May 7, 2025 • 20 mins
After 22 years, video calling platform Skype is shutting down.
After its inception, to ‘skype’ became a verb – and it was the go-to service for many years.
That is... until Covid-19 and Zoom took over.
So how has something once thought to be so innovative become so obsolete?
Who decides what apps and sites we migrate to – and looking to the future, what could be the next big bang – or bust?
Today on The Front Page, Victoria University of Wellington professor of information systems, Alex Richter joins us to discuss the fickle world of tech.
Follow The Front Page on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can read more about this and other stories in the New Zealand Herald, online at nzherald.co.nz, or tune in to news bulletins across the NZME network.
Host: Chelsea Daniels
Sound Engineer/Producer: Richard Martin
Producer: Ethan Sills
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Gilda.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. After twenty
two years, video calling platform Skype is shutting down. After
its inception, to Skype became a verb and it was
the go to service for many years, that is until
(00:30):
COVID nineteen and Zoom took over. So how has something
once thought to be so innovative become so obsolete? Who
decides what apps and sites we migrate to? And looking
to the future, what could be the next big bang
or bust? Today on the front Page, Victoria University of
Wellington Professor of Information Systems Alex Richter joins us to
(00:53):
discuss the fickle world of tech.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Alex.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Skype amassed more than three hundred million monthly users at
its peak. Many of us grew up knowing that to
video call someone was to skype someone. Where in the
world did it all go wrong?
Speaker 1 (01:16):
I think a lot of this is because of lost
opportunity during COVID, where Skype basically competed with Zoom and
maybe also a bit with teams. And the big advantage
that assume had was that it was very simple to you,
so Skype had actually a very good opportunity at the infrastructure,
(01:39):
the user base. As you say, it was actually a
synonym for even like video conferencing. But Zoom had this instant,
frictionless success, whereas the Skype interface was increasingly complex from
a user perspective, especially during COVID. That's when this simplicity
basically one. Yeah, millions of users over for soon, and Skype,
(02:05):
which was already owned by Microsoft them at some point,
was in the eyes, I guess of Microsoft no longer
that successful.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I can think of a lot of platforms and applications
that were once part of our daily lives and they've
just faded into the background almost. I'm thinking of like
MySpace being one of them, overtaken by Facebook, then Instagram.
How do we just all of a sudden decide to
just stop using one and move to another.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yeah, in the case of MySpace is actually also very interesting.
I would say it's another design principle. So for Skype,
it was in my eyes it was simplicity. For my Space,
I would say it was the activity streams that they
didn't have. So MySpace it let users personalize their pages
(02:53):
endlessly and had a lot of cool features but they
were really slow to adopt this activity streamed at Facebook,
Head and Twitter. This is a core social feature of
was for many users. They were there because they wanted
to connect with others. They wanted to have this constant
stree of awareness what's going on for others. And while
(03:14):
it turns out users, especially on these platforms are not
dead loyal, they want easy In both cases, they want
easy access, easy anti creations, and basically the interfaces that
work for them. So in both cases users decided to
move on.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Another one that I always think of is BlackBerry Messenger.
That was a huge for a moment in time. Hi.
I had several Blackberries and still have fond memories of them,
even though I wasn't a business woman in the mid
two thousands, I was in high school and of course
Microsoft Messenger or MSN Messenger was a huge part of
everyone's adolescence and.
Speaker 5 (03:51):
Bebo as well.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Why do you think some of these I mean, why
don't they stick around?
Speaker 1 (03:56):
I think what all these the example show is that
platform dominance doesn't always last. Right today we think of
these giants and we think, oh, well, they will be
there in the future. But yeah, BlackBerry is a great example,
Nokia AOL has some really big names at the time.
At some point a myths to evolve and grow with
(04:20):
the expectations of their users, and I think what the
users were afterward then often not so much features, but
the whole experience. And in the case of BlackBerry, I
think that may have been one of the reasons. And
BlackBerry was also a business tool, so there may have
been other reasons as well. In the Skype and MySpace case,
it was a lot of private users who basically decided
(04:44):
the other platforms had what they needed.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
I guess our relationship and growing immediacy as a society
has had to contribute to us cycling through this tech quicker, right.
I mean I read somewhere this morning that Netflix took
three and a half years to reach a million users,
while the likes of Threads, which was Instagram's answer to Twitter,
I've got two million users in just two hours. That
(05:08):
doesn't necessarily mean longevity nowadays, does it?
Speaker 5 (05:11):
Though?
Speaker 2 (05:11):
No?
Speaker 1 (05:12):
I agree sometimes these are dynamic developments, but exactly a
longevity relates more to into still also trying to understand
what directions could we grow and what do the users want?
And I see this as a in a way a
co evolution where the platforms try to understand the users,
(05:35):
but then the users over time may also adjust the
way they're they're using the tools, even just the way
they're doing things. So as long as as a platform
I can evolve together with the users, then it should work.
But how this evolution goes that's quite hard to predict,
(05:58):
and I think there were a lot of smart people
at these companies that we discussed that still didn't weren't
able to figure out what way the users wanted to grow.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
They only gave Google Glass to developers. Initially you could
buy them. It was about twelve hundred pounds, and it
was only on sale to the developer community, who were
the best will in the world. Probably aren't supermodels generally,
and so the user imagery was problematic. And that's by
the way, going to be a problem with the Apple
Vision Pro because the only people who'll use an Apple
(06:30):
Vision Pro in public are going to be weirdos.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
There are also some things that I think that never
really took off at all. I'm thinking like virtual reality
hasn't really taken off yet, despite everyone talking about it
and trying to make it a thing. So why aren't
we all wearing goggles or going to work in a
virtual workspace or something.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
So when we look at these design prince, we just dead.
We discuss I mean, against simplicity. I think is a
good one here, because it doesn't seem too simple to
use these goggles in some situations. Right, they're too finicky,
it takes too long and so on, so the effort
is quite high. And on the other side, their value
is not always that clear. And I think indeed there's
(07:13):
a couple of examples where technologies never took off or
took a long time because the users were just not
to sure how to really, yeah, how to use them
in the most beneficial ways.
Speaker 5 (07:25):
And in other cases it worked.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
So yeah, this is in a way relates and again
also a bit too well, what do the users, how
do they perceive these tools fitting in how they work
or how they do things in their daily lives.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
And I suppose something might need to be embraced by
the business world to become successful, do you know, like
BlackBerry messenger?
Speaker 5 (07:48):
Yes, I think the case of BlackBerry.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
I never had one, but from what I remember is
it was it was an ill using having a BlackBerry
and all of a sudden having this capability to text
from a mobile a bit different from compared to phones before.
But then the iPhone, especially in smartphones the other smartphones
(08:15):
that then came a bit later, was a major disruption
because all of a sudden, there was not just the
phone right, there was this device that was so generative
or malible. It could do so many things. And I
think what was surprising in the business world at the
time was that iPhone originally was rather seen as a
(08:36):
private device, but many organizations decided, yeah, okay, our managers
can have iPhones too. And I think that I'm not
saying that the iPhone alone killed the BlackBerry, but I
think it came as a surprise that then many businesses
moved on from the BlackBerry to smartphones like the iPhone
(08:58):
or and rid phones.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
How do you think how relationship and reliance on technology
has adapted over time. Has it become a bit of
a hindrance or a major help?
Speaker 5 (09:08):
I think it is both.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
I think there's fantastic cases how these devices make our
lives easier. At the same time, the more we integrate
them in our lives and in a way depend on them,
or fear we depend on them, the more negative effects
we also see, and starting with kids and how they
(09:31):
use these devices at school, often in really detrimental ways,
things that you and I guess didn't experience, but that
a lot of young children have to figure out nowadays,
and also as adults. I mean, so from that perspective,
I guess it's a balanced views, acknowledging the potential benefits
(09:51):
but also being aware of all the potential detrimental effects
and especially important for AI that has taken a lot
of our private lives and on our business lives by
storm in just the last couple of years. And again
then the risks that come with this, various biases and
(10:15):
problems need to be acknowledged at the same time. And yeah,
and we need to react to that as well.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
When we're talking about the next big thing, it has
to have something to do with AI, right. We at
the point where chat GPT has evolved beyond just being
a fun trend of making some AI images, sending to
your friends, making up a little itinerary. I mean, what's
the next step for AI, especially in I guess, both
in personal and business life.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Well, I mean, I would say the effects are already
really there for many freelancers, for example, in creative spaces
is where AI basically has taken over or in other professions.
So the question here is really like, how do we
We cannot really shut it out, but how can we
(11:14):
react to the fact that AI is all of a
sudden there and is taking over some tasks and parts
of of of job roles. So I think that this
is in some way happened overnight, and and businesses and
especially also policymakers around the globe bar having trouble catching
(11:36):
catching up in the private life. I guess it's similar
to uh to what I said about social media before.
I see some co evolution in a way we we
change our our practices, our habits to some extent based
on what how AI makes our lives easier. And as
(11:57):
as long as it just makes it easier and we
don't don't change things in ways that are then depremental
to our ourselves or to others, then I think, yeah,
we can see the positive effects. But again there's I
think what is very important in the space is AI literacy,
making informed decisions about AI, being aware of what AI
(12:22):
is actually able to do and where we need to
be really careful using it, and not being too too
trusting in its capabilities. So from that perspective, in my opinion,
what is happening right now is already is a really
big thing, and the question is how do we how
do we react, Like, how how can we make sure
(12:43):
that the ethics that we have, that the values that
we have are not going overboard now?
Speaker 6 (12:51):
And what about this internet thing?
Speaker 5 (12:52):
Do you do you know anything about that?
Speaker 4 (12:54):
Sure?
Speaker 5 (12:55):
What the hell is that? Exactly?
Speaker 4 (12:58):
Well, it's it's become a place where people are publishing information,
so everybody can have their own homepage. Companies are there
the latest information. It's wild, what's going on? You can
send electronic mail to people. It is the big new things.
Speaker 6 (13:13):
A couple of months ago, there was like a big
breakthrough announcement that on the internet or on some computer
deal they were going to broadcast a baseball game. You
could listen to a baseball game on your computer. And
I just thought to myself, does radio ring a bell?
Speaker 2 (13:32):
And how can we make sure that AI, the snowball
of it doesn't get away from us kind of like
the Internet did. Because I know that there's some legislation
there that's still trying to catch up to the World
Wide web. So in the.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Business lives, in a way it's a little bit easier
because you can establish guard race and policy saying look,
you can do this and that's okay, but this is
where it ends. This is a boundary look that we're
not crossing, and as the leadership of an organization can
say that. I mean there's a trade off because some
(14:06):
may feel that they're missing out if they're not using
more of the AI capabilities. But I guess it's about
managing risks there and I think it's a very valid
approach to assess the risk first and not trying to
catch up too fast. On a societal level, this is
a bit more tricky. I think in a way we
(14:28):
learned a little bit from the case of social media,
where legislation indeed has taken in many countries forever to
actually acknowledge the risks and the dangers of social media
and to catch up with it. I mean, the social
media band for children in Australia comes now literally decays
(14:50):
after young people have started using it. So in the
case of it, I think there's more awareness and there's
also louder voices that say, look, we need to we
need to implement guardrails, policies, laws also in private life,
and and actually also we need to make some of
(15:12):
these guard rails mandatory for the platform providers. I would
say policy makers have learned from the past to some
extent and try to be quicker with their with their implementations.
There As one example, I would like to mention social companions.
So there's various platforms where you can have chat with
(15:36):
with avatars literally having virtual relationships with the I and
all that, and millions of users actually trust AI quite
a lot to an extent where we had global cases
in the US in Australia where people took their lives
based on advice from a eye. So this is obviously
this has gone way too far. This is where then
(15:59):
legislation has step in and say, okay, like we need
to make sure that I doesn't give these advices and
basically that there models are only wrote out and can
be used by the public if they're safe.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah, that's really interesting actually because I read somewhere the
other day that people have been flocking to AI and
getting mental health advice instead of actually paying the money
to go see a psychologist or a counselor, and the
waiting lists for those are huge and there I've seen
a couple of psychologists on TikTok warning people saying, no,
this is not a solution. And I think there needs
(16:33):
to be a little bit more, like you said, some
literacy around what AI actually is and the advice that
it gives. It is only what you feed it, right.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Yes, yes, I mean I think they are as you say,
we have a growing need for mental support, I would
say across our societies and not enough psychologists, coaches and
so on. And I think AI can help to some extent,
(17:03):
but only in a safe space. There have been studies
that have shown that it is highly effective, and I
have examples also in my network that where experts and
psychologists were quite impressed what AI can actually do. But
just having a one positive example or a couple of
(17:23):
nice anecdotes doesn't mean it's safe to use. Somebody who
potentially uses it needs to be very aware what AI
can do and cannot do. But also we need to
make sure that the models go only that far.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
And finally, what do you think the tech world or
the business world as a whole can learn from the
downfall of apps like Skype.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
I think that many platforms that have been successful over
the last years, are very heavily uses centric. They're very
close to their users, and they're really understand and what
the users want, and they're quick to react. What we
can learn is that there's not a lot of tech loyalty,
(18:09):
so users will move on if they don't get the
experience anymore that they want. So it's really for a platform,
it's really important to understand what the users want. At
the same time, like the case of social media, also
shows that user interests and platform interests are not always aligned, right.
(18:29):
I mean, we know that social media platforms really thrive
with highly emotional for example, inflammatory posts and comments, so
because they want a high user engagement, they.
Speaker 5 (18:42):
Will encourage that.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
So here we actually also then need policies and laws
making sure that this yard doesn't further increase or it's
all contained in a way. So basically that we have
really key yeah, competing interests. I think in the long run,
(19:06):
it would be good to see more and more platforms
taking right decisions, not being after the on the short run,
after just the money, but also like after sustainable growth
that also is in the interest of the users in
terms of yeah, literally mental well being.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Thanks for joining us, Alex.
Speaker 5 (19:26):
Thank you, Chelsea.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at enzidherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also
our sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front
Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and
(19:53):
tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.
Gilda.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. After twenty
two years, video calling platform Skype is shutting down. After
its inception, to Skype became a verb and it was
the go to service for many years, that is until
(00:30):
COVID nineteen and Zoom took over. So how has something
once thought to be so innovative become so obsolete? Who
decides what apps and sites we migrate to? And looking
to the future, what could be the next big bang
or bust? Today on the front Page, Victoria University of
Wellington Professor of Information Systems Alex Richter joins us to
(00:53):
discuss the fickle world of tech.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Alex.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Skype amassed more than three hundred million monthly users at
its peak. Many of us grew up knowing that to
video call someone was to skype someone. Where in the
world did it all go wrong?
Speaker 1 (01:16):
I think a lot of this is because of lost
opportunity during COVID, where Skype basically competed with Zoom and
maybe also a bit with teams. And the big advantage
that assume had was that it was very simple to you,
so Skype had actually a very good opportunity at the infrastructure,
(01:39):
the user base. As you say, it was actually a
synonym for even like video conferencing. But Zoom had this instant,
frictionless success, whereas the Skype interface was increasingly complex from
a user perspective, especially during COVID. That's when this simplicity
basically one. Yeah, millions of users over for soon, and Skype,
(02:05):
which was already owned by Microsoft them at some point,
was in the eyes, I guess of Microsoft no longer
that successful.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I can think of a lot of platforms and applications
that were once part of our daily lives and they've
just faded into the background almost. I'm thinking of like
MySpace being one of them, overtaken by Facebook, then Instagram.
How do we just all of a sudden decide to
just stop using one and move to another.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yeah, in the case of MySpace is actually also very interesting.
I would say it's another design principle. So for Skype,
it was in my eyes it was simplicity. For my Space,
I would say it was the activity streams that they
didn't have. So MySpace it let users personalize their pages
(02:53):
endlessly and had a lot of cool features but they
were really slow to adopt this activity streamed at Facebook,
Head and Twitter. This is a core social feature of
was for many users. They were there because they wanted
to connect with others. They wanted to have this constant
stree of awareness what's going on for others. And while
(03:14):
it turns out users, especially on these platforms are not
dead loyal, they want easy In both cases, they want
easy access, easy anti creations, and basically the interfaces that
work for them. So in both cases users decided to
move on.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Another one that I always think of is BlackBerry Messenger.
That was a huge for a moment in time. Hi.
I had several Blackberries and still have fond memories of them,
even though I wasn't a business woman in the mid
two thousands, I was in high school and of course
Microsoft Messenger or MSN Messenger was a huge part of
everyone's adolescence and.
Speaker 5 (03:51):
Bebo as well.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Why do you think some of these I mean, why
don't they stick around?
Speaker 1 (03:56):
I think what all these the example show is that
platform dominance doesn't always last. Right today we think of
these giants and we think, oh, well, they will be
there in the future. But yeah, BlackBerry is a great example,
Nokia AOL has some really big names at the time.
At some point a myths to evolve and grow with
(04:20):
the expectations of their users, and I think what the
users were afterward then often not so much features, but
the whole experience. And in the case of BlackBerry, I
think that may have been one of the reasons. And
BlackBerry was also a business tool, so there may have
been other reasons as well. In the Skype and MySpace case,
it was a lot of private users who basically decided
(04:44):
the other platforms had what they needed.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
I guess our relationship and growing immediacy as a society
has had to contribute to us cycling through this tech quicker, right.
I mean I read somewhere this morning that Netflix took
three and a half years to reach a million users,
while the likes of Threads, which was Instagram's answer to Twitter,
I've got two million users in just two hours. That
(05:08):
doesn't necessarily mean longevity nowadays, does it?
Speaker 5 (05:11):
Though?
Speaker 2 (05:11):
No?
Speaker 1 (05:12):
I agree sometimes these are dynamic developments, but exactly a
longevity relates more to into still also trying to understand
what directions could we grow and what do the users want?
And I see this as a in a way a
co evolution where the platforms try to understand the users,
(05:35):
but then the users over time may also adjust the
way they're they're using the tools, even just the way
they're doing things. So as long as as a platform
I can evolve together with the users, then it should work.
But how this evolution goes that's quite hard to predict,
(05:58):
and I think there were a lot of smart people
at these companies that we discussed that still didn't weren't
able to figure out what way the users wanted to grow.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
They only gave Google Glass to developers. Initially you could
buy them. It was about twelve hundred pounds, and it
was only on sale to the developer community, who were
the best will in the world. Probably aren't supermodels generally,
and so the user imagery was problematic. And that's by
the way, going to be a problem with the Apple
Vision Pro because the only people who'll use an Apple
(06:30):
Vision Pro in public are going to be weirdos.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
There are also some things that I think that never
really took off at all. I'm thinking like virtual reality
hasn't really taken off yet, despite everyone talking about it
and trying to make it a thing. So why aren't
we all wearing goggles or going to work in a
virtual workspace or something.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
So when we look at these design prince, we just dead.
We discuss I mean, against simplicity. I think is a
good one here, because it doesn't seem too simple to
use these goggles in some situations. Right, they're too finicky,
it takes too long and so on, so the effort
is quite high. And on the other side, their value
is not always that clear. And I think indeed there's
(07:13):
a couple of examples where technologies never took off or
took a long time because the users were just not
to sure how to really, yeah, how to use them
in the most beneficial ways.
Speaker 5 (07:25):
And in other cases it worked.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
So yeah, this is in a way relates and again
also a bit too well, what do the users, how
do they perceive these tools fitting in how they work
or how they do things in their daily lives.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
And I suppose something might need to be embraced by
the business world to become successful, do you know, like
BlackBerry messenger?
Speaker 5 (07:48):
Yes, I think the case of BlackBerry.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
I never had one, but from what I remember is
it was it was an ill using having a BlackBerry
and all of a sudden having this capability to text
from a mobile a bit different from compared to phones before.
But then the iPhone, especially in smartphones the other smartphones
(08:15):
that then came a bit later, was a major disruption
because all of a sudden, there was not just the
phone right, there was this device that was so generative
or malible. It could do so many things. And I
think what was surprising in the business world at the
time was that iPhone originally was rather seen as a
(08:36):
private device, but many organizations decided, yeah, okay, our managers
can have iPhones too. And I think that I'm not
saying that the iPhone alone killed the BlackBerry, but I
think it came as a surprise that then many businesses
moved on from the BlackBerry to smartphones like the iPhone
(08:58):
or and rid phones.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
How do you think how relationship and reliance on technology
has adapted over time. Has it become a bit of
a hindrance or a major help?
Speaker 5 (09:08):
I think it is both.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
I think there's fantastic cases how these devices make our
lives easier. At the same time, the more we integrate
them in our lives and in a way depend on them,
or fear we depend on them, the more negative effects
we also see, and starting with kids and how they
(09:31):
use these devices at school, often in really detrimental ways,
things that you and I guess didn't experience, but that
a lot of young children have to figure out nowadays,
and also as adults. I mean, so from that perspective,
I guess it's a balanced views, acknowledging the potential benefits
(09:51):
but also being aware of all the potential detrimental effects
and especially important for AI that has taken a lot
of our private lives and on our business lives by
storm in just the last couple of years. And again
then the risks that come with this, various biases and
(10:15):
problems need to be acknowledged at the same time. And yeah,
and we need to react to that as well.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
When we're talking about the next big thing, it has
to have something to do with AI, right. We at
the point where chat GPT has evolved beyond just being
a fun trend of making some AI images, sending to
your friends, making up a little itinerary. I mean, what's
the next step for AI, especially in I guess, both
in personal and business life.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Well, I mean, I would say the effects are already
really there for many freelancers, for example, in creative spaces
is where AI basically has taken over or in other professions.
So the question here is really like, how do we
We cannot really shut it out, but how can we
(11:14):
react to the fact that AI is all of a
sudden there and is taking over some tasks and parts
of of of job roles. So I think that this
is in some way happened overnight, and and businesses and
especially also policymakers around the globe bar having trouble catching
(11:36):
catching up in the private life. I guess it's similar
to uh to what I said about social media before.
I see some co evolution in a way we we
change our our practices, our habits to some extent based
on what how AI makes our lives easier. And as
(11:57):
as long as it just makes it easier and we
don't don't change things in ways that are then depremental
to our ourselves or to others, then I think, yeah,
we can see the positive effects. But again there's I
think what is very important in the space is AI literacy,
making informed decisions about AI, being aware of what AI
(12:22):
is actually able to do and where we need to
be really careful using it, and not being too too
trusting in its capabilities. So from that perspective, in my opinion,
what is happening right now is already is a really
big thing, and the question is how do we how
do we react, Like, how how can we make sure
(12:43):
that the ethics that we have, that the values that
we have are not going overboard now?
Speaker 6 (12:51):
And what about this internet thing?
Speaker 5 (12:52):
Do you do you know anything about that?
Speaker 4 (12:54):
Sure?
Speaker 5 (12:55):
What the hell is that? Exactly?
Speaker 4 (12:58):
Well, it's it's become a place where people are publishing information,
so everybody can have their own homepage. Companies are there
the latest information. It's wild, what's going on? You can
send electronic mail to people. It is the big new things.
Speaker 6 (13:13):
A couple of months ago, there was like a big
breakthrough announcement that on the internet or on some computer
deal they were going to broadcast a baseball game. You
could listen to a baseball game on your computer. And
I just thought to myself, does radio ring a bell?
Speaker 2 (13:32):
And how can we make sure that AI, the snowball
of it doesn't get away from us kind of like
the Internet did. Because I know that there's some legislation
there that's still trying to catch up to the World
Wide web. So in the.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Business lives, in a way it's a little bit easier
because you can establish guard race and policy saying look,
you can do this and that's okay, but this is
where it ends. This is a boundary look that we're
not crossing, and as the leadership of an organization can
say that. I mean there's a trade off because some
(14:06):
may feel that they're missing out if they're not using
more of the AI capabilities. But I guess it's about
managing risks there and I think it's a very valid
approach to assess the risk first and not trying to
catch up too fast. On a societal level, this is
a bit more tricky. I think in a way we
(14:28):
learned a little bit from the case of social media,
where legislation indeed has taken in many countries forever to
actually acknowledge the risks and the dangers of social media
and to catch up with it. I mean, the social
media band for children in Australia comes now literally decays
(14:50):
after young people have started using it. So in the
case of it, I think there's more awareness and there's
also louder voices that say, look, we need to we
need to implement guardrails, policies, laws also in private life,
and and actually also we need to make some of
(15:12):
these guard rails mandatory for the platform providers. I would
say policy makers have learned from the past to some
extent and try to be quicker with their with their implementations.
There As one example, I would like to mention social companions.
So there's various platforms where you can have chat with
(15:36):
with avatars literally having virtual relationships with the I and
all that, and millions of users actually trust AI quite
a lot to an extent where we had global cases
in the US in Australia where people took their lives
based on advice from a eye. So this is obviously
this has gone way too far. This is where then
(15:59):
legislation has step in and say, okay, like we need
to make sure that I doesn't give these advices and
basically that there models are only wrote out and can
be used by the public if they're safe.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah, that's really interesting actually because I read somewhere the
other day that people have been flocking to AI and
getting mental health advice instead of actually paying the money
to go see a psychologist or a counselor, and the
waiting lists for those are huge and there I've seen
a couple of psychologists on TikTok warning people saying, no,
this is not a solution. And I think there needs
(16:33):
to be a little bit more, like you said, some
literacy around what AI actually is and the advice that
it gives. It is only what you feed it, right.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Yes, yes, I mean I think they are as you say,
we have a growing need for mental support, I would
say across our societies and not enough psychologists, coaches and
so on. And I think AI can help to some extent,
(17:03):
but only in a safe space. There have been studies
that have shown that it is highly effective, and I
have examples also in my network that where experts and
psychologists were quite impressed what AI can actually do. But
just having a one positive example or a couple of
(17:23):
nice anecdotes doesn't mean it's safe to use. Somebody who
potentially uses it needs to be very aware what AI
can do and cannot do. But also we need to
make sure that the models go only that far.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
And finally, what do you think the tech world or
the business world as a whole can learn from the
downfall of apps like Skype.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
I think that many platforms that have been successful over
the last years, are very heavily uses centric. They're very
close to their users, and they're really understand and what
the users want, and they're quick to react. What we
can learn is that there's not a lot of tech loyalty,
(18:09):
so users will move on if they don't get the
experience anymore that they want. So it's really for a platform,
it's really important to understand what the users want. At
the same time, like the case of social media, also
shows that user interests and platform interests are not always aligned, right.
(18:29):
I mean, we know that social media platforms really thrive
with highly emotional for example, inflammatory posts and comments, so
because they want a high user engagement, they.
Speaker 5 (18:42):
Will encourage that.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
So here we actually also then need policies and laws
making sure that this yard doesn't further increase or it's
all contained in a way. So basically that we have
really key yeah, competing interests. I think in the long run,
(19:06):
it would be good to see more and more platforms
taking right decisions, not being after the on the short run,
after just the money, but also like after sustainable growth
that also is in the interest of the users in
terms of yeah, literally mental well being.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Thanks for joining us, Alex.
Speaker 5 (19:26):
Thank you, Chelsea.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at enzidherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also
our sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front
Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and
(19:53):
tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.
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