Generative AI Might Just A Be Feature, Crypto is Back, Substack’s Nazi Problem

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) Whether generative AI is a feature or the underlying tech of new powerful applications 2) Robin AI's recent fundraising 3) Big Technology's latest piece on Snapchat+ 4) Jeff Bezos investing in perplexity AI 5) Google execs investing in a Gen AI search competitor 6) Microsoft copilot app debuts 7) Microsoft and OpenAI's weird competitive dynamic 8) Can Web3 still happen? 9) The implications of bitcoin's recent price rise 10) Pig butchering crypto scams 11) Substack's baffling position toward nazis 12) Peloton patterns with Tiktok 13) Crypto CEO was totally fake --- 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?

  Generative AI might just be a feature. Crypto is back, baby. The CEO that wasn't real and the state of Substack's Nazi problem. All that and more, coming up right after this. This episode is brought to you by Genesis. What does it actually take to put a Gentic AI to work across an entire enterprise? I recently spoke with Genesis chairman and CEO Tony Bates about why orchestration is emerging as a competitive advantage in customer experience and what companies need to get right in the AI era. Then I sat down with Adam Mitchell, head of enterprise business solutions at Voya Financial, to go inside a large-scale Agentic CX transformation, including the business decisions, trade-offs, and lessons along the way.

• 0:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  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 costs by 15 times. Visit akash.network/alex for a free consultation. That's akash.network/alex for a free consultation. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition, where we break down the news in our traditional cool-headed and nuanced format. We have a very big show today, covering some massive topics from generative AI to crypto and, of course, the travails of Substack.

• 1:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Here, as always, is Ranjan Roy from margins. Ranjan, welcome. How you doing?

• 1:32Speaker 01

  It's 2024 and crypto and generative AI remain top of mind, but I'm excited to get into it.

• 1:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  We'll debate whether crypto and AI are two sides of the same coin or not, as some people are talking about. But first, let's get right into the generative AI discussion. And let me start with this post from Fred Wilson, who runs Union Square Partners, a venture capital firm. He says, "We're moving into the application era of AI." And this is from his prediction post for 2024. "While in 2023, everyone was rightly focused on the large language models like OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Llama, etc., we will now see AI-first applications emerge in 2024 that will start to move the focus and the conversation up the stack." And we will see legacy applications embrace AI to make their products better and to remain

• 2:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  competitive with the AI-first disruptors. So I agree pretty strongly with the second half of Fred's take here, but not necessarily with the first half, because it does seem to me, and we're going to go through some examples here, that generative AI in the near term at least is going to be an add-on or a bolt-on to existing products, maybe just a feature. And we're not, you know, we came out with ChatGPT, that was the big application, it was like, oh, the age of AI application is here, but we haven't seen any since then. So what do you think? Is AI, generative AI going to be an application itself or an add-on?

• 3:00Speaker 01

  I think generative AI presents a new paradigm where we can't cleanly separate out features and, you know, pure applications. And the reason I think this is because generative AI, I think it will and should show up as a feature. There's news around Robin AI's legal copilot getting $26 million in venture, like this idea, and again, legal documentation and the whole legal field feels to me like the most ripe for disruption field that exists. So I think we'll start out where existing companies and products essentially bolt-on generative AI features, but I think then generative AI changes the entire way those features work.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  The example I always go back to is when Benedict Evans, I remember, had written that, you know, right now, Microsoft is approaching generative AI as an add-on to Excel, but what if generative AI completely rethinks the way we think about spreadsheets at all? And I do think it will, and maybe Microsoft will guide us in that direction and will do it still in Excel and it'll look differently. But I think generative AI is going to start as a feature, but end up transforming all these applications.

• 4:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And the question is what that timeline might look like? Because if you think about the near term, everything that we've seen, right? ChatGPT comes out in November 2022, we're sitting here in January 2024, and we're not anywhere close to that reimagination of Excel. Like, this is what it seems like it was going to look like to me. Whether it's this thing, this Robin AI, and by the way, so what you do with Robin AI is it's a Microsoft Word add-in, and it's a company that's, you know, just got 26 million in funding and 43 million total. And they use it, you can use it to create contracts in minutes. You can review, this is, this is an article talking about the funding, I think it's from TechCrunch, review existing contracts using plain language prompts, and identify and propose edits.

• 4:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  They say that it reduces the time to create contracts by 80%, and it reduces costs by 75%. So, it's a, it's a co-pilot, really, like the idea, and by the way, that's like, you know, almost obvious that there's been this language co-pilot around AI, which basically says, this is going to be something that helps you with the stuff that you're doing, you know, currently and not reinventing what you're doing. I'm really on the side of this, you know, assistive or this feature part of generative AI. I don't see it reinventing things like Excel or Search yet.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  So, here's why I think this could be different. And in terms of timeline, what I'm about to say is definitely not happening in the next year or two, but the whole point of a contract always was, and for anyone, you run your own business now, I've run my own business, like, it was always the most painful thing, especially when you're a solo entrepreneur, of like, trying to sift through legalese and feeling scared about these things and like, like, all those words on those pa, on that piece of paper are some kind of essentially a defense mechanism, it's some kind of programming that creates that idea. But, once that stuff essentially becomes automated, the whole point of what a contract looks like changes. Maybe this is a little out there, but, but again, it's, all those

• 6:19Speaker 01

  words are on the, the piece of paper to fit a specific way that we do business, and people read, humans read that piece of paper and try to make a judgment around that. But if all that stuff is essentially programmed and being automated anyway, then why do you even need a written contract? So, Robin AI, you know, and again, I don't know what that looks like in the future, but, and I've thought about this with a lot of content, that like, you already see it when an SEO-driven article gets abstracted down to a Google snippet. We never really needed that article to begin with. I don't think we need a lot of this contract language. It's all just been there because it's been built in a certain way.

• 6:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, and they basically like there's been talk about proof of work. You might cover this.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, we'll get into crypto.

• 7:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  That was in the, that was supposed to take care of this with smart contracts by now. It hasn't, but I went through that whole thing and didn't even say smart contract.

• 7:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, wow, very impressive. Well, you'll have plenty of opportunity coming up, but it is interesting that even if it is a feature, right, it can change things. And, you know, it sort of goes back and it can reshuffle the competitive balance of different applications and fields. And maybe even the mechanization in which business is done in certain fields. And I kind of go back to the Snapchat Plus example, which we talked about a little bit last week, where I made this bold claim, and I just wrote about this in Big Technology, thanks to your nudging actually, about how this is like the first hit generative AI product after ChatGPT. And the point is you go to Snapchat, not necessarily, and by the way, I re-downloaded Snapchat this week and I've been playing around with it. It's actually quite fun.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  I got a notification, your friend Alex Ketchwood is joining Snapchat, yeah.

• 8:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  This has really been a week of reawakening for me in terms of a few apps that I haven't used in a while.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  It's a new year.

• 8:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Snapchat and Coinbase, and we'll get to Coinbase in a minute, but but yeah, it's a super fun app and you don't come to use the AI features. Like you wouldn't go to use the My AI Bot, like you would go to use a ChatGPT. You don't, but they have that, they have image generation, they have image expansion, which, you know, helps you figure out what's outside of the frame, what the AI thinks is outside of the frame, and dreams, which you take a bunch of selfies and it puts you in these dream scenarios like old Hollywood or a movie poster or an alternative universe, and they're actually like quite good. And the thing is that it just enhances the experience. It doesn't reinvent Snapchat. What it does is it makes everything you do on Snapchat better, and that's why it's worth the $3.99 a month.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, and that's exactly it, that it starts as a feature, but even if you think about it, like disappearing messages on Snapchat was a feature, but it changed the way people message. It changed even sending photos that in the past, sending a photo as a means of communication, it needed to be a quote unquote, "good" photo. But once that disappearing feature came in, it completely changed the entire paradigm of communication. And obviously, that sounds a little grandiose, but I think it did, that people no longer felt like a photo was this like, you know, eternal thing that's important and has to look good. It was just, this is happening right now, and instead of writing it, I'll send you a photo. So that's why I think what they're doing and making generative

• 9:37Speaker 01

  AI accessible, I think is going to totally change the way people communicate. And that'll happen across whether they get it, whether other, whether Meta comes in and figures this out on Messenger. I think it will change the way people do things. Again, when you have an idea in your head, I think it was Rex Woodbury, if you read him, he said generative AI, it's an engine of imagination. And that stuck with me, is that like, you have a thought in your head, now, instead of describing it to someone, you just

• 10:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Show it to them.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  spin up a photo and send it to them.

• 10:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it's pretty amazing. And another thing that might happen here is that the feature aspect of generative AI might pave the way for people to use these products in those transformative ways. You get them, it gets people comfortable with the idea of using it. And then all of a sudden, it paves the way for them to start using completely different and transformative type of technology. And, and you actually, you know, it's kind of funny, like I made this big proclamation in our document to prep for the show, saying it's just a feature. And then you drop a story and saying that actually, there's funding coming in from Jeff Bezos for a product that will try to revolutionize search through generative AI and not just bolt it on. And I was like, dang, like the timing that you

• 10:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  get, right, to make this counterpoint is, is so perfect, but it is very interesting. So what is perplexity?

• 11:02Speaker 01

  So perplexity AI is a standalone app that essentially is trying to reimagine search in the age of generative AI. And you know, and it's very good. And it's definitely been a buzzy on Twitter type thing, but it's, you know, Jeff Bezos just invested into it. But it's basically, you know, you ask it the question as though you're talking to chat GPT. But the format it gives you, one of the things I really like is it's a lot more citation based. Chat GPT, you get essentially a wall of text. Perplexity is very good about, you know, structuring the information that's underlying that which Bard tries to do, but

• 11:44Speaker 01

  we, I don't even want to talk about Bard. My last few queries have been so bad.

• 11:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Bard has really gone downhill for you, Ron, John.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  It's it. I'm sorry, just very quick rant. It got quotes about, I asked, what are some famous quotes from George Washington? It made them up. It made up, I actually went through, and this is what I do with my time. It gave me 10 quotes and it, three of them did not exist. How do you hallucinate quotes from George Washington? Like, I don't know.

• 12:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's pretty bad.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Google, Sundar, if you're listening, get it together, please. We're rooting for you a little bit. But perplexity. So again, reimagining search, a lot of traction. And I have been using it a lot. And so many queries that you start, you realize that if you're not hoping to necessarily end up on a website, even though it can direct you to a website and just get good information. But if you need to click out, it's already doing it. And it does it in a very clean format. The information from everything I've tried is very good. So it's just what it looks like and how search can act. I think it's, it's

• 12:56Speaker 01

  a reminder, and especially as search has degraded over the last number of years and the top half of your search results screen are ads. I think like it's, it's time for to reimagine it. And they're, they're starting to.

• 13:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  So you use perplexity. I feel like after this discussion, I'm going to have to download yet another app because it sounds interesting to me. Are you using it to replace search? How's your experience been with it?

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, so definitely to replace search and I had already started with the chat GPT iOS app, using it to replace basic search queries. Again, if I'm like, if I'm looking for a restaurant or looking for something very up to the moment, I definitely, even though Bard should do it, I do not trust it, perplexity. So it's more evergreen information. It's definitely my starting point. And again, it just presents things in such a better way than search does.

• 13:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So first of all, I'm intrigued by the idea that there are companies that are trying to reinvent search already through generative AI and Jeff Bezos is investing. So gives me, you know, at least some indication that this could be real. Another thing that happened in this story, as I read down, jumped out at me, which is that it's being invested in by top Google people, including Susan, well, Susan Wojcicki, who's no longer the CEO of YouTube, but the former YouTube CEO and Jeff Dean, who's a senior vice president on AI.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Jeff Dean is investing in perplexity?

• 14:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, they, this is from the Wall Street Journal. They both made personal investments before the recent round of funding. I mean, this is, I don't understand how that happens.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  Sundar, get your house in order, man. Come on.

• 14:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, it is AI search. How do you have the guy working on AI in a search company invest in a competitor? I didn't even know that that was half possible.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  That cannot be a lie, Sundar. Come on, man. But yeah, yeah, no, this is, it is. And another very interesting thing, though. So I've been using perplexity a few months. So Microsoft just launched an iOS app for Copilot. And it's interesting because you had already talked about, I think, from a branding standpoint, and I don't know if they're going to be able to own the term, even maybe from a copyright perspective, but like, I agree, Copilot is the best way to describe this technology to most people. And the fact that that's what they call it and the app and the feature and all their existing pieces of software. But so as I've been talking up perplexity, I've played with Copilot for

• 15:26Speaker 01

  the last week, and it's pretty much as good and it does things in almost the exact same way. So.

• 15:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's excellent. This is what I've been saying on the show for, for months at this point, that I am a Bing boy, and it's now called Copilot, but Bing Chat is excellent.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, and okay, I guess previously Bing Chat one had, and I remember at first they made you like download Microsoft Edge, which I did not want to do. But is even again, the, I guess this is a reminder that like user interface and all of these things matters so much. I've always believed ChatGPT's greatest trick was the fact that it kind of streams the letters and pretends it's writing to you rather than even though if you ever use the API, it can return it as a block of text in far less time, but it creates the illusion of thinking happening. And so you, user experience and interface definitely matter in all of these.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  And, and the thing is Copilot is good. It's, it's a little, it's a little more crowded and busy than perplexity. And, uh, but it's still very good. And again, the way they present all the information. But, but I think this also gets us back into the question of are these heavily funded buzzy startups? What chat, like, how do they fight against Microsoft and Google and Apple and whoever else? Because again, here you have the buzz, one of the buzziest startups in the valley funded by Bezos and even Google's own AI search people. And yet Copilot basically can replicate the, the quality, at least from what I've seen, and in almost the exact same UI

• 17:12Speaker 01

  right away. Does that mean they just kind of disappear as Microsoft pushes Copilot across every word in Excel and Office user?

• 17:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly. I mean, so this is from the TechCrunch story. It says with Copilot, you're getting access to OpenAI's GPT-4 technology for free, which is pretty significant because OpenAI's GPT app runs GPT 3.5 technology and charges for access to GPT-4. You also get access to DALL-E 3 for free. So it really is quite remarkable that Microsoft, which has put all this money into OpenAI, is effectively, effectively offering something better for cheaper, for free.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Sorry, that, you're right. That's actually a far more salient point. Like, how is, what does that mean in this whole drama that OpenAI is majority of their revenue, vast majority, and we've talked about consumer versus enterprise a lot, is consumer in ChatGPT Plus for 20 bucks a month? And if I can get that free on Microsoft Copilot right now, like for them to do that to their own investment, does, are they doing that because they've lost faith after the whole Altman drama?

• 18:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  That is interesting. There was always going to be tension in this partnership, always, right? They're offering similar products. ChatGPT is, you know, potentially competing with some Microsoft products. But the fact that Microsoft is now offering such a competitive product, I don't know, Ranjan, it seems to me like there's going to be more tension between these two companies.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not just a competitive product. It's a, and again, if you use the two.

• 18:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  The product, better and free.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  It's the, the same product that, and it's OpenAI's entire revenue stream for free.

• 19:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Big techs, big tech is still playing the big tech game.

• 19:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, I feel like if you off, if you spend all that money and you get forty nine percent of OpenAI's revenue, but you don't own any of OpenAI, which is the case for Microsoft, you got to find a way, and this might be the way.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  Find a way. Yep, yep.

• 19:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  So let's, let's go back to our friend Fred Wilson, who in his twenty twenty three post, talking about the age of AI application is also talking about how we're going to see a big year for crypto and Web three. And for a while I thought like, okay, we're not going to hear about Web three anymore. You have the Sam Bankman-Fried scam and everybody starts to, has gotten wise to the fact that this technology is largely overpromised and was pushed by many hucksters. But we're starting to see the return of quote unquote, serious people talking about Web three again. And Wilson says that twenty twenty three was the year Web three held its ground. Okay, that's a very interesting description of what happened.

• 20:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  And twenty twenty four will be the year that regulators and lawmakers come to terms with AI. He continues, AI developed for over forty years before its coming out party. I think it will take Web 3 less than half of that time. Satoshi gave us a playbook to build decentralized, a decentralized internet stack back in 2008. And I feel quite confident that we will have massive mainstream applications running on this decentralized stack well before 2028. I think we will see mainstream decentralized applications emerge in 2024 as we now have inexpensive and fast transactions and simpler user interfaces. And this is where he says, AI and Web 3 are two sides of the same coin.

• 20:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  AI will help make Web 3 usable for mainstream applications and Web 3 will help us trust AI. Together, they will lead to a more powerful, more resilient, more trusted and more equitable internet. Ranjan, we've been talking about how like AI is not Web 3 because it has actual use cases. Is it the case that Web 3 is just going to take a little bit more time to get there? Or is this sort of the last gasp from, you know, boosters of a technology that have a lot of money in it and are desperately trying to make it happen?

• 21:12Speaker 01

  I mean, it feels a bit like every other, every industry and company has tried to put AI in its name or a company description. And that sentence to me felt, it starts to feel a little bit. The part that I definitely took issue with is that AI took 40 years and Web 3 will only be half that because we started in 2008. One thing with crypto is I remember hearing endlessly, this is like the internet in 1994. This is like the internet in 1970 already. Like anything to try to justify the lack of a killer use case or any kind of use case. What are we now 15, 16 years into it?

• 21:53Speaker 01

  So I think trying to almost brag that the time scale will be halved for this relative to AI, I think is a bit disingenuous. The only thing, based on what we said earlier, the, where he says Web 3 will help us trust AI, there still is this massive trust gap that will only get worse with generative AI. And provenance and context will become more important than ever. And right now, it's funny because like. You know, is this image real or not? Who made this image? These are the exact questions that Web three has always promised us it can answer. And also, I keep saying Web three buying into the marketing term.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Let's call it crypto or, you know, blockchain. I think actually the greatest rebranding ever was blockchain into Web three because everyone got tired of blockchain as a term. But that's what it was, that's what it is supposed to do like, and it should be doing that already. Like, the idea that there's not a mid journey plugin, a blockchain slash Web three plugin that tells you who made what, when it was made, what the prompt was, whatever else. Again, the idea that we're going to see that in 2024, when nothing has happened on that side, I think is wishful thinking. But I also think, at least as the promise is written, I mean, it should help us there.

• 23:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  So here's another place where I take issue with with Wilson, and that's him saying that it took 40 years for AI to have its coming out party. Well, all along the way, AI has had real use cases that may not have been generative AI, but computer vision and machine, machine learning rankings, natural language processing. All this stuff has been used to power everything from translations to things like Google Photos, figuring out even self-driving cars. Like, this is a already in primetime technology that just took another leap forward. Whereas with Web three, you're just not quite there.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree. I think that's a, that's a good point that you're right. He almost equate, he equates AI and Web three, not generative AI specifically. And AI, Google search itself has been rebuilt around AI and machine learning. So every, almost every major technological use case, there's, I mean, very often some kind of AI component to it. But I think also, again, it's going to be an interesting year because I think if you've seen Fidelity now has set, has announced the idea of a Bitcoin ETF with a fee of just around 0.39% and is waiting for SEC approval. So there's energy back.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  There's energy back in crypto, in Bitcoin, and everyone's trying to set this as a year. Bitcoin's held strong at like 45K right now. So, so I don't know. Do you think?

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Do you think Bitcoin ends the year higher or lower than 46K?

• 24:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's always such a crap shoot to predict what the price of Bitcoin is going to be. But I do think that there's like, looking at the fact that Bitcoin is, I am astonished that it's up to, it's like 43,000 today. I'm astonished it's back there. I thought it was over. You know, when it went down to 17,000, I was like, you know, see it, you'll never reach your, you know, the heights again. And then I, you know, so I was researching our segment for today and I was like, all right, screw it. I'll open my Coinbase app to see how much I'm down. And those numbers were green, baby. Like, things look good. And it's going to make people like, say, oh, this crypto thing, like, I'm already getting FOMO for not having invested again at the depths. And I'm happy to be in, you know, in the positive numbers again.

• 25:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  But it is, it's very interesting that this thing just will not die. And it's about to be, like you mentioned, it's about to be traded through ETFs, which is going to bring mainstream investor, you would imagine, more mainstream investor interest in the app, in, in the, you know, in the coin. Especially as it's had this surge. I mean, it's on the way up and it's going to be listed as an ETF. You know, that's, that's some serious momentum. So on one hand, I look at this Web3 thing with some skepticism and on the other, I'm just like, well, as long as the price of, I mean, that's really what this has been about, right? As long as the price of Bitcoin is as high as it is, it's a little bit hard to dismiss.

• 26:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  And maybe we will find use cases for this blockchain technology as long as the money is there, which will attract more investment and more development.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  See, this is where I disagree. I think, and I've, I've thought this for a long time. The focus on price is what distracts from any utilization around the technology. And that's why maybe we could have had that use case, but because the focus on price was the core, it brought in the wrong people, they focused on the wrong things. And I actually think, I'm shocked that the... Bit, or I guess the Bitcoin community, but the Web3 community from everything I've seen is like incredibly excited about the ETF. Because think about what an ETF does. It abstracts away the entire technology and just makes it a vehicle for speculation.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  And that, that's literally what the definition is. It gives you exposure without having to touch the underlying asset. And that's exactly what I would think you should not want with this, because the whole point is now you're getting, focus on it again, everyone getting involved. Casual investors, their first exposure to this, or maybe their fifth or sixth, is through something that completely says the technology, we don't care about that. We only care about the price. So I actually think the Bitcoin ETF idea is, it's a negative for any potential Web3 development, serious application killer use case.

• 27:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, this is a good moment also to plug that I have Albert Wagner, who is Fred Wilson's partner at Union Square Ventures, coming on the show next Wednesday. So I'm going to do that interview on Tuesday, and I'm definitely going to bring this up to him. It should be interesting. So look out for that in your feeds next Wednesday. Oh, we're not done with crypto, folks, because as crypto arises, there will continue to be more and more ridiculous stories about the way that this technology or this speculation has been used to scam people. So we have two big stories, one we're going to end with, but the first, let's talk about now, because as I've gotten to know Ron John, one of the things I've learned is that whenever it comes to a big scam, or confidence game, or con, this man lights

• 28:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  up, and he dropped a story about pig butchering in our document this week. And I was just like, oh, boy, this is going to be so exciting to talk about, because this one is a fun, fun scam.

• 28:52Speaker 01

  Well, I think we're gonna have to say, lose it while I am, my eyes are lit and I'm smiling because this is such a ridiculous story. It, it, it, there, it's, it's a serious one. So I just finished reading Number Goes Up by Zeke Fox, which honestly was one of the most fun business books I've read in a long time, where it, it's written in kind of like, almost like a mystery style travel the globe story format, but the underlying business writing is very smart and very good. And so he's, his focus is on Tether. And we haven't really touched on it that much because I guess last year it wasn't quite the story it was in 21 and 22. But again, the stable

• 29:36Speaker 01

  coin that underlies so much of the entire crypto infrastructure. And then how Tether, and then kind of he goes through Tether through many cycles. And he even had interviewed SBF, Sam Bankman Fried in person a number of times, covers that, covers the rise and fall of FTX. And in the end, Tether stays standing. And then obviously, the question is, where is it being used? What, other than pure speculation, why is it being used? And in that, he uncovers what are called pig butchering scams. And there's, I've seen more and more of the Wall Street Journal had a pretty big feature a month ago. CNN had an article just this week. There's news out of

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Colorado in the Nation, there's a big piece. But basically, it's the idea that, you know, you get, and I don't know, do you, have you ever gotten those text messages from some unusually attractive, random looking female who's like, hi?

• 30:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Always. No, no, they're always real.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, for Alex, they're always real.

• 30:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  And trust me.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  But so what's funny is, I actually myself, so the author, Zeke Fox, he, he starts responding to it and takes them on this journey I'll quickly talk about, not to spoil too much from the book, but. I had responded. Basically, you respond, they start kind of talking to you a little bit and try to flirt with you. And then next thing it's like, hey, I'm making, they tell you, I'm making a lot of money in crypto. And then potentially invite you to join a WhatsApp group where it moves further and then they start giving you tips. They start asking you to send money to get, send Tether, the stablecoin, to convert your money to Tether. And then send that tether to what are often either fake exchanges, fake web, like entire websites that look like an exchange.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  And so this is not only scamming many people out of untold amounts of money. And, and you know, like some numbers you hear, there's like hundred million dollar scams uncovered, three hundred million dollar scams uncovered. The other crazy part of this story is the people who are on the other side are often trafficked. There are people who answer like an ad in their living, a lot of them are living in China and they go to Cambodia or Vietnam to work in a tourism agency or as a telemarketer. And then literally are imprisoned in buildings where they cannot leave, they're abused. And they are forced to carry on these pig butcher, butchering scams.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  And the crazy part is even from what little he sees, you understand there's potentially billions of dollars in this. Tether, the stablecoin company, just last month even froze two hundred twenty five million dollars of what they say they've uncovered a huge ring of pig butchering. So they're at least taking some stance around it. But the idea that in terms of what that killer use case has quietly been over the last six years. It seems to be that there is at least a multi-billion dollar economy in scamming people in the West. And then on the other side, people in a horrible situation being forced to, to do this.

• 32:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I probably shouldn't have used the word fun, but it is definitely, it is revealing. Like it's, it's a crazy, crazy story that does reveal so much of what crypto is being used for. And it's sad. And like, it is, one of the things that these stories do is they bring home that there's like real people on the other end of this that are actually getting scammed and are losing money because of this stuff. And you wonder, like a lot of technology, there's a trade off, right? We talked about this, uh, this past week with Meredith Whitaker, that. If you have a new technology released, there's going to be some good and bad. Where does it land on net? I would argue most of it on net is positive. But when you hear these stories and you've heard them as people got cleaned out, as they've invested in FTX and in all these other different.

• 33:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  And I feel like everybody who's like in the tech industry now knows at least within one degree of separation, someone who's lost a ton of money on a crypto scam. And you start to wonder whether this stuff is actually, you know, a net positive or negative. And it's really hard to argue that anything but the negative side at this point.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think what was even more eye opening for me is as a former trader, relatively capitalist person, the idea of all, it's already bad enough, people falling for a scam, but then there's always the, hey, getting into crypto was of your own accord. That's your fault. It was more the other side understanding is not just the people losing the money. It's the people who are actually facilitating the scams that that this is a massive part of how these operations work is an even more depressing part. But, but in terms of people losing their money too, the book, do you remember Axie Infinity and Smooth Love Potion?

• 34:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  The play to earn revolution, which I remember when it was coming out. That was one of my biggest, I don't want to say eye roll moments, but just like, come on, this is come on.

• 34:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Why not? It's an eye roll moment, why not?

• 34:48Speaker 01

  The idea that people are going to lift themselves out of poverty by playing games. And again, he talks to a number of people who lost a lot, like took out loans, borrowed money to invest in making their own creatures in Axie Infinity to gather and gain Smooth Love Potion tokens and then lost a lot of money. And again, it's not someone who has a bunch of money and lost a little bit. It's people who lose everything. So I think it's, it's, I don't know, it's surprising to me.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  That those conversations are not bigger and we seem to just move on. Like even right now Bitcoin 45K, people are tweeting a lot, people are like, like yet those last few years are just glossed over. And I am curious, I was surprised reading it that it wasn't a bigger story already, given the book came out a few months ago, but it's starting to be covered a little bit, but still not where it needs to be.

• 35:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  So Andreessen Horowitz actually reached out and asked me if I wanted to interview Chris Dixon, who has a book coming out about Web3 and crypto, sorry, in the coming weeks. And of course, I'm interested in speaking with him. And then they wrote back and said, listen, he's, you know, he's now looking at some other shows, so we'll see. And it's like, Chris, I'm at Andreessen Horowitz, if you're listening, come on and have the talk. Like, I understand this is not going to be an easy interview, but just do it, right? Like, what's the point of being an advocate for this technology if you're not gonna step up to the plate and talk about it with people who are gonna ask you tough questions? So that's my public plea. I'll continue to work behind the scenes to bring this interview to folks.

• 36:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  And if they decide not to do it, then we're gonna talk more about it. Because I do think that the boosters of this technology need to have frank conversations with people who may not agree with them.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  I think that's, that's a fair thing. And again, the idea of more democratization around disrupting finance, especially in emerging markets and making payments easier across borders and instantaneous, all these things would be an incredibly positive good, but it has not happened yet. And maybe it's happening more than we realize. And for him to explain that, I would be happy to hear this.

• 37:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, as would I, and I think so would our audience. So I'll keep you all posted on that. All right, let's take a quick break. And go from crypto to the Nazis on Substack and then fun and finish with, you know, some more uplifting stories or not even uplifting, but one really hilarious story that I cannot wait to talk about. 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. That's exactly what Avpoint does. For 25 years, they've been the trusted layer beneath the world's most demanding data,

• 37:51Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 38:35Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 39:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  become real world attacks. The link's in the show notes.

• 39:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast, here with Ranjan Roy of Margins. Ranjan, we both write on Substack. And Substack has had a bit of an issue with Nazis on the platform. There was an Atlantic story that uncovered that Substack has Nazi, you know, not even people that wink at Nazis, but full-fledged Nazis writing on the platform, making money on Substack. And it's a small amount of people, but they're there. And Substack refuses to either take them off or demonetize them. And it sort of gets to this, it's like an essential example of like, should online platforms be for free speech? Or, you know, should they take anything down?

• 40:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  And, you know, obviously, this is protected speech, it's not illegal to write this stuff in the US. But should a tech platform be making money off of Nazi writing? And subject itself to, or expose itself to the possibility that people reading work on their site might go and then take, I mean, take violent action? Like Nazism is a tradition with, it's an ideological tradition that's associated with violence. You cannot separate the violence out. And so, do you want to be the platform that people are going to read and potentially take action there? And even 8chan, if you watch the great documentary about QAnon, so, you know, basically got to the point where it's like, we cannot host this ideology anymore because people are

• 40:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  going out and shooting folks up after reading it. And Substack is standing behind it. It's pretty wild. They're basically like, "We don't like Nazis either, but to censor this would be worse than allowing it to be up." I mean, I'm curious how you read this situation. To some people, it seems, you know, completely cut and dry. I mean, my newsletter is still on Substack, but I am not, you know... Confident in staying there. I'm curious what you think.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  I am, I've followed this for a long time. We were fairly early in starting margins on Substack. And I feel, it's very representative in an interesting way around just platforms versus publications. Substack has always been funny to me because Substack calls themselves a platform that supports free speech, yet they chose very specific authors to give large cash advances to and essentially chosen curated what showed up on the front page. And it was a publication very much in that sense, which means you have an editorial view and responsibility. But they will never take the, you know, the ownership of that.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  But by the same token, in terms of like platforms and content moderation, I always feel this is always a game and it's purely kind of being run in a, it's not done in an ethical way at all. It's purely in a capitalistic way of try to just deflect, try to just deflect and hope you can grow the business and raise the next round and potentially IPO or whatever else and keep growing. But I, less from the ethical side, I'm actually just more confused what they mean and what they're trying to do from a business standpoint, because Substack itself already took on kind of a specific branding, especially during the COVID years.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  And why would you want to dig further into that, especially when there's reporting they were having trouble raising additional rounds? They've raised a very, very expensive round of their last money. Like, so they have to grow. Why would they do this? I mean, do you think it's willful? Do you think it's just such a commitment to quote unquote free speech?

• 43:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think that they realize that they're going to signal to a lot of their right-leaning authors that they are going to be willing to censor and they don't want to do that. But that's, I do not think this is smart. I do not think this is wise. I do not think this is well thought through. I've emailed with them a little bit in the background, completely off record, so I'm not going to share what they said. But, I mean, I'll say it's like straight up that I'm fairly dismayed by this. It should be easy, right? Nazis making money on your product, you should not allow them to do that. Even, like again, it's not controversial, even Eight Trend draws a line here, you know? It's crazy to continue to

• 43:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  want to be in this type of business. And I think, you know, it's gonna be, maybe not the end of Substack, but like, it's gonna meaningfully hurt this business and potentially lead to a spiral that leaves them on the, on the boundaries of the tech, tech world, on the margins, so to speak, but not those type, on the fringes. And I think it's the, some of the dumbest business management I've ever seen in my life. And I'm not, I'm like, not in the like, I don't even think they need to take these people off the platform, necessarily. I just think they shouldn't be able to make any money on the writing that they're doing.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, YouTube wrote the playbook for everybody, like, and again, I mean, in a very smart way, and to their credit, thing keeps growing and going, like, YouTube wrote the playbook and the playbook is right there, so why you wouldn't take it? I mean, I guess at that point, you do wonder in terms of like, the free speech pilling in, within like, a closed community.

• 44:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, they're funded by, again, Andreessen Horowitz, so that's probably part of it.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I think, I don't know, I think this is gonna be an interesting year for me with Substack, less the Nazis, more the growth.

• 45:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, well, they're definitely hurting the growth, for sure. Sorry, go ahead.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, 2024 is gonna be a year, I think that we'll be talking about this all year long, where a lot of the 2021 and 2022 vintage hyped companies, if they didn't realize those projections in 2023, that, you know, the...

• 45:30Speaker 01

  Rubber will meet the road and I think I actually think I think we will be hearing more about Substack's business than content moderation in the next like six months.

• 45:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, maybe this is a sign that they're quite desperate on the business front and they feel that they can't lose. But the other thing is that people are gonna start stop paying for Substacks if they continue to stand by us. Like I mean, we just went paid on big technology and I've definitely gotten notes from a couple of people saying, listen, I'm off of Substack. I'm not gonna pay anymore. And I guess I don't blame them. It's very, it's a very strange position to me for me to be in, right? Like, I've had multiple family members that were killed in the Holocaust and like to have people, you know, unsubscribe to big technology because I'm on a platform that allows Nazis to make money is just a very strange situation. So I guess like I'm gonna wait and see what they do. You know,

• 46:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  it's very, very difficult to replicate the functionality, right? So it would be very tough for me to move, but I don't think it's completely out of the cards to think that big technology might go elsewhere if this keeps up.

• 46:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Anyway, talk about Peloton. We already knew there was gonna be no transition away from this.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  There was no transition. We'd already discussed from pig butchering to Nazis. So I'm gonna come in and tell you about how Peloton, which is I, I never sold my bike. I said I was going to a few months ago and I didn't end up selling it. So still and I still pay for it and the

• 47:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Are you riding?

• 47:04Speaker 01

  I ride. Since it's been cold, I've been riding again and they've been making some updates, but it's still, it was my favorite pandemic company because I was a user for a few years beforehand, loved it. And then what they did during the pandemic that was absurd again, once their stock went up. Overpromising, trying to release too many products, letting the core product degrade. So it's a company in a bit of desperation now. And they just announced a partnership with TikTok on Thursday, where they're gonna, they're gonna have hashtag TikTok fitness powered by Peloton. Within the platform, there's gonna be a fitness space that you can go to and try to get, take some fitness classes or watch some fitness videos.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  The thing that was interesting to me is, this is a reminder, the question with all these companies, right? Has always been, were they ever a tech company? Was WeWork a real estate company or a tech company? Was Peloton an exercise hardware company? Or a tech company slash like media company, basically digital? They're going all in, they're leaving the hardware behind and really trying to lean into streaming fitness, which is a very, very competitive space. So I think it's a move that reeks of a bit of desperation. But again, going back to, actually to tie it into our last segment,

• 48:27Speaker 01

  companies that were hyped in 2021 that are doing extreme things to try to remain relevant in 2024. I think Peloton going on TikTok and Substack and Nazis perhaps, or free speech, as you said. I think we're gonna see a lot more companies in that exact state do things that are kind of questionable or just try to lean in into the wrong business decisions because they have to do something.

• 48:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly, yeah. And I'm also a Peloton fan. We had Emma Lovewell here, who's a Peloton instructor. It's one of our earliest interviews on the podcast, so.

• 49:04Speaker 01

  Wait, you had Emma Lovewell?

• 49:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh yeah, she was a 2020 interview, for sure.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  I did not, I did not know this.

• 49:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  All right.

• 49:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Actually, one of my favorite interviews we've done on the show, and she's a great instructor.

• 49:14Speaker 01

  My favorite instructors, yeah, yeah.

• 49:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  So, uh, yeah.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  Wait, what was the, I guess Peloton, the technology angle there?

• 49:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, we just talked about like, what was it, what's it like to teach, you know, fitness classes to 50,000 people on the other side of your, of your screen? In a stadium sized ride effectively, uh, without seeing any of them. And like what it's been like just experiencing the Peloton rise. In the middle of covid. So I also, I mean, I I had one as soon as they announced the lockdowns. I was like, or even beforehand, I went to Amazon and was like, exercise bike. Like, if I'm not gonna leave my apartment, I'm getting an exercise bike. And I got one of those like, you know, cheap Chinese made uh exercise bikes and then I signed up to the Peloton app. And I used it for months through covid and it was honestly, it was a savior for me. So.

• 50:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Uh but yeah, it's been been interesting to see where this company has gone since then. Do they end up acquired by Apple?

• 50:11Speaker 01

  They've been saying that for a long time and Apple, this this is even more reason. I think it's confusing again why it's a bad business decision. Apple has its own pretty good, if not great, streaming fitness media content. They don't have hardware. So Peloton should just be tripling down that we are the best and I think they are. Hardware company that also marries together software in a seamless, entertaining way. Rather than we're yet another streaming fitness content platform. Cause it makes it less attractive to Apple.

• 50:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. Okay, let's let's end with my favorite story of the week, which is that there was this. And by the way, I don't take joy in in these these scams, but they are fun to read about. I guess it's like the true crime. Type of thing that is intriguing to me, but the there was this crypto company called Hyperverse. And they tried it out, this uh chief executive officer, uh Stephen Reese Lewis. And the Guardian did this investigation and this person was fake. So um. They they uh let's see, so. They said no records exist of Stephen Reese Lewis in the UK's company's register.

• 51:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Uh then he also uh said he was at the University of Leeds and the University of Cambridge. And neither of those com- those universities have him in their databases. And he said that um he had sold a company to Adobe and Adobe said there's no Stephen Reese Lewis. And he also said that he worked for Goldman Sachs and Goldman Sachs said they did not um ever employ this person. And um.

• 51:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, the craziest thing is that this crypto company, which again, you know, speaking of the overall negative impact of crypto, took a lot of money from people and then didn't return it. And it had these testimonials from Chuck Norris and Steve Wozniak, and just who endorsed this company, Hyperverse, that he was the leader of. So Chuck Norris said, "Under the leadership of CEO Steve, and Hyperverse will be the leader of the metaverse space." And Steve Wozniak says, "I'm here to support Steven and Hyperverse. I can't wait for the Hyperverse." And the story found out that both of these guys are on Cameo, and basically wink, wink at the fact that Hyperverse bought Cameo endorsements from

• 52:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Chuck Norris and Steve Wozniak, who gave them willingly for like a hundred bucks, probably under dollars, put them on the website. And they're like, oh, all of a sudden, they look legit. It's just the craziest story, man. I don't even know where to begin on this one.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  I think we've had a pretty serious show for the last half. I think this one, this is the type of scamming and confidence game that does bring a full smile to my face because, again, it's not just crypto. Cameo is involved. And the idea of, it's brilliant if you think about it, like Chuck Norris, here's a cameo, here's a hundred bucks, say exactly this, and then to put it on your website. It's nuts. The thing also, Steve Wozniak, why is he doing cameos? He has to have enough money. Even Chuck Norris, what do they get paid? That's what's really struck out to me in this. Do they just enjoy it? Like, why is

• 53:38Speaker 01

  Steve Wozniak doing a cameo or Chuck Norris? They don't, they're not George Santos. They don't need, you know, a couple of clips of a hundred dollars here or there.

• 53:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, I am drawing complete blanks on this one, Ron. John, what do you think the answer is?

• 53:52Speaker 01

  I don't know. Maybe they just love, they love the format. They love the cameo. Just making the people happy.

• 54:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  I guess so. I mean, if I was a billionaire, would I, you know, do shout outs on Cameo for a hundred bucks each?

• 54:09Speaker 01

  You should do it for free. Donate to charity at least.

• 54:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  Maybe that, maybe, oh, that's the idea. Cameo, but people just do it for charity.

• 54:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And then the companies that order the cameos use that for scams. So you, it could be this flywheel here where...

• 54:26Speaker 01

  2021, we would have raised some money already.

• 54:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  We'd have been great. Okay, so you have a celebrity do a cameo. That cameo is used for a crypto company. That crypto company impoverishes people and those people are made whole by a charity that the cameo thing funds. It's beautiful.

• 54:46Speaker 01

  Saving the world. Technology saving the world.

• 54:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's why I'm a techno optimist. Ranjan, thanks so much for joining us. Great talking to you as always.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  All right. Good way to end there.

• 54:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right, everybody. We're optimistic here. Just, uh, just gotta be creative. All right, everybody. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Ranjan, for being here. On Wednesday, as I mentioned, my interview with Union Square Ventures, Albert Wagner, is going to be live and then Ranjan and I will be back uh, next Friday, typical time. So we hope to see you there and we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

• 55:37Speaker 02

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  When the world gets you down.

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• 56:20Alex Kantrowitz?

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