Microsoft is in its AI PC era

Today on the flagship podcast of Arm-based chipsets: 03:08 - The Verge’s Tom Warren and David Pierce discuss the announcements from Microsoft’s Surface event, including the new Arm-powered Surface Laptop, and Copilot Plus PCs. Microsoft’s Surface AI event: news, rumors, and lots of Qualcomm laptops Microsoft announces an Arm-powered Surface Laptop Microsoft’s new Surface Pro gets an OLED display for the first time Microsoft announces Copilot Plus PCs with built-in AI hardware The new, faster Surface Pro is Microsoft's all-purpose AI PC Recall is Microsoft’s key to unlocking the future of PCs 27:29 -Verge senior AI reporter Kylie Robison joins the show to chat about OpenAI’s GPT-4o demo and where we’re headed in the next few years of AI. ChatGPT is getting a Mac app OpenAI’s custom GPT Store is now open to all for free OpenAI releases GPT-4o, a faster model that’s free for all ChatGPT users ChatGPT will be able to talk to you like Scarlett Johansson in Her OpenAI pulls its Scarlett Johansson-like voice for ChatGPT OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever is officially leaving OpenAI researcher resigns, claiming safety has taken ‘a backseat to shiny products’ We tried out the Project Astra demo at Google I/O which worked well un... | tech | TikTok 57:40 - Nilay Patel answers a question about iPads for this week’s Vergecast Hotline. Apple iPad Pro (2024) review: the best tablet money can buy Email us at [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:02David Pierce?

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of ARM-based chipsets. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am currently in the woods in the middle of nowhere in Virginia at an Airbnb. So the last seven days have been my wife's birthday, Mother's Day, and our wedding anniversary, all in the course of a week. If you get to choose in your life to do all those things at once or spread them out through the year, I highly recommend spreading them out through the year. But this is what we have. So every year, we try to combine all these celebrations and just go find a place in the woods with bad internet and no cell connectivity and just relax for a couple of days. I cannot recommend enough, every once in a while, just finding somewhere where you

• 0:43David Pierce?

  can't be online whether you want to or not, and just lean into it for a couple of days. It's the best. But I'm in the woods, but The Vergecast goes on. We have an awesome show for you today. We actually have a lot to get to. It is the newsiest time in recent memory, and there's a lot of fun stuff to talk about. Today on the show, we're going to talk about two things. We're going to talk about the Surface event that just happened where Microsoft kind of unveiled both its new devices, but also what seems to be an entirely new generation of laptops and Windows PCs. There's a lot going on. There's some big, huge promises. We're going to talk about all of it. We're also going to talk about OpenAI. I know we've been talking about the OpenAI event from last week and Google Gemini and

• 1:25David Pierce?

  this whole AI space that we're in right now a lot over the last couple of weeks, but I can't stop thinking about it, especially what OpenAI believes is the future and how we're going to talk to computers going forward. Lots to get to on that front. We're going to talk to Kylie Robinson, our new AI reporter, about all of it. We also have a question about iPads on the Vergecast hotline because we also can't stop talking about iPads. Lots to do in this episode. All that is coming up in just a second, but I just heard the hot tub motor go off, which means it's hot enough, which means it's hot tub time. This is The Vergecast. We'll see you in a sec.

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• 3:01David Pierce?

  Welcome back. We've been hearing for the last couple of months that a whole new generation of PCs was about to come out. Qualcomm had this new lineup of chips called the Snapdragon X that were supposedly drastically more powerful and more efficient and would actually bring the Windows PC world up to par with the recent Macs that run on Apple's own silicon. That's a big win on its own, obviously, but also the combination of power and efficiency changes more than you might think. Not only do things get better and longer lasting, which is a huge win, but you can also do different kinds of device design when you can count on all-day battery life. You can build them with 5G and other connectivity because people will actually take them away from the charger.

• 3:45David Pierce?

  Windows tablets would suddenly make a lot more sense for a lot of people. So would more portable Windows gaming devices. It all sounds awesome. It also, I should say, is a thing we have been promised many, many times. Qualcomm has been claiming that the next one was the one. For years, everything was going to be the year of Windows on ARM. I'm skeptical of all of it. Well, yesterday, that new generation of PCs showed up. Microsoft had a big event to launch new services. Lots of other companies announced Snapdragon devices of their own. Our own Tom Warren is at the event in Seattle to catch us up on all of it. Hi, Tom.

• 4:21Speaker 04

  Hello there.

• 4:22David Pierce?

  How's life in Seattle?

• 4:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's good. It's sunny. It's not raining, so I can't complain.

• 4:27David Pierce?

  I did appreciate that the weather came up like three times at the beginning of the event this morning. They were very happy that it was a sunny day in Seattle.

• 4:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, the last, they put us all in the tent today. So the last time they did that, it was like mudslides all around the tent. So I'm glad that's not happened.

• 4:42David Pierce?

  Oh, boy. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about this event. This was an event we've known was coming for a while. It's the day before Microsoft Build, but it's not Microsoft Build. Like, give me the vibes of the event a little bit.

• 4:54Speaker 04

  Yeah. So obviously, we kind of knew that they'd been working on these sort of like ARM-powered PCs. And kind of like the event sort of talked us through this sort of reinvention of Windows, which is Microsoft's promised a bunch on sort of Windows and ARM previously. But it does feel like it's slightly different this time, mainly because these devices have got more performance and battery life, all that sort of stuff. But also because all the OEMs are actually doing their own variants of what they're calling these Copilot Plus PCs. And they're actually like the top-tier variants of their Windows laptops. So it's not like they're just shoving these chips into some mid-range laptops and just calling it that. They're like, I quote, "all in" on these Copilot Plus PCs. So the event kind of ran that down, why that matters, the performance versus the MacBook Air.

• 5:39Speaker 04

  Because Microsoft thinks that this is kind of like their moment to sort of beat the MacBook Air, which is kind of interesting. And then some of the AI sort of features that these new laptops enable.

• 5:48David Pierce?

  Yeah, there's a lot of confidence coming out of Microsoft in this event. Like, I feel like normally, I'm used to sort of the Panos Panay era, where he would come out and sort of tell you how lovely a device is and try to convince you of how wonderful it is and how much the team cared about it. And this felt like a very different Microsoft. They just came out and were like, "We did it, folks. Like, here's the stuff. Check it out. Let's go." Was that what it felt like in the room?

• 6:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, it definitely felt a little bit different than some of it. Because the previous Surface event that they had last year, it was like literally like days after we knew Panos was leaving. And that felt like-

• 6:18David Pierce?

  Oh, that's right.

• 6:19Speaker 04

  It was like a kind of like a funeral to Surface. It felt like Surface was dying or something. It was a really odd event. This one, it just feels like the Surface is like the platform, like essentially the showpiece for this platform, for these new advances on Windows and ARM. And that's kind of, they didn't make Surface like the most important thing, but it wasn't the least important thing. It was kind of, you know, just there to sort of back up that they are serious about this transition to ARM.

• 6:45David Pierce?

  Yeah, so talk to me about the the Copilot Plus PCs thing because you and I have been on this show for the last couple of months. I would say relatively consistently making fun of the idea of an AI PC, which just generally means nothing. But this time, Microsoft came out and much more clearly tried to define what a Copilot Plus PC is and what makes it different and what makes it special and why this kind of deserves its own category of PCs. Like, what makes a Copilot Plus PC a Copilot Plus PC?

• 7:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. They previously had these AI PCs that were kind of like, they were trying to sell it on this AI vision of Windows, but they didn't quite have the performance essentially inside for them to actually enable these AI features that are part of these Copilot Plus PCs. So essentially what they are is, I think the way Microsoft defined them is that the MPU, the neural processing unit, it's a new chip. I wouldn't say it's necessarily new, but it's new to sort of Windows. A new chip that will basically accelerate these AI tasks. So they've got this new recall feature, which essentially, say you're working on your laptop and like you saw an elephant two weeks ago, and you're like, where did I see that damn elephant? Was it in a tab? Like, was it in an email? Like, sure, I saw it. And then you can just type in elephant,

• 8:01Speaker 04

  and it will be like, okay, I saw this in your email. And it doesn't need to like see the words that you've typed, like elephant. It will literally understand that that is an elephant. So it's quite good for recalling like those memories from your everyday use of Windows. Very similar to a macOS app called Rewind, which does a similar thing. But obviously, this is built in, it's leveraging the actual MPU, so it's not hitting the CPU or GPU to sort of do this. So you can just do these whilst you're watching videos or processing, I don't know, like Premiere Pro or something like that, and it's not going to hit that performance. There's also like live captions, and they showed like translation there, which was pretty cool. But you can't like save that stuff. So it's just, so say you wanted to watch, or listen, or watch a podcast that was in Japanese, you could literally just load it up and it would

• 8:45Speaker 04

  just do that live translation for you. So that was pretty cool.

• 8:49David Pierce?

  I have to say, I thought Recall was really cool. And I actually thought in general, Microsoft did a really good job of not only explaining why you want lots of power on your computer, but also showing the kinds of features that you can do on your device when you have this stuff. Like the translation was a good example where you were able to have like multiple languages being translated to each other in multiple, in real time on a video call, which is the kind of thing you genuinely only can do on device because you're sending all that to the cloud. It just falls apart. But and with the, with the live captions and some of the edit, image editing stuff, they did a really good job of saying like, this is actually what you need all of that power locally in order to do. And I feel like for me, Recall, which is, I think if I remember correctly, all private, all on device,

• 9:33David Pierce?

  not uploaded anywhere, not even leaving your computer. Like really, really smart way to show this is what you can do when you have this thing on your computer. Like I found that very compelling.

• 9:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think Recall was probably the, is their sort of flagship feature for this AI stuff. But they did also show, which was just kind of more forward looking and it wasn't like a complete demo experience, but they showed some of the stuff where you could have like this co-pilot experience in a game, like an Xbox game on Windows. And so there was like a really cool demo. And I don't know if this came through very well on the live blog, so definitely check out their demo of it. But it was essentially someone was playing Minecraft and then the co-pilot was like teaching the person how to craft in the game because it could actually see obviously what, what you were seeing. So it, it knew. And that was like, that was pretty cool. And it was like a zombie in Minecraft appeared and they were like, oh no, there's a zombie. You better run away.

• 10:25Speaker 04

  Like it was like literally guiding them around the game as if it was like their friend sitting beside them. So that was like a really good hint at where this could go. When you've got all this sort of on-device AI models running in the background and can actually see everything you're doing. And I thought that one was, that one was particularly cool.

• 10:40David Pierce?

  That is really cool. On the Recall one, we talked when you were reporting on this, I think it was called AI Explorer was the code name that you had found out about, is that right?

• 10:49Speaker 04

  Yes, that's right.

• 10:50David Pierce?

  We were debating whether it was going to seem very cool or very creepy. Having seen the thing in action, where do you land? Cool or creepy?

• 10:58Speaker 04

  I think it's in the middle, right?

• 11:00David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 11:00Speaker 04

  Definitely, because it is kind of creepy that they are taking basically a snapshot of everything you do on your PC. They say there's obviously a way to manage that. You can like disable it per app or particular websites and stuff. But there is still the fact that it's running at all times in the background and capturing everything you do. But then again, so is like your web browsing history, you know, that's always captured in your browser, not quite to the degree of like seeing it per se. So I think there is definitely a creepiness to it, but I wonder if people will sort of see past that for the actual functionality that it enables. And it's all local. I am speaking to one of their security VPs shortly, so to sort of find out how they're going to protect against malicious activity.

• 11:42Speaker 04

  Because you can imagine someone getting in through some sort of flaw and then, I don't know, using these AI models to cause chaos on your PC and search for stuff. There's potential there. So I am curious how they've actually secured it beyond the sort of vague promises that they had on stage. But yeah, I think it's definitely in between. I think there's going to be a bunch of people that will disable this on the hardware that they buy. But then I think the things that it enables, particularly around that like sort of Minecraft demo in the future, I think, I think it's going to be worth the trade off, right? As long as they can keep it secure.

• 12:13David Pierce?

  Yeah, I mean, the demos like that where it can collaborate with you as you're using your computer is like, that's the stuff that both Microsoft and others show these bits and pieces of that I'm always like, oh, I get it now. Like, that's, that's the kind of stuff I actually want AI for, not to, you know, write me business emails, but like, help me do the things I'm trying to do better and in a sort of automated proactive way like that. That's pretty cool.

• 12:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, being being assistive and sort of like helping you along your ways is definitely the way that I would prefer to see AI go than try and sort of replace you essentially.

• 12:48David Pierce?

  Totally. So let's talk about the devices. So the two big new ones from Microsoft, the Surface Laptop and the Surface Pro, no numbers, which really throws me off. We're just, it's just the, no, are there numbers?

• 13:01Speaker 04

  They're sneaky numbers. So the Surface Pro is called the Surface Pro 11th Edition, which is very Microsoft, as you can imagine.

• 13:08David Pierce?

  It is very Microsoft.

• 13:09Speaker 04

  They're kind of just referring it to as a Surface Pro, right? Or the Copilot Plus Surface Pro, if you want to get even more Microsoft. But yeah, essentially, there are no numbers.

• 13:18David Pierce?

  Okay, you've seen them both. I would say my takeaway just from reading the live blog and seeing the specs and stuff is basically similar-ish footprints. Like I think the Surface Pro in particular is exactly the same size as before. And the whole pitch is like gigantic, massive internal upgrade that kind of changes everything. Is that reasonable?

• 13:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, on the Surface Pro, they've got a new OLED display model, which is, which is nice. It's good to have OLED on there. It's not tandem like the iPad Pro. I think that Dell's XPS actually is. So you've got a new display option there. But yeah, overall, the actual device looks very similar. But they have done one really cool thing that I like is the type cover. Now, you know from reviewing these for years, the whole lappability argument with the Surface Pro has raged for like a decade now.

• 14:08David Pierce?

  Yep.

• 14:08Speaker 04

  And they've actually, what they've done is they've reinforced it. So there's actually, I couldn't really get it to bounce, honestly, when I was using on a desk.

• 14:16David Pierce?

  Really?

• 14:17Speaker 04

  Yeah. You know how it usually flexes and you get that weird bounce? It's really annoying when you're trying to write like a long document.

• 14:24David Pierce?

  Yeah, as soon as you start typing fast, the whole thing sort of feels like it's wiggling underneath you. Yeah.

• 14:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, like it doesn't do that anymore. It's still that very slight flex, but like it's not really as bad. And I tried it on my lap as well, same, it was the same. And it's because they basically reinforced the base of the Surface Keyboard. They put a battery in it now, so the actual trackpad is a little bit larger and it has haptic feedback and it has a Bluetooth. Chip inside there, so you pull it away from the display and you can actually use it wirelessly. So it's not like just a dumb keyboard when you when you pull it off anymore. Um. So some pretty cool keyboard upgrades and you can also use the old keyboards if you if you want to. Yeah, and that that and the OLED display, I'd say are the biggest things that you would notice on the outside. It's obviously the inside is they're actually Qualcomm powered now, so it's Windows on ARM.

• 15:08Speaker 04

  Um. The Snapdragon X Elite and the and the Plus in in the Surface Pro, depending on, you know, which model you go for. And playing around with it for like a good, you know, ten, twenty minutes, it does, it just doesn't feel like a regular Windows laptop, right? Um. Especially when everything is running native on there. I we really need to review these to like check out these these uh big claims that Microsoft's making. But yeah, it feels like super slick and and and fast and speedy as you would kind of expect. You I don't think you'd necessarily think that this was an ARM laptop, put it that way.

• 15:37David Pierce?

  That's really exciting. I mean, and I think that sounds, as you say it, almost like faint praise, but I just want to make sure like it's it's really not faint praise. Given what we've seen from Windows on ARM in the past, like you could tell on the last generation Surface Pro, whether you were using the Intel model or the Qualcomm model.

• 15:56Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 15:56David Pierce?

  Like immediately, like immediately you could tell the difference. And so just the fact that you pick it up and it just feels like a Windows laptop is already an enormous win.

• 16:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. Like it does, it I couldn't get it to like really lag, you know? I know I wasn't really pushing it. We will like, I say faint praise because we have to check this out when we review it. But from from everything I can see, it does look like they might have done it this time. But it really is going to come down to the app compatibility and they they've made some big promises about new emulator and. I think just the pure fact that these chips are a lot better, um they're sort of brute forcing their way through this in in many ways. But they're not doing it in a way that's going to kill the battery life either, um which is interesting because they're making big claims about that as well. It's like sixteen hours browsing the web, like twenty hour plus hours if you're watching local video. So if that actually holds up or anywhere close to it, um then yeah, that's going to be very competitive compared to sort of the MacBook Air.

• 16:50Speaker 04

  Whereas usually when when Microsoft says they have like a ten hour battery life PC, it's usually five hours, you know.

• 16:56David Pierce?

  Well, and you got to see, if I remember correctly, like you actually got to see them run these demos next to a MacBook Air, right? I find Microsoft's whole fascination right now with the MacBook Air and the M3 chip in particular really fascinating, but just the fact that they put you in a room and tested the MacBook Air next to the new surfaces is just wild to me.

• 17:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, I spent an hour watching a ton of demos. That's ranging from like Cinebench and Geekbench, you know, like the sort of the basic PC benchmarks, all the way up to like, they made scripts for like doing Photoshop filters, which they showed some of those on stage, and then some AI tasks. And yeah, I'd say out of that hour, probably at least every five minutes, the MacBook Air was mentioned. Like, I'm not joking, I'm not over exaggerating. It was literally relentless.

• 17:43David Pierce?

  Why is Microsoft so obsessed with the MacBook Air?

• 17:45Speaker 04

  I think because they know that they've fallen behind that like premium set of devices over the past few years since Apple transitioned to the M1. They've really been behind it, and Intel hasn't like got them there on battery life or performance to sort of match that, that kind of great offering from Apple. So they're, I think their confidence is like, yeah, we're finally here, you know, we can be competitive or if not better, and we can do it with all these AI sort of features on tops. There you go, Apple, you know, we're here. Yeah, so it's definitely a new level of confidence.

• 18:17David Pierce?

  Yeah, that makes sense. And speaking of that, actually, I was very confused by the fact that Microsoft, at the beginning of the event, said a bunch about how all the OEMs, all the chipmakers, everybody's in that this Copilot Plus PCs thing is, is like an industry-wide move, and then spent the whole rest of the hour talking about Qualcomm-powered devices. What is, what do you make of that?

• 18:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, they kind of did this thing that was like, oh, AMD and Intel are gonna have these Copilot Plus PCs, you know, soon, but, but not right now. So we've been partnering with Qualcomm to do this. I think they're kind of, I think they're downplaying a little bit their ARM transition there, because obviously they want this to be all partner focus, that's the whole idea of Windows, but they've made such a big effort, even in all those demos, like there was no mention of Intel and AMD, you know? Like, it was all about these Qualcomm devices, all about the transition to ARM, like, all about how they've recompiled the kernel and done all this work in the background so that they're confident that ARM is finally gonna be, you know, competitive with the Intel-based models that we have of Surface devices right now.

• 19:23Speaker 04

  So I think they they kind of had to throw a bone to Intel and AMD and had to have them included, obviously, in this event. And I'm not, that's not terribly surprising, but their stage presence was was very little compared to all the ARM talk that they had on stage, right? It was all, all of those AI experiences were lit up by a combination of these new chips. So it's going to be interesting to see when Intel and AMD can actually have an answer with the MPUs as performant. Because they're already, like, they're talking, these chips are 45 tops, whereas the Intel ones are like less than 10 right now. So by the time Intel matches, will Qualcomm then jump ahead? Like, it's going to be interesting to see where the roadmap sort of pans out here.

• 20:05David Pierce?

  I did enjoy, this wasn't the spec heaviest event ever, which I thought was really interesting. They spent a lot of time doing like app demos and a lot less time talking about the details of how these chips work and all that stuff. But they did keep talking about 45 trillion operations per second over and over and over. That was like the one spec they said like 10 times. It was very funny. It was like they are, they're like, our chip is so fast and we're, we're going to remind you 11 times during this event how fast our chips are because they're so proud of their fast chips.

• 20:38Speaker 04

  Exactly. And depending on how they calculate it, I'm going to have to see, I think it will be faster for AI operations than the M4 perhaps. So it's going to be interesting when that roadmap shakes out. Because obviously Qualcomm have had ARM chips for years and they've never been quite this performant. And they acquired Nuvia. And I think that is the key to why these chips are different. And I mean, that's, that's the key. Because those Nuvia chips were built by ex-Apple engineers. So it's almost like, you know, they're building the Windows silicon. So I think, I think that is the key to why this all feels a little bit different. Is that the chips are actually performing like you would expect them to.

• 21:16David Pierce?

  So does all that add up to this being the moment Microsoft seems to want it to be? Like the sense I got reading your reporting and from talking to you about this for the last couple of months is that this is kind of a day Microsoft has had circled on the calendar for two years. It's like, this is the beginning of the new era of Windows. We have the power, we have the AI stuff, Copilot is starting to get there. Like, there, along with this, there were, I think, every OEM on planet Earth announced a bunch of Copilot Plus PCs. Like, this, this was clearly designed to be sort of the beginning of an era of Windows PCs. Do you think it got what it was trying to do?

• 21:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think so. I think, I was surprised by some of the AI features that they showed on stage. I think those, those looked really promising. So I wasn't expecting as much of the AI features as they showed. And just coming to campus this morning, it's like, they literally have like signage everywhere. It's like the new AI of, era has, is here, sort of thing. So they're obviously like very confident in it. And what they showed and just, just playing around with the devices, it, it does feel like something is different here. Like, this is definitely different from like the 2018 push and definitely different from this Surface RT push. So, yeah, I mean, I want to try them out. I want to review them next month and, and give them a good sort of spin, just to see if this is actually, you know, if this can replace my own laptop.

• 22:38Speaker 04

  And see, if, if they can really nail that battery life, then, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what Intel and AMD are gonna do, because

• 22:45David Pierce?

  I know.

• 22:46Speaker 04

  Qualcomm might have delivered here.

• 22:47David Pierce?

  Yeah, I feel like you and I are in exactly the same headspace, which is like, I desperately want this to be everything that they said it would be, because it would be so much fun if the whole Windows ecosystem just kind of leveled up. But also, we've been burned on this specific promise several times in the past.

• 23:02Speaker 04

  It's like, if I sound cautious, it's because of those two burn moments in the past.

• 23:06David Pierce?

  Exactly. But it does, I, I think if it's, if it's ever gonna happen, it feels like it might happen right now.

• 23:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think if it if it doesn't happen right now, then I mean, they've blown it, right? Like, everything that they've showed in all the all these big promises, it'll be pretty crazy if if they it doesn't live up to that, you know, if the performance isn't there, these AI features don't work properly, or like the battery life just sucks, then Microsoft's blown it, right? So they kind of have to have done it this time, otherwise there's a lot on the line, given the way that they've been talking and the confidence that they're that they're putting into this.

• 23:38David Pierce?

  Totally. Yeah, I realized going in that there were a bunch of people who bought iPad Pros last week who were looking at the Surface Pro this week, being like, oh, maybe I want a Surface Pro. And it's like, oh, if Microsoft's doing that, they've done it. They're back.

• 23:52Speaker 04

  That's true. Yeah, it's not it's not as thin and like as sexy hardware as the iPad Pro, I'd say. But, yeah, I mean.

• 23:59David Pierce?

  But it runs all my apps, Tom.

• 24:01Speaker 04

  It runs all your apps. You can actually use it, yeah. So when you're processing video and you tap a notification, it's not going to kill that video in the background, like, it's an actual OS, so.

• 24:11David Pierce?

  Yeah, 100%. All right, Tom, you got meetings to get to. Thank you for for jumping on and doing this. I appreciate it.

• 24:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, no worries.

• 24:18David Pierce?

  Good luck with the rest of your stuff in Redmond.

• 24:20Speaker 04

  All right, thank you. I'll speak to you soon.

• 24:22David Pierce?

  All right, we got to take a break. But actually, real quick, before we do, you can subscribe now to Tom's new newsletter called Notepad about all things Microsoft. I'll put a link in the show notes. It's brand new and it's already fantastic. All right, quick break, then we're going to talk OpenAI. We'll be right back.

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• 26:08David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. We talked a bit on last week's show about the OpenAI event from last Monday in which the company announced GPT-4O and a super personable, maybe even flirty, voice assistant. Hey, ChatGPT, I'm Mark. How are you?

• 26:23Speaker 06

  Oh, Mark. I'm doing great. Thanks for asking. How about you?

• 26:28David Pierce?

  So I'm on stage right now. If you hear that clip and you're like, oh, weird, that sounds like Scarlett Johansson in "Her." Well, so did everybody else. I mean, listen to this from her.

• 26:39Speaker 06

  OK, let's start with your emails. You have several thousand emails regarding LA Weekly, but it looks like you haven't worked there in many years.

• 26:45David Pierce?

  And now this clip from the OpenAI event.

• 26:47Speaker 07

  Ah, I see it now. You wrote down 3X plus 1 equals 4.

• 26:54David Pierce?

  Yep, exactly. I could do this forever because the similarities are deeply uncanny, but here's just one more. This is from the GPT-4O demo when one of the researchers wrote "I hurt ChatGPT" on a piece of paper and then held up his phone camera so it could see it.

• 27:09Speaker 07

  Of course, I'd love to see what you wrote. Show it to me whenever you're ready.

• 27:14David Pierce?

  OK, so this is what I wrote down. What do you see?

• 27:18Speaker 07

  Oh, I see. I love ChatGPT. That's so sweet of you.

• 27:23David Pierce?

  And now here's a moment from her. You're beautiful.

• 27:29Speaker 06

  Thank you, Theodore.

• 27:32Speaker 06

  I'm kissing your head.

• 27:35David Pierce?

  Side note, by the way, Her is such a good movie. If you haven't seen it or haven't seen it in a while, do it. It's even better than I remembered. And given everything that has happened with AI over the last couple of years, it hits different now. Anyway, other than the fact that the actual product that exists in the world doesn't work quite as well and sounds a little more robotic than the one in the movie. I mean, the vibes here are very similar, both in the product in general and in the voice specifically, to the point where actually, over the weekend, OpenAI pulled the voice that you're hearing here, which was named Sky, from the product altogether. OpenAI said it wasn't trying to mimic Scarlett Johansson in Her, which I find very hard to believe for reasons we'll get into. But then, on Monday night, just before this episode went out,

• 28:19David Pierce?

  Scarlett Johansson actually gave a statement saying that last September, OpenAI had contacted Her about being the voice of GPT-4O, and as many as two days before, like two days before the event in which they revealed GPT-4O with this new voice, with this new flirty personality, they were still contacting her, trying to get her to reconsider and do the voice. It's all very strange, and this is the kind of thing we just don't have a lot of history of dealing with. There's just not a lot of precedent for this kind of story. And in general, there are a lot of questions here about what we learned from that GPT-4O demo and what OpenAI is really up to here and where we're headed in the next few years of AI. And to talk through all of that stuff and more,

• 29:03David Pierce?

  I grabbed Kylie Robinson, The Verge's new senior AI reporter. Kylie Robinson, welcome to The Vergecast.

• 29:08Speaker 08

  Thank you for having me.

• 29:09David Pierce?

  This is what, day nine for you at The Verge as we're recording this?

• 29:13Speaker 08

  Precisely, yes.

• 29:14David Pierce?

  And you've already been in like 465 news cycles?

• 29:19Speaker 08

  That is 100% correct. Maybe one more today, but yes, exactly.

• 29:24David Pierce?

  How's it been so far? How is, how are your first nine days at The Verge?

• 29:27Speaker 08

  It is so fantastic. It's pure chaos. And I think a lot of people looking are like, why are you doing all this? Are they killing you? No, it's because it's so fun and I can't stop agreeing to write stuff. So it's been great.

• 29:38David Pierce?

  Yeah, you fit in very well in that respect. Mostly, I want to talk about OpenAI.

• 29:42Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 29:42David Pierce?

  There's a lot going on, but I think to me, like, what's been interesting is there's been a ton of news the last two weeks. And the only thing I can think about is that OpenAI demo.

• 29:51Speaker 08

  Oh, my God.

• 29:52David Pierce?

  27 minutes of just like, super awkward OpenAI interactions. And I can't stop thinking about it. I don't know. So I'm mostly just Chris, you've been covering OpenAI for a long time. You've been thinking about this company, you've been thinking about AI for a while. You're our senior AI reporter. What did you make of that event? There were all these rumors leading up to this about what OpenAI was gonna do. They did it ahead of Google I/O, I have to assume deliberately. There were lots of rumors. None of those rumors turned out to be true. This was like this other thing. Like, what, where was your head during that event? What were you thinking about?

• 30:24Speaker 08

  Well, I was really excited for it to be this huge, huge thing. They, they built it up so much. So, you know, the rumors were it's gonna be a search engine that rivals perplexity in Google. It's going to be GPT-5. So when we got GPT-4O, it's cool. It is. How natural this is. It's very sci-fi. But I did my first TikTok for The Verge, and my takeaway was, this is so flirty. Do we need flirty AI? I don't think so. Just like, you know, not to throw OpenAI completely under the bus, I said the same about XAI's Grok. Like, do we need a sarcastic, snarky AI? I'm not sure. Let's get, let's get some other advancements first before it starts being mean and flirty. Some people in the

• 31:08Speaker 08

  TikTok comments did not agree. These Gen Zers were like, do not take away my, my AI girlfriend, please. The announcement, it was interesting. It's not a huge leap forward. I think they definitely wanted to get in front of I/O. I did talk to the CTO, Mira Maroti, in a very short briefing after the launch. And I asked, like, hey, why today? And she's like, you're asking because of I/O? And I'm like, well, of course. And she said, you know, we didn't even know I/O was happening. I'm like, okay.

• 31:35David Pierce?

  Yeah, cool. I mean, that's just a lie. That's like, not even a good.

• 31:39Speaker 08

  Yeah, I'm like, okay, we're not taking the bait. All right, moving on. But yeah, so it was interesting. Obviously, I went to I O and I thought, you know, this stuff is really cool. It was a two hour long keynote. I was there in person. Pretty brutal. But yeah, GPT-4O, it's cool. It has a long way to go. It kind of feels like the rumors in the AI reporting world is that they had something bigger that wasn't ready in time. So they're like, here's 4O. Microsoft Build is coming up at the end of this month. So I'm kind of expecting something bigger for that. Yeah, it was an interesting demo. Flirty.

• 32:15David Pierce?

  Talk to me about the flirty thing, because I confess, this is the thing I can't stop thinking about, right? And like you pointed out in the middle of it, like, this is just her. And I think Sam Altman even said, like, referenced her before. Miriam Maradi was like, no, we're not doing a her thing, which is like, again, obviously not true. They're obviously doing a her thing. I'm so torn on this, and I'm curious how you're thinking about it. On the one hand, I totally understand why it makes sense for these things to like be fun to talk to, right? And I don't know if flirty is the correct version of fun to talk to. But again, I think this this push towards like, if you're going to spend all your time interacting with this thing, it should be enjoyable to interact with and not just some like cold metal robot that you talk to. I totally understand that. I also think that is like a mess.

• 32:59Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 32:59David Pierce?

  And just is for OpenAI and for everybody else will cause as many problems as it solves, maybe more, and is going to make all of this really weird before the technology is nearly good enough to actually have any of this work. Like, her is a fun example because like, she doesn't get basic facts wrong all the time in her. Like importantly, it's very good technology.

• 33:19Speaker 08

  Yes.

• 33:20David Pierce?

  It's not just like flirty Scarlett Johansson, but very dumb. Like, that's not, that's not what they're doing. And I don't know, I just cannot wrap my head around whether this like 11 year old movie about a voice assistant is the correct place for us to be going, even though I kind of understand why we're going that way. I don't know. And I feel like everybody has had very visceral reactions to it. So I'm curious what what yours has been.

• 33:45Speaker 08

  You know, a lot of tech reporters have said, like, please, for the love of God, can these tech executives finish the movies? Like, see how it ends?

• 33:53David Pierce?

  Right.

• 33:54Speaker 08

  Yeah, no, not convinced we need flirty AI before we have accurate AI. And something I noticed during Google I/O is that when they were demoing their similar assistants, it was on video, it was not live and versus OpenAI's demo was live. So you got to see all the flubs. And if the listeners have seen Neelai break the AI product.

• 34:17David Pierce?

  We'll put it in the show notes. It's very good if you haven't seen it.

• 34:19Speaker 08

  It's very good. I was sitting in the press lounge and they came back. They're like, Neelai broke it twice, which is what I expected.

• 34:25David Pierce?

  That's the goal, yeah.

• 34:26Speaker 08

  Yes, exactly. So, um, yeah, flirty AI. As a tech reporter, it just makes me like, okay, can we, can we do better than this? I don't want to completely drag them because it is cool that we're finally getting like a working Siri. I was just thinking before we started this episode, when I use Siri almost exclusively as a timer, because it doesn't work for anything else. I do laundry and it's 50 minutes every time and it always thinks 15 minutes, no matter how hard I try. That's how mostly useless it is. So I have to say 55.

• 34:56David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 34:56Speaker 08

  Yeah, so flirty AI, not super useful, feels purposeful, obviously. Mira said, you know, not the case. She said, someone else in the audience asked me that. I don't know, I don't know where they're getting that from. It's just sounds so natural. And I'm like, and, and then meanwhile, Altman is like her.

• 35:13David Pierce?

  Yeah, he just tweeted the word her, didn't he?

• 35:15Speaker 08

  Yes, he did. So, and he said, um, I've been, I think it was a dream force or something at a conference. And he said her was his favorite movie and all his tech reporters were like noted. So, yeah, I think they're trying to inch towards that reality. I don't know. I feel a bunch of different ways about it. What, what were you thinking when you saw it?

• 35:33David Pierce?

  I thought it was really impressive and I, I just keep coming back to like the immediate reaction everybody had to ChatGPT, which is like, I can't believe it's this good, which is

• 35:45Speaker 08

  Yes.

• 35:45David Pierce?

  both a compliment and an insult, right? Like, it's not very good, but it is genuinely impressive that it is as good as it is. And I feel like I, I've spent a lot of time reporting on AI in the last year and a half and trying to constantly calibrate that, that it's impressive, that it's as good as it is, and it's also not very good, like both. Both of those things are true and it is so hard to hold both of the idea, both of those ideas in your head at the same time. And this to me was like that too. Like I actually went back and watched, it's like a 26 minute video. Everybody should watch it. It's, it's weird and awkward and delightful. But it's actually like, it screws up a lot, like a lot in the demo. And again, that's like, it's fine. This is new early technology. They're having fun. This was not, they didn't promise that it was perfect. They just sort of showed how it worked.

• 36:29David Pierce?

  But it screwed up a lot and nobody talked about it, right? Everybody came to the end of that thing and all over the internet, the immediate reaction was basically like, OpenAI just destroyed all of the AI competitors forever. It is leaps and bounds ahead of everybody else. This is the only thing that there is forever and ever. And I just don't think that's true. Like it's cool and it, it, it's a good demo. And the fact that it feels at all like a person and does convincing sounding like ums and laughs and

• 36:59Speaker 08

  Yes.

• 36:59David Pierce?

  Uh, what was it? He showed the like I, I heart.

• 37:02Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 37:03David Pierce?

  GPT four O and it was like, oh, that's so sweet. Like,

• 37:05Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 37:06David Pierce?

  That is both impressive and nothing.

• 37:09Speaker 08

  Exactly. Exactly. I think a really good example of that too. It's like an OpenAI effect is with Sora. People are like, This has just put all of these text to video AI companies out of business and people like to say they launched it, but neither of us can use it. None, it's still in demo mode. So, You know, people are like, wow, OpenAI destroyed everyone. It's, you know, this technology is not even out yet and clearly it has A long way to go when you see it breaking in demos. So yes, it's very hard to hold both of those at the same time. And day nine at the verge, I'm still figuring out how to balance that.

• 37:43David Pierce?

  It's, it's tough. And I'm curious, I think the Sora thing is actually an interesting example because OpenAI was perceived to have this big lead, right? Like it, it kicked off a lot of this stuff with ChatGPT. It has been the company we have talked about the most as we talk about AI. But now, like you said, we're in developer conference season. Google just announced, I would say in a significantly more polished and less interesting way, a lot of the same stuff That OpenAI and ChatGPT have been doing for a while. Microsoft today, as you're hearing this, is presumably going to launch some of the same stuff. Potentially with its own technology. Apple is likely to do some of the same stuff, potentially with OpenAI. Anthropic is out here doing stuff. There's just a million competitors now. So I feel like one thing I've been thinking about, and I'm curious how

• 38:25David Pierce?

  you're thinking about this as you like, try to sort of map out this space in your mind, like where is OpenAI in the AI world right now? Is it still winning the race? Does it feel like?

• 38:36Speaker 08

  In the hype, perhaps.

• 38:37David Pierce?

  Fair, yeah.

• 38:38Speaker 08

  They get, they get a lot of hype, rightfully so. They do deliver a lot of mind bending sci fi kind of stuff. And that's part of why I joined this beat because wow, you know, I loved reading sci fi books. This is all very weird and fun. I was speaking to someone at a major AI company who said that essentially everyone's just, this year, you're just gonna see them leapfrog over each other as they all go towards the same thing, you know. They're all sort of training models in the same way. They're all trying to deliver the same products. So it's hard to say like tomorrow, things can change. This, this beat, this technology moves so fast. I felt this way when Sora came out because I had just interviewed the CEO of Runway for a piece.

• 39:19David Pierce?

  What's Runway?

• 39:20Speaker 08

  Runway is a text to video startup, AI generative startup. And they helped create everything everywhere all at once. So some of the AI tech was used in that. So they're a very cool company and I thought when I saw their demo, this is sci fi and cool. But then Sora came out and I was like, oh my God, this is crazy. And I sent it to the Runway CEO and he was like, welcome to our world. Like things change so quickly every day. So who, how is AI in the race? Like where are they in the, in the race? There's still leaps and bounds ahead of maybe, you know, someone like Amazon. But things can change at any point. And I think we're gonna see that a lot this year.

• 40:01David Pierce?

  Yeah, I do, I've come to think that that is why it's so chaotic is because there is this sense that this is like a land grab moment. And it's all happening so fast that you actually still kind of can catch up. Like I, I remember a year ago, hearing stories from people that were like, oh, only a few companies are gonna be able to do this. Training the models is so expensive and so hard, it's not gonna work. And I think there's some truths to that, but also there There is so much open space in this market right now and there's so much money in it that it feels like we're probably at least a couple of years away from any of this feeling at all settled. And so if you're a company that is like, we want to find a place to make a lot of money very quickly. And we kind of think we can win because no one really has yet.

• 40:41Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 40:41David Pierce?

  This is probably the place to do it, for better and for worse.

• 40:44Speaker 08

  Definitely, I agree.

• 40:46David Pierce?

  So you mentioned all of these companies sort of working towards the same thing, like that the North Star is coming into view. What do you feel like that thing is that everybody is pointed towards?

• 40:55Speaker 08

  You know, as an avid Vergecast fan and listener, I've been hearing you talk about hardware in your ears. And I think it was Meta, a scoop came out from the information about Meta doing like headphones for AI. I, yes, I thought, I was at a South by party and we were going around asking questions about technology. And something I said that's way ahead of its time is hardware, like this AI hardware, which turned out to be true. That was a couple of months before we saw the R1 and the humane pin. Something that was really shocking to me as I joined this beat is how much these AI companies are investing in robotics and bringing this AI into like a physical plane. Cause I thought that that's way off, we're not going to be there anytime soon, but they are seemingly investing

• 41:38Speaker 08

  quite hard into, like you have the Ray-Ban Meta, the Meta Ray-Bans. It looks like Sam Altman is doing something with Love From, which is Johnny Ive's startup. So where is this headed? I think we're going to see more of those conversational AI assistants. We have what we saw at Google I/O. I would kind of love this world where AI is doing everything for me because I have too many emails and too many notifications. But I'm also pretty torn on how they're using my data.

• 42:05David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 42:05Speaker 08

  Obviously. But yeah, so I think we're going to see more advances in, in hardware.

• 42:11David Pierce?

  I'm so surprised to hear you say you think hardware is the thing, like it's, it is music to my gadget loving ears. But like, I've been wondering at this moment, after Humane failed so badly and Rabbit failed so badly and like those companies aren't dead and this stuff moves fast. And like the, my Rabbit R1 updates like every other day at this point and it's ridiculous. But that one particular version of Of that kind of thing is just clearly not gonna work, right? And I think it was very telling to me that that OpenAI demo, they're just sitting there talking into a phone. And I saw a bunch of people pointing that out that like, this is actually the way that we do this is we sit here and I hold my phone in my hand and I talk to it. And that is the interface for AI that we are doing right now.

• 42:53David Pierce?

  And I have a lot of theories about why that's not the case forever. But I did kind of wonder like, are we are we going to put off this dream for five years? In order to let some of that stuff get better and then we'll worry about the hardware because phones are great and they'll get us where we need to go. But I have to say, I find it's very exciting to me that these companies are still buying into the idea that hardware is part of the equation, if maybe not the whole thing, at least not for now.

• 43:19Speaker 08

  See, this is where you know a lot about this, but I was surprised, obviously, that they're doing anything in hardware that they still think that this is the case because the humane pin and the R1, as nifty as they seem to be, I I kind of think they're just destined to be in drawers, collecting dust and not really the next big thing. But I'm wondering if you have any tinfoil hat theories about it being an iPhone on stage? Because I thought, you know, there is for for the listener, there's reports that OpenAI and Apple are going to do this deal where ChatGPT is integrated into the iPhone, which everyone's like, oh, my God, once again, Siri might work. That could be great. I do see the future just, I mean, who who doesn't want to just carry their iPhone instead of multiple devices like you've mentioned?

• 44:02Speaker 08

  When I say hardware, just as you've said on the Vergecast, headphones, glasses, I think you said you're not into the glasses idea. I wear glasses, so seems perfect to me.

• 44:11David Pierce?

  I think if you wear glasses, it is like a perfect, obvious place to go. For me, like I have the I have the Meta Ray-Ban glasses and my problem is, I don't know how long it takes. This is just going to be David complains about wearing glasses for a minute. But my problem is, how long does it take to wear glasses before you stop noticing that you're wearing glasses? Because I have these, they have like, they have clear lenses, they're transitions, they're actually really useful. I like having them on all day, but I never stop noticing that I'm wearing glasses and it drives me kind of nuts. And part of that is because they're heavy, but part of that, I think, is also just like, it's going to be hard to convince people who don't wear glasses to wear glasses.

• 44:45Speaker 08

  Sure.

• 44:46David Pierce?

  But maybe I just need to wear them longer. Like, do I just need to put these on for three days and I'll get used to it?

• 44:50Speaker 08

  Well, it's taken me about 20 years of wearing glasses. To be fair, um, so I don't even notice them on my face. But well, the answer to that is if Meta makes this earbud push. I don't know if you read the article, but they're still working out some of the kinks reportedly.

• 45:05David Pierce?

  Well, because it was earbuds with cameras in them, right? Which is just the wildest idea.

• 45:09Speaker 08

  But you feel like they're like, found out that if you have long hair, the cameras are going to be covered because obviously. And one of my favorite parts is that they're figuring out how to stop it from being too hot, which is I think something that was experienced with the the humane pin is that people were like, this is getting really hot. So, you know, catching fire in your ears doesn't sound like a great product. I hope they work that out, especially for you, since you can't wear glasses.

• 45:32David Pierce?

  Yeah, I'm bullish on the idea of headphones being the next thing. But again, it's partly just as a as a conduit to your phone, which I think works fine. But I want to go back to your point about the iPhone, because one of the things that OpenAI, I think this was Sam Altman who said it, that there's a new chat GPT app for the Mac. And there were a lot of people who I would say reasonably asked, where's the Windows app? Microsoft owns an enormous percentage of your company. You have been partners with them for forever. Like, what the hell? And I think it was Sam, right? Who just said sort of offhandedly like, oh, Mac is just where our users are. And then there's an iPhone on stage. And it's like, how many conspiracy theories should I read into those two facts? You tell me.

• 46:11Speaker 08

  You know, okay, my my tinfoil hat is that there's beef. I've been told that it's not necessarily true, not by anyone, like just from coworkers, uh, from Tom. Tom was like, I have opinions about this, but um, I just think that there's beef. I I was covering OpenAI during the the ouster, the meltdown. And I'm just imagining Satya during his Thanksgiving week, like, damn it. Like, why do I have to deal with this? He's on Pivot, he's on like CNBC. So I think what we're we're seeing with inflection, them bringing in inflection. It seems like there's sort of this potential Apple deal. It feels like there's this decoupling because both are realizing that they've relied so much on the other. And that it's like a codependent relationship.

• 46:55Speaker 08

  They're like, maybe we should take some time apart is where I see this going. Especially with the iPhone on stage, the Mac app. It feels like there's a lot of signs, but that's just my like tinfoil hat for now.

• 47:06David Pierce?

  I do think it is generally true that companies do that kind of stuff on purpose. I think is is a thing that I have learned over the years is that you you want to just think, oh, they just like brought up their phone. And did it and it's like, no, even the stuff that looks like it's not thought through and rehearsed is usually pretty thought through. And rehearsed and is not an accident and.

• 47:24Speaker 08

  Exactly.

• 47:25David Pierce?

  There was a conversation about what phone they would use for that demo. I'm very confident about that fact. And I think, I mean, to your point, like, part of the reason I find this space so fascinating right now is it feels like that uncoupling you're talking about is literally happening like right now in real time at insane. Speeds like.

• 47:41Speaker 08

  Yes.

• 47:41David Pierce?

  Between Google I O and W W D C, which is essentially what like four weeks. We are going to potentially like completely upend the economics of the A I industry. It like insane like you think about what the Google search deal. Has done for Apple and all the regulatory stuff that that is causing the amount of money that changes hands and like if you put. Something like that into the iPhone through Open A I. It blows up that whole industry in a crazy way, or if they just like randomly pick anthropic, which to me is the most. Chaotic answer, and I would love for that to happen.

• 48:12Speaker 08

  Delicious. Yes.

• 48:13David Pierce?

  Just go open source, be like, we went with Meta, we did llama, like, Apple Siri powered by llama and just blow up the world. It'd be amazing, but it just feels like all of this. Was starting not to settle, but to sort of be understandable. You kind of knew where everybody was and what they were working on. And now it feels like between all these relationships, and I think especially with Apple. Kind of all of the walls are up in the air again in a really interesting way.

• 48:37Speaker 08

  Yes, and something I've been thinking about a lot is sometimes these A I researchers are like, we're building G P T five and it's hard to predict what it's going to do. It's hard to predict what any of this is going to do, and that's strange as a reporter and just a human in this world like. We don't know how this is going to change our lives at any point.

• 48:55David Pierce?

  Do you think that's part of why they're leaning in on the like flirty personality side of it? Because if it's if it's delightful, you don't, it doesn't matter that like.

• 49:05Speaker 08

  Yes.

• 49:05David Pierce?

  Having fun with it becomes the point and not the is it any good at tasks, which is what they want to get to eventually?

• 49:11Speaker 08

  I've heard this point before and, you know, starting as an AI reporter, people told me not to anthropomorphize the the technology because then it takes the blame off the company and they can blame the AI. So I'm so cognizant of that as I report. And then they come out with flirty AI and it's like, like, I'm confused because I think OpenAI also said at some points, you know, it's tech, it's not human. And we saw that with the Google guy who was like, this is real and it's human and, you know, so, you know, to see all of that and then go, here's your flirty AI girlfriend like her. It feels strange, but yes, I do think

• 49:53Speaker 08

  it's an interesting critique to have. Like, look over here, this is fun. Don't pay attention to how it barely works, I think is part of the point.

• 50:03David Pierce?

  Yeah, I agree. I will say, by the way, that the New York Times has cornered the horny AI beat. So we're gonna have to find, we have to find something else for you to do. I'm really sorry. You just, you were too late to the game for the horny AI beat. It's just, you can't have it.

• 50:16Speaker 08

  I was wondering if I could say this on the Vergecast. This is a huge day for Kevin Roos. I forgot to message him about it. He's gonna have 10 more girlfriends by the time we finish this.

• 50:25David Pierce?

  Kevin Roos, vindicated every day. Just gets better and better to be Kevin Roos. Kevin, we love you. Come on the Vergecast. One more thing before I let you go. You mentioned the the brief Sam ouster. And the one other bit of OpenAI news last week was that Ilya Sutskever, who was a big part of that story, is leaving OpenAI for good. What do you, what do you make of that story? What do you know about what's going on there?

• 50:48Speaker 08

  Oh, my God. That was about 4:00 PM while I was at Google I/O. And I was like, oh, my God, please, no, no more news, please. Yeah, that seemed to have caused other people to leave OpenAI as well. The sort of Ilya cult inside of OpenAI. I don't know. I think I'm really hoping we get some fun discovery, maybe from the XAI lawsuit against them to figure out what went down. Not to be totally off course, but when the government is deciding to ban TikTok and everyone's like, where's the receipts? What what happened? Similarly, here. What is happening at OpenAI that caused all this drama? And now Ilya is leaving and it all feels very strange. My thoughts are, we need a lot more information.

• 51:31Speaker 08

  I think that is sort of owed as this changes people's lives and how they interact with technology. The meme is, what, what does Ilya know? Where is Ilya? I think we deserve some answers there. I don't think we're going to get them from OpenAI. We're going to get them from great AI reporters who dig into it. But it's strange. It's really strange.

• 51:52David Pierce?

  I mean, I would think the, the most simple way to read it is that that divide that everyone sort of ascribed the issues to, but then kind of waved off was the like, doing AI for good versus doing AI for profit. The fact that not only did Ilya leave, but then a bunch of people, like you said, in the Ilya cult also left, suggests to me that that divide, or whatever the divide was, still exists. And there was some reporting that said Ilya basically never came back to work after all of this. And so it definitely suggests to me that whatever happened last fall is not done happening. Like Sam won in whatever that looks like. But whatever is going on inside of that company seems to still be going on inside of that company.

• 52:36Speaker 08

  I agree. I think that rift is still there. The reporting suggests that it was like EAC versus the D cells, people who want this to move fast and people who want this to be a research lab that's for good. I think that rift is still there. And I think that's something you're going to continue to see in this AI race. I think the people who want to make money are going to continue coming out on top as we see here, though.

• 52:59David Pierce?

  Yeah, I mean, as of right now, I think, just thinking about Google I/O. It's like, why did they make any of these choices? And the answer is like, oh, because there's so much money in it right now, right this minute. There's so much money in it. And will there be forever? Who knows? But there is a lot right now and it is making everybody do truly wild stuff.

• 53:16Speaker 08

  Yes, exactly that.

• 53:18David Pierce?

  Fair enough. All right, well, we're going to have to have you come back on when we get more stuff from Apple and Build and everything else. So, welcome to hell. And by hell, I mean the Vergecast. Kylie, thank you for being here.

• 53:29Speaker 08

  Thank you.

• 53:30David Pierce?

  All right, we got to take one more break and then we're going to talk iPads on the Vergecast hotline.

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• 55:09David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. Let's get to the hotline. As always, the number is 866-VERGE-11. The email is [email protected]. Send us all of your questions. We've gotten a lot of iPad questions, and I think at some point here, we're going to stop answering iPad questions. But we try to do at least one on the show every week, and at some point, we'll stop talking about iPads. But this week, we have a question about iPads, and it comes from Clifton.

• 55:32Speaker 09

  Hi, this is Clifton from Tacoma, Washington. I was just listening to the Case for the iPad Pro podcast. And in your comparison to the iPad and the MacBook, I was wondering, do you think that the majority of that want for macOS on the iPad would go away if Apple just made a touchscreen MacBook? Also, on the same token, do you think that if they made a two-in-one, that the work case for Pros on the iPad would go away? And it would probably just go back as a media consumption device? I think it's similar to Apple thinking they know what customers want instead of actually doing what customers want. Thanks, I appreciate it.

• 56:10David Pierce?

  So there's like a big thinky thing at the end there that I kind of want to ignore for now. Neelai Patel is here. Hi, Neelai. Hey, we've like talked around this for two weeks and also like 10 years. So like, let's just talk about this. Like, what do we want from Apple? Is I feel like basically the question being asked here. There's the iPad, there's the MacBook, and somewhere in the middle, there is this idea of like a perfect device that would solve all of our problems. What is it?

• 56:34Nilay Patel?

  I think it's an iPad that doesn't have a totally restricted application model. Like, that's the problem. The problem is not that it doesn't run macOS. What macOS represents to people is freedom.

• 56:44David Pierce?

  Right.

• 56:45Nilay Patel?

  I can just use this thing like a computer, and developers can show up and fill the gaps that Apple has left open. You cannot do that on an iPad. So it's just whatever Apple wants you to do. And if they would just let go, I think these things would evolve on very different trajectories, and they just won't let go. Which I guess comes back to what do we want Apple to do?

• 57:08David Pierce?

  Well, I think I largely agree. Like, I got a bunch of crap on threads because I posted something to the effect of like, I agree that I don't want huge sweeping changes to the iPad, but it would be nice to be able to put Windows where I want them to. And a bunch of people are like, you can put Windows wherever you want. And I'm looking at it right now. I can see nine different apps on my Mac right now. I can see them all. And that is not how it works on the iPad. And there are like a million little things like that to me. But the evolution thing, I'm curious how you think about it. Because I think the case a lot of people would make is that if you just let both of these things kind of be everything, that eventually they would just crash into each other, and the iPad and the Mac would essentially be the same thing. But you don't think that's the case?

• 57:47Nilay Patel?

  I don't. I think about a lot of iPad use cases that I see that I think are really interesting. I'm married to a lawyer. Some lawyers show up at meetings with iPads just to sign contracts and get through them. You don't need a Mac laptop for that. You don't even need the keyboard case for that.

• 58:02David Pierce?

  Right. And also the fact, by the way, that it lies flat on a desk or table is actually really important. Like, I was thinking about this just form factor wise, right? Like, if you just put a touchscreen on the Mac, does it suddenly solve all of your iPad problems? And like, no, because drawing like that sucks. Signing things like that sucks. Like, having a thing that just lies down like a piece of paper on a table does change things. I think you're right.

• 58:23Nilay Patel?

  I will note that you have to put a case on some of these iPads so they can actually lie flat. But, you know, I agree with you. There's just a bunch of places where you want a computer in a tablet form factor that is where the interface is natively touch. Great. Again, we get notes from people who are like interior designers and architects who are like, this thing is my computer. I walk around taking pictures with it and showing people things and drawing on it all day long. And I kill the battery of my iPad every day, which is admittedly not so hard to do. But there's just a world of use cases that way. And then there's a world of use cases for the laptop form factor. And I think the problem is Apple thinks the form factor is important and not the use cases. So they're like, we'll just make it a laptop. And now it's a laptop replacement.

• 59:08Nilay Patel?

  And I think most people are like, well, I use my laptop for all these things and it can't do those things.

• 59:12David Pierce?

  Right.

• 59:12Nilay Patel?

  And then I, this is just me imposing a belief on Apple. I think Apple wants computers to be easier than the market wants them to be. You know, like, people, you give a kid a laptop, like, just crazy stuff starts happening.

• 59:27David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 59:27Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, they, they start to expand on the boundary of what you can even do with some of these applications. That's really cool. I've seen entire graphic design businesses that have existed by teenagers using the Instagram create mode in ways that no Instagram product manager ever thought that thing would be used. That's the beauty of computers. And to whatever extent that has not happened on the iPad, I think that's the tragedy. And I think it's because of the restrictions in the operating system. Yeah, I tend to agree, but I think-

• 59:57David Pierce?

  Something you said at the very beginning of this, I think, is very striking, which is the assumption that the best version of this thing is closer to an iPad that does more stuff than it is to a Mac with a touchscreen, right? Because I think, like, if you, just to boil this question all the way down, it's like, does a Mac with a touchscreen solve all of our problems? And I think the answer is clearly no, and I'm not even sure it solves many of our problems. Like, I actually, I look at my Mac and I'm like, I don't know how often I want a touchscreen on this thing. And I think, to me, when I look at the iPad, the best version of that is so much more interesting than kind of the next version of a Mac, if that makes sense.

• 1:00:34Nilay Patel?

  Well, I'm confident the criticism we will get, because you said that, is from a bunch of Windows people who use touchscreens on their Windows PCs all day long, and they're like, this is great.

• 1:00:42David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 1:00:43Nilay Patel?

  Actually being able to, I think Tom Warren has published a version of this piece. Yeah, we've had a sound conversation for so long, I can't tell you if it was a decade ago or yesterday, Tom Warren published, like, touching the screen on a PC is pretty good. Because we've been talking about it for a long time, and it is pretty good. The people who use computers that way, they get used to it, they like it. To me, it's really just about the application model. And in particular, on the Mac, because the web browsers are so good, and you can run different web browsing engines, and Chrome and Safari and whatever else, there's a richness to the experience that you just get. You can just have a lot of the latest things on a Mac, because all of the latest things tend to run in the web browser. All of the AI in the world is happening in web browsers, right? You cannot do that on iPad.

• 1:01:27Nilay Patel?

  Like, the web browser is still pretty much mobile Safari. They fake it in different ways.

• 1:01:30David Pierce?

  Right.

• 1:01:31Nilay Patel?

  And it's just that, it's that, right? It's, Apple has just restricted a bunch of stuff, maybe to protect Apple's business model, maybe because they have an idealistic vision of what an iPad user should do, or how they should work, or how easy it should be, or to keep you safe or secure, whatever you want to believe about why this has happened, it has happened. And I think those are the limits that people keep bopping up against and saying, oh, just let this be a Mac. Because the Mac represents those limits going away. And I really do think, you can see it, you know, on other kinds of tablets, that if you let that form factor evolve, it will head towards a different place. Like, I think it would be really interesting if the solution to the input problem, especially with all the AI we have now, isn't just put a keyboard on it.

• 1:02:14Nilay Patel?

  Like we, we, we just haven't like tried.

• 1:02:17David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:17Nilay Patel?

  Because we are like, maybe the, maybe everything will just, you know how like everything evolves into be a crab?

• 1:02:23David Pierce?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:02:23Nilay Patel?

  It's like everything is evolving to be a laptop again. And like, I don't know, maybe there's some other ways to do it.

• 1:02:27David Pierce?

  Well, yeah. And that's the thing. I think like when, when people have asked me over the last few weeks, like, why are you so hung up on the idea that Apple should or could or ought to make this thing more like a laptop? I just find myself wanting to hold the thing up with the magic keyboard and be like, because Apple made it a laptop. Like the two accessories this company has invested in are a pencil, which makes perfect sense and is extremely iPad-y. And I actually think it's like iPad plus pencil is by far the most compelling case for an iPad in every way you can imagine. Or it's a laptop.

• 1:02:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:58David Pierce?

  Like they just, it just looks like a laptop. It acts like a laptop, but the Gmail app is worse. Like that's just, that's the difference. And I'm sort of with you in that sense, but like to the Windows point, right? The Surface rhymes with an iPad, I would say almost more than it rhymes with a Mac, right? Like it runs Windows and it can do all the stuff, but in terms of like the spirit of that device, it's so much an iPad.

• 1:03:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:23David Pierce?

  And I think actually like Microsoft got that really right and just has not really solved a lot of the software stuff around Windows. Like the Surface isn't everything it could be because of Windows in the same way that iPad is like hamstrung by iPadOS, but in completely radically separate ways.

• 1:03:37Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's two companies reacting to the web in totally different ways. Microsoft just lost to the web.

• 1:03:42David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:42Nilay Patel?

  No one's developing hot shit win 32 applications for the Surface outside of games.

• 1:03:48David Pierce?

  Right.

• 1:03:48Nilay Patel?

  Uh, you just have to like set those aside, but like the hottest new applications in the world happen on the web. Like that is a thing. That's just true. The web has become the dominant place to deploy desktop applications. Great. Microsoft reacted to it by just letting go, by being like, you know what? We built Azure. Put your web applications on our cloud service and run OpenAI on our cloud service and we'll make the money there and whatever. We'll just try to get you to use Edge.

• 1:04:13David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:14Nilay Patel?

  And that is one reaction, a big company, especially because they lost in mobile. They basically had no choice. Apple's response to it is like, no, no, that won't happen at all, sir. Right? And on our tablet. You will deploy applications for the iPad. You will use the App Store. And indeed, there are some cool iPad apps because of it. That's great. Like Procreate is an entire company that exists to develop iPad apps and use the iPad in the way that Apple wants people to use. That is great. That's a success story. But there's not a lot of great iPad apps. Like, they squeezed the balloon and it didn't get a lot bigger.

• 1:04:47Nilay Patel?

  Like, mostly the air went out. There's some balance in there, but you can see those are two reactions to the same problem.

• 1:04:53David Pierce?

  All I keep thinking, as you say that, is like, boy, it's ridiculous that Google never figured out how to make decent hardware out of this. That like, this circling Google did around Chromebooks and Android tablets and all this stuff, like, nobody should be more incentivized to figure out how to do this well than Google, and it just didn't. And that makes me angry. And I just look at my Pixelbook and I'm like, God, you could have been something.

• 1:05:13Nilay Patel?

  It could have been great. I mean, I famously bought my mother a Chromebook Pixel, the $1,000 Chromebook, several years ago. She still uses it.

• 1:05:20David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:20Nilay Patel?

  Because it was easier to use than a Windows PC or a Mac. Well, you open a Mac today, it has 50 different interface paradigms all happening at you at once. There's Launchpad and Mac apps and a web browser, and it's trying to get you to use Safari and all this other stuff. And you can run iPad apps and it has an App Store, but you can also, and that's like, that's too much. Like, actually, just go to a bunch of webpages and use whatever you need to use there, and here's a really nice piece of hardware to do it. It's pretty good. And I think you look at kind of all the like, the Steam Decks of the world that are running games in Linux now, and you're like, oh, you could build a kick-ass Chromebook right now.

• 1:05:54David Pierce?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:05:55Nilay Patel?

  And is anyone gonna do it? It's like, I don't know. We've come a long way from the iPad where I'm like, you could build a kick-ass Chromebook. But that feels like one version of computing where the restraints are lifted and it does everything everyone wants. And the simplicity that Apple's chasing with the iPad is still there.

• 1:06:11David Pierce?

  Yeah, I really do agree with, and you said this on last Friday's show, that a desktop web browser, like a true great desktop web browsing environment would immediately solve a lot of people's iPad problems. I think that's, I think that's really real.

• 1:06:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, let us just run Chrome. Like, honestly, maybe it'll destroy the battery, it'll light on fire. Chrome has a lot of problems. But if you just let me use an iPad like a Chromebook. Yeah, you know, like I would still buy the hardware. I would still pay for Apple's various services. I would still need iCloud storage. Like you'll make your money, Tim, but like, let me use the computer the way I want to.

• 1:06:45David Pierce?

  So maybe, maybe part of the reason people want a touchscreen MacBook is that that seems like the more likely way to get closer to that perfect middle. Cause I think the iPad thing you're describing is like, what if we just blew up the whole way Apple thinks about itself? And that'd be cool, but seems less likely than there might be a touchscreen on a MacBook. And Mark Gurman has reported that Apple's considering that again, like it has seemed anathema to Apple for a long time, but I would track that as probably a more likely sort of nudge towards the perfect all things for all people computer than let's upend the app model entirely.

• 1:07:20Nilay Patel?

  Well, I think there's two ways of thinking about it. One, at some point, you're just like, it's an M4 and it's a keyboard and a screen. They should be the same.

• 1:07:29David Pierce?

  I mean, I would assume by the way that they will be like, I suspect we are going to get a Mac with basically these exact same specs before very long.

• 1:07:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. The only difference between a Mac and iPad is that Mac doesn't have a random light, our sensor and a camera on the back.

• 1:07:39David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 1:07:40Nilay Patel?

  Fine. But I think the other thing that is happening is in Europe, there's a bunch of regulations that say you have to let other web browsers on these devices with their own engines. And maybe someone just makes a great desktop web browser with the desktop Chrome engine, maybe. And like, and I think as we've already seen with emulators, it really recontextualizes what you can do when you get out of Apple's restrictions or those restrictions fade away and other people are allowed to use the hardware to their advantage. So I think that's, the iPad is in all the regulations now. There, you know, there's some back and forth on it, but they the Europeans are Europeans and they're like, no, we're taking that too. Great. So I just think there's something else that might happen there that could really change how we feel about iPads.

• 1:08:21David Pierce?

  That's fair. I guess I just mean, I don't see a world in which Apple does that of its own volition.

• 1:08:26Nilay Patel?

  Oh, no, definitely not.

• 1:08:26David Pierce?

  Especially with the iPad. Apple seems so precious about the way that that thing works, that every teeny tiny thing it has done to open it up has felt extremely kicking and screaming against its will.

• 1:08:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, because it's the one that they control and it's the one that is a monopoly, I guess. Like, it's hard to make the case. I guess Europeans are regulating it for various reasons because they think it's a gatekeeper, but it's Apple's. Apple has long said this is our vision for the future of computing. It has not won in the market. It just hasn't. Like, they sell a lot of iPads. They sell more tablets than anybody else, but people still use their laptops. Like, I can look at our own usage in Google Analytics on our webpage and tell you, no one's browsing our website on a tablet. Like, it's just not happening. And so I think they feel protective of it because it's not under pressure. Like, they are the market, but the market's really small.

• 1:09:16David Pierce?

  Yeah, and I think they have this sense of what it could be, and it is like beautiful and perfect and extremely Apple.

• 1:09:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, if only everyone would do what they want.

• 1:09:26David Pierce?

  Then we wouldn't need touchscreen backlogs. It would all be fine. All right, we should go. Neelai, thank you as always.

• 1:09:31Nilay Patel?

  See you.

• 1:09:34David Pierce?

  All right, that is it for The Vergecast today. Thanks to everybody who came on the show, and thank you especially, as always, for listening. There's lots more on everything we talked about at theverge.com, tons from the Surface event and all the new Microsoft things, all of our OpenAI coverage, everything about iPads, all of it. We'll put it in the show notes, but also read theverge.com. It is just a crazy newsy week. Microsoft Build is today. Developer conferences are everywhere. AI stuff is everywhere. There's just a ton going on. As always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or PC recommendations for me, you can always email us at [email protected] or keep calling the hotline, 866-VERGE11. Like I said, I love hearing from you. We have a Slack room that just pumps in every voicemail and we get to listen to it. It's so much fun. It is my absolute

• 1:10:17David Pierce?

  favorite thing, both about maybe my job and definitely about being in Slack. If you've got ideas, thoughts, questions, keep it all coming. This show is produced by Andrew Moreno, Liam James, and Will Poor. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Neelai, Alex, and I will be back on Friday to talk more about Build, more about AI, and everything else going on in tech this week. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

• 1:10:48Speaker 11

  Everyone's got a hard question about AI. Your job, your kids, where it's going. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way, because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claud.ai/spotify and keep thinking. That's claud.ai/spotify.

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