This week, some courtroom drama. It’s Elon Musk v. OpenAI the next few weeks and billionaires are taking the stand and opening their diaries — and memories of Burning Man — to scrutiny. Reed Albergotti (Semafor) breaks down the legal battle and why Elon Musk believes he’s owed billions since OpenAI went for-profit. Nitasha Tiku (The Washington Post) reports on the Pentagon agreement Google was ‘proud’ to sign. But it’s déjà vu for many Google employees, who once again demanded company leadership proceed cautiously. Finally, Taylor Lorenz (User Mag) on the ‘girlboss-ification’ of AI: the coordinated push by major AI companies to win over women, from Anthropic's invite-only influencer supper clubs in New York to Reese Witherspoon's suspiciously enthusiastic (and allegedly unpaid) AI pep talk on Instagram.
Additional Reading:
- Shadowboxing Emperors | Semafor
- Google workers petition CEO to refuse classified AI work with Pentagon | The Washington Post
- Google told staff it is ‘proud’ of Pentagon AI contract after internal backlash | Financial Times
- The Girlboss-ification of AI w/ Kat Tenbarge | User Mag
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
So I wanted to start this week with a reinterpretation
of Esop's fable The Boy who Cried Wolf for the
AI age. Don't you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 2 (00:21):
But I know the boy who cried Wolf.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
So a beloved wolf escaped last week from its zoo
enclosure in Dejan, South Korea, which set off a multi
day wolf hunt, and one local person circulated an image
of the wolf walking down a popular intersection, so the
whole search operation focused on this area. But it turned
out that wolf was an AI deep fake, and so
(00:47):
the the search for the wolf was derailed for several days.
Schools were closed, and the man who cried deep fake
wolf is now under arrest for disrupting government work by deception,
which carries up to five years in jail.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Wow, someone's regulating a high.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
He was not eaten by the wolf, though, isn't someone
supposed to get eaten by the wolf in the end?
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Well, I guess he got eaten by the Traconian penal
code of South Korea, which is the wolf in this story.
Let's get into it. I'mos Voloscan, and this is the
week in tech where I'm joined by three of the
most plugged in reporters to break down what's really happening
in tech right now, And in fact, two of them
were so busy filing and crunching on various things that
(01:31):
we could barely start the recording. But today we're joined
by Natasha Tikou, tech reporter for the Washington Post, Read Albergotti,
tech editor for Semaphore, and Taylor Lorenz of User mag Read.
I want to start with you. The big news this
week is the trial between Elon Musk and open Ai.
A jury was chosen this week, and there have already
(01:52):
been texts and diary entries from the tech titans that
have emerged in discovery that are quite embarrassing. Before we
dive into those, red why is Elon bringing this little suit?
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Well, Elon started open ai as a charity, and like
all things Elon, he wanted to run it himself, and
the open ai folks didn't like that. They booted him
out and he said, I'm not I'm pulling all my funding.
You're on your own. So open Ai started this for
profit wing. They raised a bunch of money from private investors.
(02:23):
Everything was fine until they launched chat GPT and all
of a sudden, you know, they had lightning in a
bottle and it became this successful business. And Elon's like,
wait a minute, that's the charity I founded. You know,
I want my money back and I don't want you
to be a for profit company, and I'm going to
assume you in federal court. And somehow remarkably, this is
(02:47):
now before a nine person jury in Oakland, California, where
you know, just af you. Seems like a few months
ago there were people lighting teslas on fire, and you know,
people hate AI. So I was joking in my columnistry
that is like, if only the jury could find a
way for both sides to lose in this case, I
(03:08):
think they'd be happy.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Unfortunately, I think it might go the other way. I
think both sides will probably emerge just fine from this.
Tends to go that way with billionaires, right, it does, Natasha.
I know you've also been covering the trial. What is
on of the most embarrassing tipbits that have come out
of this?
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Well? I really enjoyed the exchange that Elon had yesterday
where they asked him what a safety card was and
he had seemingly never heard of the concept. I mean,
it's the concept deserves its own You know close scrutiny.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I'm guilty here as well. I don't know what a
safety code is.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Yeah, so it's like every time GPT four point five
comes out, they do a system card or sometimes called
a model card, where they go through all the risks.
I should say, XAI has its own safety cards. You
know that the very small safety staff at XAI that
is I think well was gone by the end of
(04:07):
the year last year worked really hard on It's just
like imagine if I don't know, the CEO of Nabisco
was like, what's a nutrition label? It's kind of like that.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
It was even more embarrassing, that, isn't it, because you
know the whole point that this trial is about his
he alone being responsible for the safety of AI and humanity.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
I mean, if that's what Elon, if that's the popular narrative, like, wow,
that's really yeah, yes, I guess so. I mean that's
certainly how he's positioned himself. But I also I mean
I object to even the term charity. You know, it
was a nonprofit. Uh, we all know how tech nonprofits go.
(04:49):
Elon was very happy to try to like bring it
inside Tesla, Like this is all a little bit revisionist history.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Right right, But it is ultimately legally that is that
that is the term, right, it is charity and this
is ultimately about nonprofit governance, right, I mean that is
the the the irony of all of this, which I
think is obviously ridiculous, is like that is that is
what this case is about. It's nonprofit governance.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
I think you made the case for read Yeah, that
the the stakes in terms of precedent here are extremely low, right,
not that many nonprofits are going to become multi hundred
million dollar corporate, billion dollar corporations. And you had some
amusing references not a strategy to this being like gladiators,
except as the emperor's fighting. But the stakes are very low, right.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Right, right, right, I said I think I said it
was emperor's It's like emperor's shadow boxing in front of
the angry populace, is what it feels like to me.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
I was quite struck by Greg Brockmann's diary in all
of this. Did you have a chance to read any
of that read.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
I've I've glanced at various things, but yes, I know
I know what you're talking about. Where you know they're
they're sort of discussing like what they want to do
in this very flippant way, right, and it's like, ah,
maybe we should become a for profit, maybe we should,
you know, but it's you know, it's all, it's all
for our entertainment. I agree.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
There's a key line in the in the diary, I think,
which could be a crux of the case, where Brockmann
writes something like would one billion dollars be worth it?
And I think Elon's lawyers are using this too, suggest
that there was a dastardly plan all along by Brooklyn Oltman.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Right right. They knew one day they would release this
very popular chat bot and it would be worth a
trillion dollars. And you know, if it been the best
way to do that would be to trick Elon Musk
into donating money to launch this thing. I mean, what
a what a joke?
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Honestly, I just like that somebody is holding Elana accountable.
Like it just feels so good to have somebody like
in the cross examine itation or you know what I mean,
like confront Elon and talk to him like a normal person,
because you can tell that he is so surrounded by
yes men that you know, like there was a moment
(07:10):
I saw in the transcript when they think they were
asking him like it was something like will Tesla or
one of your companies ever developed like Agi? And he goes,
that's never the point. The point is to get people
from A to B. And then they pull up his
tweet and it says like Tesla will develop AGI or something.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
You know.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
It's just like, I just love seeing him confronted in
that way.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Have you guys been at the trial? Have you guys
been going No, I'm.
Speaker 5 (07:32):
In so Cal I'm not schlepping for that.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
No, I think I have to go next week.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Read I thought you were going to be this week.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
I was going to be there, but then I realized
that in order to get a seat, because I didn't
get one of there's only a small handful of media seats,
I'd have to show up at five am and like
wait in line. Like I'm like, I'm buying an iPhone
in you know, two thousand and seven or something. So
I just I was like, I can't, I can't do it.
I would love to be there. I used to be
a court reporter, you know, for the journal of these things.
(08:01):
They're so fun, but too many responsibilities. Unfortunately, so I'm
following following the case from a fire and imagining that
I'm there.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
The other bit in the Elon cross that I enjoyed
was Burning Man, and because he was at Burning Man
in twenty seventeen, apparently when there was some crucial negotiations
going on with Altman and Brockman, and the question was
whether or not he remembered them, and one of the
issues at play was something called rhino ketamin. Yes, Taylor,
(08:33):
you also pointed out Zuckerberg. Some of Zuckerberg's texts to
Musk that came to light during this trial. How do
they come to light him and what did.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
They say to you?
Speaker 4 (08:42):
Yeah, so during the early days of Douge, it was
revealed that, you know, Musk and Elon were texting quite
in a friendly manner, and Zuckerberg, who had just given
this whole sort of tirade about how he's a free
speech you know, we have got to protect free speech
on Facebook and meta platforms after Trump was elected, is
effectively telling Elan, I'm happy to censor content in a
(09:06):
way that's friendly to you, you know, like let me
know if you need flag anything to me, basically, And
I just think it reveals how cynical Mark Zuckerberg is
and how ridiculous, you know, how completely uncommitted he is
to free expression on his own platforms.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Redial smiling, Well, I just think it's that this is
we need our sort of like every couple of years
reminder of why we don't sue each other in the
tech industry.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
You know, I was going to say, I don't know,
there's not an Aesop's fable about the tech titan who
is so petty that they subjected themselves to a really
embarrassing discovery process. But I think if you stop we're
around now, he might be is there anything I mean,
is there anything that might come from this that's that's
remotely consequential? I mean, is is there any it could
(09:53):
could if Elon prevails, could open Ai be broken up?
And what's the limit of the potential judgment here?
Speaker 2 (10:00):
I don't see anything coming out of this of significance
other than it's a major distraction, which is which is all.
I mean, ultimately, probably the strategy here that I mean,
XAI is behind right, Musk's founded this company, and as
fast as they are moving, you know, they did sort
of you know, they did get gapped in the beginning
of this race, and so I think that's probably the
(10:22):
strategy is, like let's see if I can slow them
down a little bit, you know with this lawsuit. But
like ultimately you're not going to see open ai collapse
as a result of this litigation. I just don't think
it's going to happen.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
I do think it's interesting it's coming right as open
ai is so vulnerable though. You know open Ai it
came out, has missed its earnings goals, it's missed its
user growth goals. It's struggling to hit a billion users,
I think on its products. So I do think it's
in this tricky position it's in, you know, like just
a little bit Volatile's not like it's going to go
(10:56):
out of business tomorrow. And now you see Xai try
trying to really accelerate. You know, they bought Cursor, like
which is significant, the really popular coding platform. So you
can see how I think trying to like navigate and
weasel his way in and start to compete with like
the real big dogs, which is really just open Ai
and Anthropic.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Well, the Cursor acquisition or whatever it is possible acquisition, yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
Or like maybe they have to pay if they don't
acquire it. That was very confusing to me. I don't
know how standard that stuff is.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
It's a real it's a real off. It's like a
you know, an acquisition offer, but like there's a ten
billion dollar breakup fee. But essentially, but that to me,
what that was all about was somehow Xai missed this
whole harness revolution that happened over the last like few months,
you know, really like this year.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
The harness revolution. What you mean is basically like the
open poor clor code moment basically.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Right, I mean that's what like, like you see this
massive increase in token usage and AI and it's all
because of these harnesses that allow you to to basically
like pile on the tokens and build build software with
the single prompt and that's what that's what codex does
and Claud code, claud cowork and yes, open claw And
(12:10):
somehow Xai is like just chugging them along with their
chatbot on x and like and sort of seems to
not realize that this is happening, and they're like, oh
my god, we have to acquire we got to acquire
something to get in this game. I was really shocked
by that because as fast as Xai moved in the beginning,
they seem to like move very slowly in this in
(12:31):
this area. So I don't know, you know, I don't
know what that's. I mean, obviously there's a huge leadership
shake up at Xai, and Musk has said on you know, publicly,
that he made a mistake and has to sort of
redo things. But I mean, I guess it turns out
running like twelve different companies, you know, it's a little difficult.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
So you read you talked about going to the cursor
Ai office and how it was kind of I don't
want to mischaracterize you, but like basically a reformation hardware
from mid twenties. I remember it. I mean I remember
literally this is how fast the world we're living in
moves today. Like I remember two weeks ago reading a
piece being like cusser Ai, like, you know, the hottest
(13:12):
company in the world of the early vibe coding days,
like missed its chance and now it's probably going to
go to zero because like killed code at its lunch
and the next week x Ai comes along to buy
them for sixty billion dollars. I mean, it's a little
bit of a I mean, what's it like for you?
I think a little bit further away from this, but like,
how do you keep up with the just relentless whirlpool
(13:32):
of who's up who's down?
Speaker 2 (13:34):
I don't know. I mean by not going to stand
in line at five am at a federal courthouse, I
guess I mean it's it's really hard. I don't know
how you two feel about it, but I feel like
every if you take a week off, you're just you're
all of a sudden playing catch up, and you know,
it's just constant. I think you have to be sort
of zen about it, honestly, like just sort of like
(13:56):
you know you're going to miss a few things here
and there, but it's it is like the the whole
landscape change is constantly.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
I will say, like I feel like covering influencers and
online like TikTok drama has given me this like capacity
for drama that is so high and I can't even
believe that a lot of these tech executives are like
approaching that level of drama. But like the AI boom
has made tech so dramatic, but I still think it's
(14:23):
not quite as dramatic as the YouTuber TikToker world somehow,
although I think elon Is would could get us there.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
It's like not as dramatic, but the landscape change is fast.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
Maybe Elon And I mean there is a lot of
drama and a lot of change. I just I think
it's like, I don't know, I feel like we're in
this like especially dramatic time because it's this like race, right,
like they're all sort of chasing the same goal. I
guess which is Agi or who know. You guys would
know better than me. But it's like they all just
seem like in this like really fierce competition that we
haven't seen in a while. Like we just haven't seen
(14:54):
that in the tech industry. We've had like Google and
Meta sort of tacitly and competition, but not in this
like there's not this like you know, bitter thing. I
think I brought this up before, but it reminds me
so much. I covered Tinder and Bumble in the early
days in the twenty tens, and it really does remind
me of that because both of these companies were just
in this like locked in this like aggressive like emotional
(15:16):
kind of like competition with each other.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Yeah, I think it's happening simultaneously, where the expectation of
like what it is to be a tax CEO is
also different, like you're supposed to be you know, like
masculinity means like kind of getting in the Twitter fray
and you know, like challenging your opponents, like the idea
of being a board appointed executive who like doesn't create
(15:43):
any controversy that almost goes against your valuation. Now, so yeah,
all of these things are coinciding at once. I would
say too, like the the valuations are so high that
you can put like a multi billion dollar like I
was just like, oh, let me put a pin in
the cursor act with I'll figure it out later, because
there's you know, like multi billion dollar deals happening everywhere
(16:07):
in the ecosystem at the same time.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Just to come back to the trial before we go
to the next story, I mean, what how we expecting
how do they pick the jury because I mean it
must have been hard to find nine jurors who who
weren't predisposed to in this in this issue and this
is literally just a popularity contest between two very unpopular people.
Like if presidential elections, say or well.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
They did have some trouble with the jury because they
were i think, asking if they were using AI and
what their thoughts were on AI. And there's so much
public sentiment against AI right now. I think it was
like half the jury uses AI, half of them don't.
But it's interesting that, you know, this jury selection was
happening amidst all of these larger like cultural conversations about
sort of.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
The role of AI. I think, and if you if
you spray painted a tesla, you could still be on
the jury, but if you lit it on fire, then
that was you were biased as too by.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
That's not true. That's a I don't know why, very dry.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
This is very serious.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
I think the judge actually in this case, like that's
been a problem with some of the Texas lawsuits, but
the judge in this case was like, Okay, people have
strong opinions about Elon and we're just going to have
to go forward with it.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
I think she herself made some jokes. I mean, she
seemed to also, for a judge, be quite attuned to
the inherent comedy of the situation, right right right.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yeah, she's we covered her, you know, back in the
Apple epic trial. She presided over that, so that was
another one. She's you know, she's, she's she's used to this,
like high profile tech trial.
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description box Well Natasha Changing gears. The Pentagon continues to
(18:56):
negotiate with Silicon Valley, and this week it was Google's turn.
They signed a deal to provide the Pentagon with AI
models for quote classified work, something that Open AI is
also done. Anthropic famously has not done tells about the
deal with Google.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Yeah, so the deal is actually an amendment to an
existing contract two hunt that was up to two hundred
million dollars in sign last year. And what's different here
is the ability to work on classified documents, classified work.
And this also followed a open letter to CEO Sun
(19:34):
Dar Pichai from six hundred or so employees, including some
of the top researchers at Google DeepMind, who highlighted that
you know, if they entered into classified work, Google would
not you know, be able to know exactly how its
technology was being deployed. You know it. They referenced the
(19:58):
Anthropic Pentagon fight, but they said, you know, the concerns
about domestic mass surveillance and lethal autonomous weapons aren't where
it ends. They emphasize that this technology makes mistakes. And
then the next day we heard that you know, Google
had approved it for or agreed to use their technology
for classified work.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
We gratefully received your letter.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
However, Yeah, it's just I mean, I just find the
like symmetry between the Google protests. Back around when Project
Maven what first, you know, first became this touch point
(20:39):
within the technology industry. You know, there was a Google
letter back then that talked about not wanting to be
in the business of war. And there's a great book
out right now by Katrina Manson from Bloomberg that looks
at Project Made in the whole history of it from
the perspective of the Pentagon and a lot of the
people working inside the Pentagon to push for it. And
(21:02):
it's so interesting because the Google workers at the time
were really framed as kind of naive. You know, what
did you think your multi billion dollar corporation was doing POTTA?
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Just for the benefit of those of us who don't
know what was Project Maven and when was it and
how is it similar and how is it different to
what's going on now?
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Sure, so Project Maven it was around twenty seventeen, I'm
if I'm remembering correctly, But basically it was the idea
of using computer vision to go through all this drone footage,
like the Pentagon had amassed all of this information and
they were having trouble processing it in a timely fashion.
(21:43):
You know, this was just more than a human being,
you know, more than any of their employees could go through.
And Google argued at the time, you know, this is
just about efficiency, it's about accuracy. And Katrina's book really
reveals that from the beginning. Actually they they did think
about this as a as a prelude to using AI
(22:06):
for targeting and as a prelude to using AI as
a as a weapon of war. And now we're seeing,
you know, the same. The whole Pentagon anthropic debate is
also around Maven and I should say, like the the
kind of resurgence of defense tech within Silicon Valley. A
lot of the rhetoric around that was talking about like
(22:28):
not wanting to be like these Google employees who objected
to Pentagon work. You know, they were framed as unpatriotic,
you know, uh not in support of Western values and
kind of you know, these like.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
The Western value of blowing people up you know, abroad
with drones.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Yeah, it's you know, it's just like for those of
us who covered that original Google letter and that original protest,
the idea that like the you know, so many of
these top companies are now out vying for you know,
very publicly and willing to make compromises with the Pentagon.
Is I just think I mean, it's not something I anticipated.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
I think Meredith Whittaker, who's the CEO of Signal now,
was a big part of the original Project Maven protests
at Google and then left and now obviously runs Signal,
and it seemed like the Project Mayven protest, there was
like a moment where it was like, oh wow, like
could the tech workers or the workers these big corporations
kind of come together and you know, as corporate citizens,
(23:32):
kind of change the course of corporate governance. And I
guess they lost, right. The answer was no, And so
this letter is interesting, but I'm not sure. I mean read,
how do you see that moment versus this moment in
terms of tech workers and their leverage.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
I mean you could see their response that Google had
to the employees the Kent Walker, you know, basically wrote
a letter to the employee saying, we're proud to support
the Pentagon, and I mean they're just going to ignore
They're just to ignore the employees. And I think the
I think what they've realized, which maybe at the time
they didn't like fully appreciate. Is like, this is not
the majority of Google employees, right, It's a there's a
(24:12):
there's a small chunk of you know as a percentage,
a tiny little sliver of employees who don't like the
fact that they do work for the government, specifically the military,
and it's not really that big of a deal. I mean,
I think that's how the company views it.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Have you spoken to anyone read Taylor Natasha within Google,
any of the kind of people who work signatory to
the letter about how they're feeling.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
I haven't spoken to signatories, but I do think it's
interesting the way that different companies are being stigmatized and
the you know, the anger that people have, Like for instance,
you see a lot of public backlash against people that
work for open Ai. Because of all this, I think
people are starting to realize that all of these tech
companies are evil because you'll see people like you'll see
people in the comments of post being like, Okay, but
(24:59):
you work for Microsoft, you work for Google, you work
for whatever.
Speaker 5 (25:02):
I mean is that with open Aye?
Speaker 4 (25:04):
But like, you know, I think like people are starting
to realize, like the public is starting to realize that
all these tech companies have business are going to be
in the business of war, and not that that's okay,
but it's it's I think it's harder and harder for
people to.
Speaker 5 (25:19):
Avoid that if you want to work in tech.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
I think you know, ultimately, yeah, I mean these companies
like tech companies, and I mean Silicon Value was built
by the military essentially, right, I mean that's that's who
it's the original customer for all these semiconductors.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
And it was Dupper, right, I.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Mean sure, I mean one of them. Yeah, And I
think you know, it's just I think it's just part
of it, right, You're building the high tech industry in
the US is always going to have to work with
the military. And honestly, like I don't I don't really
know why it's so controversial, to be honest, Like it's
it's not like, you know, it's not like militaries out there.
(26:01):
I mean, I I I Taylor made the comment that
you know about blowing people up, but like this is
you know, this is the US military. Like there's oversight
and there's there are processes to you know, to make
sure obviously, Like you don't.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Know, you don't know why it's controversial, like especially after
the bombing in Iran. I mean, like you know, that's
still an open question.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
The bombing school, I mean of the yes, yes, yeah, Well,
first of all, Claude didn't have anything to do with
that bombing. But second of all, like there you know,
there's there's an investigation to that bombing. It's not like
that wasn't a that wasn't a I've done a bunch
of reporting on that, Like I mean, I've talked to
people in various you know, parts of the government and
(26:50):
adjacent to the government about that bombing, and I mean
it was it was human error. Like that school was
on the target list for probably decades and know did
they didn't realize that the if anything, AI could have helped, right,
If anything, AI could have helped improve the targeting of
that of that school. But that's a tragic incident. That's
not the US saying, hey, we're gonna go bomba school.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Now wait, I'm sorry to be the president is say
we're going to bomb bridges and infrastructure and power plants.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
I mean, the president can say whatever he wants, but
if you understand the way the military works, like no
one in the Pentagon, no one in the military was like,
you know what, who cares, Let's just bomb away and
like not care about civilians, Like that's not what's going on.
So like you can you can, you can say that
and it's fine, and the president can go say whatever
he wants on truth social but like you can actually
(27:40):
do the reporting as well, like talk to people, which
I have done, And like I don't debate.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
That you're that you haven't done reporting, and I don't
debate that a lot of people in the military are,
you know, like you're saying. I don't think every single
person that works at the Pentagon is like blood thirsty.
But I do think America has a quite atrocious record
of behavior in the Middle East, especially and as we're escalating,
you know, things with Iran, our alliance with Israel, what's
(28:06):
going on in Lebanon right now. I do think that
these are really important questions to ask. I mean, Israel,
who we are tightly aligned with and continues to be
a military partner of ours, does continue to bomb schools.
I just think like it's worth asking these questions. How
is AI being integrated? Maybe in that case, you're right,
maybe you're right, read like that could have improved maybe
it could have saved us, you know, from bombing that school.
(28:28):
But I think we need a lot more oversight. And
when the President is making comments like that, it does
cause you can understand why the public would be alarmed.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Right, more oversight is great, Like I'm all for that, Like, like,
that's that's a totally different issue. Like if you think
there's not enough oversight, Like I think that we live
in a democracy, like you can you know, citizens can
get involved in that and like push, I mean you
have to remember, like these people work for us, right,
this is a this is a democracy. So if you
(28:57):
want more oversight into how targeting happens in the military,
you should advocate for that. I think it makes total sense.
But it's I think it's a separate issue.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Natasha, Well, I just if we back up and look
specifically at this most recent Google letter, I think, you know,
this was an opportunity to think about like who are
there tech workers that still have market power, that are
still able to you know, win some concessions from management.
(29:29):
And it was in particular like Emil Michael, you know,
the the under sectretaria of the Department of War. He
has talked about having you know, he kind of compared
it to moneyball. He was like, there's these thousands of
researchers who get traded back and forth between these top
AI companies, and they are the ones that have, you know,
power to push back against the CEO of Anthropic or
(29:52):
at Open AI. And these people, you know a lot
of them come from the like quote unquote AI safe
D community, you know, and they have been very public
about I mean, they have a specific set of concerns.
But I think it's very interesting. You know, obviously, the
mass layoffs in tech push back against any kind of
(30:14):
employee activism has really dampened, you know, the ability for
like the market power of tech workers, I mean cursor,
you know, like there's there's so many reasons why they
don't have the same market power. But it was supposed
to these few thousand researchers were supposed to maybe still
be able to exercise that amount of control to hold
(30:36):
a company to its stated values. And so I do
think that this letter in particular is interesting because it
had a lot of these top Google Deep Mind people
and and you know, we haven't seen what anthropic workers
might do yet if they feel like the CEO is
not is not you know, fighting for the standards that
(30:57):
that they would like to see.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
What's interesting here though, is once you get to the
point of an open letter, it's sort of it's a
concession of defeat, right Like these Opening Eye sorry, these Gemini,
these Deep Mind researchers could have gone to Demis and said, hey, Demis, like,
if you don't say to Sunda that we're not going
to do this, we're not gonna work for you anymore.
(31:19):
And maybe that would have led to a different outcome.
But like, it's one thing. I mean, there's clearly either
they don't only person within Deep Mind to has leverages
is Demis, or those team members would write an open letter,
but they wouldn't actually threaten to quit or leave his team.
I mean, there's some there's something from this story where
like either you're right where they literally have no leverage,
(31:39):
or they had one position in public but in the
end didn't really want to leave their jobs.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
No, I think that's such a good point. They are
basically yeah, they are basically kind of speed running what
we saw at Google. Like the reason that the first
open letter was such a big deal is that because
like previously, Google workers felt like we can have this
open conversation with our executives. You know, we have these
(32:06):
we have these weekly meetings. They'll tell us candidly, you know,
the compromises that they have to make and why they're
making these decisions. And the idea of going public was
kind of you know, it was it was a it
was a break from tradition. So it's true once you're
going public, but you know that means like, so you
have a few leverage like uh, you know, levers to
(32:29):
pull right. You can quit, you can try to publicly
embarrass your company, or you know, like gather bad press.
Obviously that has also lost a lot of its juice
in the current era. So yeah, I think you're right
at the point where you're going public, relying on on
Google's public you know, concerned about public reputation right now,
(32:50):
they're concerned about public reputation. Is like, we are a
good American company, We are a good player. They gave
their services to the Pentagon at a day count, you know.
Emil Michael, for all of the criticism around Anthropic, has
talked about how like Google has kind of made up
for the whole original Project mabe An incident. So yeah,
(33:11):
I'm not surprised that they that this was the company's
response to the letter.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yeah, I mean I was obviously have been following the
King's trip to the United States this week with more
interest than the average person in America. I would think
even he's uh, you know, our dear leader. But there
was a meet There was a sort of meet and
greet in the British Embassy in Washington, d C. And
the pictures were of the King hanging out with Jensen
Lang and Tim Cook. I was like, this is this
is so bizarre, Like he is meeting the administration. The
(33:38):
administration is the tech CEOs?
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Probably true?
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Yeah, read you broke some news about how anthropics investors,
in particular Amazon have been distinctly muted on their support
for the conflict.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
With the DoD Yes, that's true. Actually I broke the
story of the of the of anthropics fight with the Pentagon,
just the record. But you know, I think, no, I mean,
I look, I yeah, I think behind closed doors this
is to your point. I think you and na Tasha
both made this point, which is like, I mean, behind
(34:13):
closed doors, people are just not as upset about this
as they as they seem to be publicly. Because I
agree like if the top researchers, if all the top
researchers at Google and deep mindset, we're we're actually going
to walk out the door if you don't stop working
for the US government. I mean, I think Google would
have no choice. Like I think they do have a
lot of leverage, but that's not what they're doing. And
(34:35):
I think there's a lot of like, you know, hey,
we want to sort of like I think, speak to
a certain audience publicly on social media. But then I
think they realize, like this is just you know, this
is the way it is. Like it's you know, I
don't think they're nobody's gonna lose. They're going to give
(34:56):
up their career, like really put their neck on the
line for this.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
This Taylor, we being too cynical here.
Speaker 5 (35:04):
Now you can never be too cynical about.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Zach.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
We're just just just just to close on this story.
What what's your call? Read Natasha on where the anthropic
thing goes from here? Like do they does it do
that kind of disappear as a thing a bit like
the TikTok ban or like or what a thing? Well,
I guess it's I guess it didn't disappear that it
(35:31):
kept getting rolled over until it was handled out friendly hands.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Yeah, I think it well, if I had to guess,
I would say that, yeah, it does sort of blow over.
I think this lawsuiting it synthropic is ridiculous. I mean,
it's clearly not actually a supply chain risk. They don't actually,
no one depending on actually thinks it's a supply chain risk.
And you know, ultimately it's it's always been about trying
to get them to sort of, you know, remove any restrictions.
(36:00):
They'll they'll they'll get pulled back into the fold. But
I think the act the question I keep asking people,
and so far no one's like taking the bait and
no one no one said yes. It's like, will the
Pentagon eventually say we have to be in control of
our own technology, like we have to develop our own
you know, our own models. Whatever that looks like that
can't be touched or you know, somehow curtailed by people
(36:23):
in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
We gotta take a short break.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
Now.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
When we come back, Taylor is going to unpack the
girl bussification of Ali. Stay with us, Welcome back to
Tech Stuff. Taylor. You had a recent episode of your
(36:59):
podcas Power user title the girl Bossification of AI, which
is a fantastic title. What does it mean?
Speaker 5 (37:07):
Yes, the girl bossification of AI.
Speaker 4 (37:11):
It's basically just this really concerted effort that the major
AI companies are making right now to attract women. So
they have been just going overboard. Anthropic has been hosting
influencer dinners with like influencer girlies in the West Village and.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Oh wow, all over New York.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
Yes, it's become a very hot ticket. Actually a lot
of influencers are like clamoring to get it invited. And
you know, the companies like higgs Field are working more
closely with fashion influencers to push their products. You see
a lot of AI startups partnering with women. There's this
effort also to sell moms on the idea of AI
and get it integrated into their lives and their children's lives.
(37:51):
So I think, you know, as I talked about in
my piece, women are really essential for consumer technology to
become sort of mass market and popular. And I think
that the men hopped on board right away, especially these
like young you know, hypertech kind of pilled men in
San Francisco.
Speaker 5 (38:09):
But but now they're trying to get a.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Lot of like read guilty teen girls and moms.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
I you know, I crossed the I bridge that gap tailor.
I built a school dashboard that my wife and I
use now. So it has a chat feature. You can
talk to it and tell it to add things to
the calendar. It's great, that's awesome.
Speaker 4 (38:29):
I mean, just get an agent to raise your child soon, right, Like,
I think that's what I could.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
I would not there yet, I want to.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
So the kind of trend piece idea here is right
that in the beginning if in the beginning, you know,
when the earth was formless, seventy percent of AI uses
were men, right, And the idea is that AI companies
wanting to bridge that gap and make it only fifty
to fifty.
Speaker 4 (38:53):
Yeah, they want they want to bridge that gap, and
they also want their products to be culturally relevant. It's
it's a lot easy, especially when it comes to pr
to be seen as less of a threat. Let you know,
people have a more positive kind of view of you
if you come in through like the lifestyle lens. I
think this is why Open Eye also recruited Charles Porch
(39:14):
from Instagram, who was the leader of all their sort
of celebrity partnerships Reese Witherspoon says that she wasn't paid
to promote AI recently, but she did this very viral video.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Okay roll tape on Reese.
Speaker 6 (39:28):
I was with ten women in a book club yesterday
and I said to the ten of them, how many
of you guys use AI?
Speaker 5 (39:34):
And only three of them used AI.
Speaker 6 (39:36):
So if three out of ten women are the only
ones using AI, that means seventy percent of that group
is not keeping up. I think we should learn the
basics together and learn some really good tools that are
going to make our everyday lives easier and better.
Speaker 5 (39:53):
Do you want me to share what I'm learning with you?
Speaker 2 (39:55):
It's time.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
It's time, people. This was not a paid post.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
This was allegedly not a paid post. But you know,
there are a lot of other influencers that that are
doing paid partnerships with these companies. There's a lot of
AI companies that are seeking to work with influencers, specifically
young female lifestyle influencers.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
I thought it was so interesting that it was read
sorry Reese, because sorry, because I had written this about
the girl bossification of Crypto, and it was Reese Witherspoon,
Gwyneth Paltrow Mila Kunis who were also doing you know,
(40:35):
uh like groups of women talking about n f T
s and how you really really really need to get
on board. And I mean, I feel very differently about
this current wave of technology, and I do think, like,
you know, the way that it's being pushed you, you
will suffer economically if you don't know how to utilize
(40:56):
the technology it's being you know, implemented everywhere. But I
just think it's really really interesting that it is the
same set of women, you know, as we know, like
their representatives at CIA and other agencies. You know, they're
also looking at AI and how to implement it. And
I'm sure also looking at these partnerships that are that
(41:19):
the companies are are embarking with. It's so funny because
we analyze those like terrible Super Bowl ads all the time.
But Anthropic has a very good relationship with AI influencers
and a number of women. If you look at like,
you know, partner with Claude, the people who come up
are often women.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
I'm desperate to hear here, they've been doing a good job.
The curtain raised on these influence that dinner is hosted
by Anthropic, Like what's the what's the vibe, Like what
happens is it like a kind of like there's a demonstration,
is actually like using the technology practically? It is more
like kind of permeating the idea about AI through culture,
like what happens at the or it just literally get together.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Who's been to one?
Speaker 4 (41:57):
I have certainly not been invited to one. I don't
think they're inviting journalists to these things, but but they
you know, they seem to be like pretty popular. One
substack influencer this week, who's known for covering sort of
like fashion lifestyle business, wrote a substack post I got
invited to Claude's first ever supper club, and she writes,
(42:19):
you know, about the experience in her substack. So I
do think it's like become this clout thing. You'll see
a lot of like overhead shots of the menus, and
it all looks very aesthetic, very clawed and and sort
of like elevated.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
It's interesting that you wrote the globalsification of Crypto piece
and attachment to Taylor's written written this piece. I'm curious
if there's anything's any it was all similarities or if
there's any differences.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
No, I think it's extremely similar. You know, we also
saw uh uh frustration with the lack of adoption from
women around crypto and you know, this was also I
think around the time when the super Power were happening,
so they had you know a number of political goals,
(43:04):
you know, bills that they wanted to pass in Washington.
I will say though, that AI companion apps like character
AI and some of those other ones that like young
people use to chat with, you know, oftentimes like anime
characters or like different user generated versions of characters they like,
that had huge adoption from young women and women of
(43:27):
all ages. Like I don't you know the data, the
exact data is really hard to find. But when I
had talked to Sensor Tower about character AI, like I
think it was December twenty twenty four, it was like
seventy percent women compared to Claude, which was like you
know Claude and Open AI and chat ept where where
(43:48):
the difference was kind of in the opposite way. So
I do think, you know, part of it is just
the executives being a little bit divorced from how their
technology is being used by real people. Uh And yeah,
now they can't kind of they can't let that knowledge
(44:09):
gap continue. They have to figure it out and pressure
the demographics to their favor.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
There was a there was a story that you just
reminded me of this, Natasha. Like a couple of years ago,
I wrote this story about one of these not character
ab but it was called janitor Ai, which is I, oh, yeah,
I know what that name is all about. But someone
gave me a tip that Martin Screlly, you know, the
farmer bro was like invested in this company called janeited
Ai and it was not safe for work chatbots, and
(44:38):
I'm like, oh god, this is like too good not
to write. So I like look into it and I
was just expecting I don't know what I was expecting,
but something really rauchy and mostly guys. And it was
like you said, it was like all these people I
talked to were all women. They're like young women who
were like, you know, inventing these sort of these kind
of like romantic partner chat bots. And they would do
(45:00):
it together like as a group. They'd event like a
character and then have conversations. But then it was really
opened my eyes to the whole to the whole thing.
So I think you're right, like it seems like there
are corners of it where it's actually more women than men. Granular.
Speaker 3 (45:16):
Yeah, and I think like even early adopters, like a
lot of social media managers, Uh, we were pretty quick
to adopt this stuff. Like if you looked on TikTok.
I think it's just like the executives are always looking
on Twitter. You know, they're very ex pilled. Also, channit
Ai continues to be like super super popular.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
It is.
Speaker 3 (45:37):
I would say, like a lot of the companion apps
are just as explicit. Uh, but yeah, it's all these
you know, it's kind of like fan fiction, interactive fan fiction.
Is I think how they like why it has developed
this a similar audience.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Tyler, what was the kind of main takeaway of your piece?
Speaker 4 (45:57):
Just that like kind of like Natasha said, I mean,
women are this like highly relevant audience. I saw some
pushback on Twitter. People were like, no one ever had
to sell women on cell phones or sell women on
the internet, which is hilarious because there was so much
mass marketing to women to get, you know, to adopt
cell phones. Cell Phones were initially seen as this kind
(46:19):
of corporate thing that like business people would have. They
were clunky and expensive, and then of course you had Nokia,
you had all these companies redesigning, you had the Charlie's Angels,
you know, Raiser Special so and same thing with the Internet.
There was this aggressive effort to show women that like, hey,
there's value. Come here for parenting advice, come here for cooking,
you know, all these sort of traditionally female coded purposes.
(46:41):
And I think you're seeing that with the I I
think that the tech industry has unfortunately cried Wolf a
little bit. As Natasha said, So, I think a lot
of women, you know, are seeing this and being like, oh, what, well,
I just learned about crypto and NFTs and that was nothing.
So I'm just going to kind of ignore this AI thing.
And as Natasha said, and I agree, like that's a
each mistake because this is not They have a lot
(47:03):
of bs, but this is not it.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
None of you are very entertained by my wolf story
at the beginning. But I think I've been sent to
in on the list.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
I think there's a lot of crying, crying Wolf's going on,
and I that, yeah, there's we could we could talk
about that all day. But I I was just surprised,
I really surprised how hard it is for people to
kind of like just look at a technology for what
it is as opposed to like the messenger. It's like, well, well,
I Silicon Valley brought us crypto, and therefore everything Silicon
(47:32):
Valley brings us is like a useless scam. It's like
I wasn't into like NFTs, like I was this is
stupid now, but I'm totally into AI because it can
save me a lot of time. It's like, why, well,
why is that so hard for people?
Speaker 5 (47:45):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (47:45):
I would not. I think that the average consumer is
a lot smarter than that you were given. I mean,
the way that they marketed these chatbots is very unique.
You know, they weren't saying here is a way to
save time. They were saying, here is you know, like
the stepping stone to AGI, and you figure it out,
You figure out what the use case is, and you know,
(48:06):
devote your weekend to reading up on this, watching a
bunch of YouTube videos, you know, figuring out how to optimize.
Like the idea that you know, like moms or women
need to save time and have a more efficient approach
to their online life is so obvious, and it wasn't
as though anybody was pushing that use case or making
(48:28):
it simple or accessible. So I don't think it's like
oh these crypto people. I think it is once again
a technology where the where the implication for your everyday
life was not made clear to people.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
And you know, but I also disagree that you have
to that if you're like falling behind, like the point
that Reese was saying this idea that oh my god,
you should be freaking out because you're going to fall behind, Like,
you know, I think, I think this stuff is great.
I love playing around with it. But at the same time,
like it's just getting easier and easier to use. This
(49:05):
isn't like DOS or something like you don't have to
learn that much like you literally download you know, codex
on your computer and just tell it to make something
for you and it just does it. Like it's not
this is like the easiest technology to adopt and it
will just get easier. So I don't I just don't
think people should be fazing out.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
It's barely a product. I would not say it's the
easiest technology to adopt it. Yes, I agree the way
the way that the industry is pushing FOMO, like you
must react to the latest, you know, the latest release
is completely false. But I will say, just like talking
to a number of tech workers who are not in
you know, who are working in marketing, who are working
(49:45):
in trust and safety in other fields, if you take
any time off or you go for a new job,
the way that they the way that HR talks to
you about like are you are you up on the
latest thing? Like can you code? Like do you know?
Like you you know? This is this is why, Like
this is technology for the bosses and they have pushed
this fear down through through the ranks. So if you can't,
(50:10):
like it's almost worth it just to learn the lingo
and make people feel assured that you can, you know,
play along with the latest. But this is like people
are being asked this in roles where it is not urgent,
not relevant, where you could wait until they have a product.
Speaker 1 (50:27):
But by the way, I had a conversation with Ali Islami,
who's one of the senior distinguished research or at deep
Mind last week in London on the stage of the
Royal Institution, which is actually quite a cool experience where
they dissected mummies in eighteen twenty one and discovered sodium.
But he said that you know, basically as an AI researcher.
Every week you're interacting with a different AI, Like it's
(50:50):
changing so fast. So he's not a booster, he's not
in the marketing team, and he's genuinely saying like the
experience of my life is to observe and try and
figure out this things. So I totally agree with you, Tasha.
There is this like bosses absurd, like Foamo driven, Like
if you were you know, if you were if you
didn't spend your weekend trying to make an open tooll,
you know, you should rethink about whether you you know
(51:12):
you're the right fit for this organization. On the other hand,
like it just it's also just they fact show true
that this thing is changing so fast that if you
don't keep up with it, you're not up with it.
So it's kind of an interesting thing.
Speaker 2 (51:23):
Yeah, but like, yeah, of course the guy deep mind
has to be that's his job, Like he has to
be up on all this stuff. I'm surprised. Honestly, I
went to this is like off the record, so I'll
be vague about it, but like I went to this
thing yesterday where a bunch of journalists were getting taught
how to use a tool an AI tool, and I
was like, I'm gonna be like the most behind person here,
(51:45):
Like these are all like young journalists who like don't
have kids, a lot of them, and they're and they're
covering AI like they're going to be doing all this
crazy stuff, and I'm gonna be like this dumb dad
who's like, well, I made a school dashboard, and I
like I was one of the only people even downloaded
this stuff on my computer.
Speaker 1 (52:02):
Like I'm like, because you are you would actually actually
be looking for ways to save times.
Speaker 2 (52:07):
Yes, exactly, No, But I mean, honestly it's my job too,
like I have to I write about AI and technology,
like I have to know how to at least I
have to at least try this stuff as much as
I can. And it's like, I mean, I can't afford
to token max and spend six figures a you know,
a week on tokens, but like, you know, I should
at least be somewhat familiar with this, and like people
(52:29):
just aren't. And I but I honestly don't think it's
like it's I think it is easy to use, Like
I've used technology my whole life, have had to like
go through all these different technology waves. This is like
the easiest one to use because it's like, what are
you talking about?
Speaker 3 (52:44):
You could wait, you could wait, like they could have
waited to launch until it was like push a button
to make a website, you know, push up.
Speaker 2 (52:52):
But that is what happens now. It's like not even
push a button, like just talk.
Speaker 3 (52:57):
I don't think that the way that it's marketed, the
way that interface it like they're still bringing in consumer product.
People share your theory.
Speaker 2 (53:08):
This is my conspiracy theory and why it's my unproven,
no evidence conspiracy theory for why they are not marketing
it because if they did, if they marketed it in
the right way there, they wouldn't have enough tokens, like
you can't. There's not enough infrastructure to have everyone on
the planet building their very own user interface for their life.
(53:29):
That takes like however many tokens, so.
Speaker 1 (53:32):
Reach theories, the spoils go to the vanguard. Natasha disagrees,
that's all we have time for this week, and it's
actually more than Taylor had time for, which's why you
haven't heard her voice for the last couple of minutes.
She had to had to drop out just to close
the best week in Tech, Worst week in Tech, we
talked about crypto crying Wolf. My my worst week in
(53:53):
tech goes to SBF whose whose request for a new
trial was dismissed. Best week maybe Semaphore with the announcement
of the Silicon Valley and the World event in November, Reid.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
I can't argue with that. I think we definitely, I
think we definitely had the best speak of tech. I
think we're looking forward to, you know, a very special event.
So thank you for blagging that. And if you're interested
in coming, let me know if you're a you know,
if you're a global world leader ahead of State.
Speaker 3 (54:23):
I was going to say as having the best weekend
tech because he was, I guess, the coolest dad at
this event. They need women. I wasn't invited.
Speaker 5 (54:31):
What the fuck?
Speaker 2 (54:32):
There are a lot of women there. You should definitely.
I will talk to you all the time and get
you invited to the next thing. But honestly, you're probably
way too advanced for it. But you know, hopefully the
next one will be more advanced. Natasha, anyone else with
the worst we.
Speaker 3 (54:47):
Can take Manis or Meta.
Speaker 2 (54:50):
Oh god, that's a really good one. That's a really
manis is. Yeah, we'll be right. Yeah, I mean, manis
got The Chinese government was like, we're not going to
let you. Well, I don't really know how this works.
They're like, we're not going to let you be acquired
by Meta, but like apparently the money's already been wired,
like it's already like it's already happened. So I just
(55:11):
it's like basically, I think some of the founders just
can't leave China. Is the is the end result, but
it's more of like a it's more of a chilling effect,
Like I don't think there's all these Chinese companies that
have like moved to Singapore in hopes of getting some
kind of exit or access to the Western markets, and
like it's just not going to happen.
Speaker 3 (55:30):
I think, yeah, I think exactly a chilling effect to
close this loophole, and like, uh, you know, saber rattling
for any other Chinese AI startups that want to get
acquired by US companies. So like the mechanics of this
particular deal are rest less relevant than just like oh
you know that the Chinese government might go after you
(55:50):
even if you're based in Singapore, Hong Kong or or
the deal's already closed.
Speaker 2 (55:57):
What's interesting is like the child's like, you saw this
with the H two hundreds, with US selling H two hundreds,
and then China's like, well, no, we're not even gonna
let our companies by the H two hundreds. And it's
this constant back and forth of like, oh, I'm I'm
gonna cut you off and no, I'm cutting you off first,
and it's just like these markets are so despite what
(56:18):
I think. There was some rumblings of like, oh, maybe
that maybe things are loosening up a little bit, but
it's clearly just not happening. I mean, these markets are
totally separate, and you know will be for some time.
Speaker 1 (56:33):
For text stuff. I'm as vlos in. This episode was
produced by Eliza Dennis and Melissa Slaughter. Executive produced by
me Julian Nutta and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrin
Novel for I Help Podcasts. Jack Insley mixed this episode
and Kyle mudop Rodot theme song, but he phraseder engineered
this session. Special thank you to Natasha Tiku, Read al
(56:53):
Bergotti and Taylor Renz. Please check out all their excellent work.
Thank you
So I wanted to start this week with a reinterpretation
of Esop's fable The Boy who Cried Wolf for the
AI age. Don't you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 2 (00:21):
But I know the boy who cried Wolf.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
So a beloved wolf escaped last week from its zoo
enclosure in Dejan, South Korea, which set off a multi
day wolf hunt, and one local person circulated an image
of the wolf walking down a popular intersection, so the
whole search operation focused on this area. But it turned
out that wolf was an AI deep fake, and so
(00:47):
the the search for the wolf was derailed for several days.
Schools were closed, and the man who cried deep fake
wolf is now under arrest for disrupting government work by deception,
which carries up to five years in jail.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Wow, someone's regulating a high.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
He was not eaten by the wolf, though, isn't someone
supposed to get eaten by the wolf in the end?
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Well, I guess he got eaten by the Traconian penal
code of South Korea, which is the wolf in this story.
Let's get into it. I'mos Voloscan, and this is the
week in tech where I'm joined by three of the
most plugged in reporters to break down what's really happening
in tech right now, And in fact, two of them
were so busy filing and crunching on various things that
(01:31):
we could barely start the recording. But today we're joined
by Natasha Tikou, tech reporter for the Washington Post, Read Albergotti,
tech editor for Semaphore, and Taylor Lorenz of User mag Read.
I want to start with you. The big news this
week is the trial between Elon Musk and open Ai.
A jury was chosen this week, and there have already
(01:52):
been texts and diary entries from the tech titans that
have emerged in discovery that are quite embarrassing. Before we
dive into those, red why is Elon bringing this little suit?
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Well, Elon started open ai as a charity, and like
all things Elon, he wanted to run it himself, and
the open ai folks didn't like that. They booted him
out and he said, I'm not I'm pulling all my funding.
You're on your own. So open Ai started this for
profit wing. They raised a bunch of money from private investors.
(02:23):
Everything was fine until they launched chat GPT and all
of a sudden, you know, they had lightning in a
bottle and it became this successful business. And Elon's like,
wait a minute, that's the charity I founded. You know,
I want my money back and I don't want you
to be a for profit company, and I'm going to
assume you in federal court. And somehow remarkably, this is
(02:47):
now before a nine person jury in Oakland, California, where
you know, just af you. Seems like a few months
ago there were people lighting teslas on fire, and you know,
people hate AI. So I was joking in my columnistry
that is like, if only the jury could find a
way for both sides to lose in this case, I
(03:08):
think they'd be happy.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Unfortunately, I think it might go the other way. I
think both sides will probably emerge just fine from this.
Tends to go that way with billionaires, right, it does, Natasha.
I know you've also been covering the trial. What is
on of the most embarrassing tipbits that have come out
of this?
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Well? I really enjoyed the exchange that Elon had yesterday
where they asked him what a safety card was and
he had seemingly never heard of the concept. I mean,
it's the concept deserves its own You know close scrutiny.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I'm guilty here as well. I don't know what a
safety code is.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Yeah, so it's like every time GPT four point five
comes out, they do a system card or sometimes called
a model card, where they go through all the risks.
I should say, XAI has its own safety cards. You
know that the very small safety staff at XAI that
is I think well was gone by the end of
(04:07):
the year last year worked really hard on It's just
like imagine if I don't know, the CEO of Nabisco
was like, what's a nutrition label? It's kind of like that.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
It was even more embarrassing, that, isn't it, because you
know the whole point that this trial is about his
he alone being responsible for the safety of AI and humanity.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
I mean, if that's what Elon, if that's the popular narrative, like, wow,
that's really yeah, yes, I guess so. I mean that's
certainly how he's positioned himself. But I also I mean
I object to even the term charity. You know, it
was a nonprofit. Uh, we all know how tech nonprofits go.
(04:49):
Elon was very happy to try to like bring it
inside Tesla, Like this is all a little bit revisionist history.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Right right, But it is ultimately legally that is that
that is the term, right, it is charity and this
is ultimately about nonprofit governance, right, I mean that is
the the the irony of all of this, which I
think is obviously ridiculous, is like that is that is
what this case is about. It's nonprofit governance.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
I think you made the case for read Yeah, that
the the stakes in terms of precedent here are extremely low, right,
not that many nonprofits are going to become multi hundred
million dollar corporate, billion dollar corporations. And you had some
amusing references not a strategy to this being like gladiators,
except as the emperor's fighting. But the stakes are very low, right.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Right, right, right, I said I think I said it
was emperor's It's like emperor's shadow boxing in front of
the angry populace, is what it feels like to me.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
I was quite struck by Greg Brockmann's diary in all
of this. Did you have a chance to read any
of that read.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
I've I've glanced at various things, but yes, I know
I know what you're talking about. Where you know they're
they're sort of discussing like what they want to do
in this very flippant way, right, and it's like, ah,
maybe we should become a for profit, maybe we should,
you know, but it's you know, it's all, it's all
for our entertainment. I agree.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
There's a key line in the in the diary, I think,
which could be a crux of the case, where Brockmann
writes something like would one billion dollars be worth it?
And I think Elon's lawyers are using this too, suggest
that there was a dastardly plan all along by Brooklyn Oltman.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Right right. They knew one day they would release this
very popular chat bot and it would be worth a
trillion dollars. And you know, if it been the best
way to do that would be to trick Elon Musk
into donating money to launch this thing. I mean, what
a what a joke?
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Honestly, I just like that somebody is holding Elana accountable.
Like it just feels so good to have somebody like
in the cross examine itation or you know what I mean,
like confront Elon and talk to him like a normal person,
because you can tell that he is so surrounded by
yes men that you know, like there was a moment
(07:10):
I saw in the transcript when they think they were
asking him like it was something like will Tesla or
one of your companies ever developed like Agi? And he goes,
that's never the point. The point is to get people
from A to B. And then they pull up his
tweet and it says like Tesla will develop AGI or something.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
You know.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
It's just like, I just love seeing him confronted in
that way.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Have you guys been at the trial? Have you guys
been going No, I'm.
Speaker 5 (07:32):
In so Cal I'm not schlepping for that.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
No, I think I have to go next week.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Read I thought you were going to be this week.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
I was going to be there, but then I realized
that in order to get a seat, because I didn't
get one of there's only a small handful of media seats,
I'd have to show up at five am and like
wait in line. Like I'm like, I'm buying an iPhone
in you know, two thousand and seven or something. So
I just I was like, I can't, I can't do it.
I would love to be there. I used to be
a court reporter, you know, for the journal of these things.
(08:01):
They're so fun, but too many responsibilities. Unfortunately, so I'm
following following the case from a fire and imagining that
I'm there.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
The other bit in the Elon cross that I enjoyed
was Burning Man, and because he was at Burning Man
in twenty seventeen, apparently when there was some crucial negotiations
going on with Altman and Brockman, and the question was
whether or not he remembered them, and one of the
issues at play was something called rhino ketamin. Yes, Taylor,
(08:33):
you also pointed out Zuckerberg. Some of Zuckerberg's texts to
Musk that came to light during this trial. How do
they come to light him and what did.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
They say to you?
Speaker 4 (08:42):
Yeah, so during the early days of Douge, it was
revealed that, you know, Musk and Elon were texting quite
in a friendly manner, and Zuckerberg, who had just given
this whole sort of tirade about how he's a free
speech you know, we have got to protect free speech
on Facebook and meta platforms after Trump was elected, is
effectively telling Elan, I'm happy to censor content in a
(09:06):
way that's friendly to you, you know, like let me
know if you need flag anything to me, basically, And
I just think it reveals how cynical Mark Zuckerberg is
and how ridiculous, you know, how completely uncommitted he is
to free expression on his own platforms.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Redial smiling, Well, I just think it's that this is
we need our sort of like every couple of years
reminder of why we don't sue each other in the
tech industry.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
You know, I was going to say, I don't know,
there's not an Aesop's fable about the tech titan who
is so petty that they subjected themselves to a really
embarrassing discovery process. But I think if you stop we're
around now, he might be is there anything I mean,
is there anything that might come from this that's that's
remotely consequential? I mean, is is there any it could
(09:53):
could if Elon prevails, could open Ai be broken up?
And what's the limit of the potential judgment here?
Speaker 2 (10:00):
I don't see anything coming out of this of significance
other than it's a major distraction, which is which is all.
I mean, ultimately, probably the strategy here that I mean,
XAI is behind right, Musk's founded this company, and as
fast as they are moving, you know, they did sort
of you know, they did get gapped in the beginning
of this race, and so I think that's probably the
(10:22):
strategy is, like let's see if I can slow them
down a little bit, you know with this lawsuit. But
like ultimately you're not going to see open ai collapse
as a result of this litigation. I just don't think
it's going to happen.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
I do think it's interesting it's coming right as open
ai is so vulnerable though. You know open Ai it
came out, has missed its earnings goals, it's missed its
user growth goals. It's struggling to hit a billion users,
I think on its products. So I do think it's
in this tricky position it's in, you know, like just
a little bit Volatile's not like it's going to go
(10:56):
out of business tomorrow. And now you see Xai try
trying to really accelerate. You know, they bought Cursor, like
which is significant, the really popular coding platform. So you
can see how I think trying to like navigate and
weasel his way in and start to compete with like
the real big dogs, which is really just open Ai
and Anthropic.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Well, the Cursor acquisition or whatever it is possible acquisition, yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
Or like maybe they have to pay if they don't
acquire it. That was very confusing to me. I don't
know how standard that stuff is.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
It's a real it's a real off. It's like a
you know, an acquisition offer, but like there's a ten
billion dollar breakup fee. But essentially, but that to me,
what that was all about was somehow Xai missed this
whole harness revolution that happened over the last like few months,
you know, really like this year.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
The harness revolution. What you mean is basically like the
open poor clor code moment basically.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Right, I mean that's what like, like you see this
massive increase in token usage and AI and it's all
because of these harnesses that allow you to to basically
like pile on the tokens and build build software with
the single prompt and that's what that's what codex does
and Claud code, claud cowork and yes, open claw And
(12:10):
somehow Xai is like just chugging them along with their
chatbot on x and like and sort of seems to
not realize that this is happening, and they're like, oh
my god, we have to acquire we got to acquire
something to get in this game. I was really shocked
by that because as fast as Xai moved in the beginning,
they seem to like move very slowly in this in
(12:31):
this area. So I don't know, you know, I don't
know what that's. I mean, obviously there's a huge leadership
shake up at Xai, and Musk has said on you know, publicly,
that he made a mistake and has to sort of
redo things. But I mean, I guess it turns out
running like twelve different companies, you know, it's a little difficult.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
So you read you talked about going to the cursor
Ai office and how it was kind of I don't
want to mischaracterize you, but like basically a reformation hardware
from mid twenties. I remember it. I mean I remember
literally this is how fast the world we're living in
moves today. Like I remember two weeks ago reading a
piece being like cusser Ai, like, you know, the hottest
(13:12):
company in the world of the early vibe coding days,
like missed its chance and now it's probably going to
go to zero because like killed code at its lunch
and the next week x Ai comes along to buy
them for sixty billion dollars. I mean, it's a little
bit of a I mean, what's it like for you?
I think a little bit further away from this, but like,
how do you keep up with the just relentless whirlpool
(13:32):
of who's up who's down?
Speaker 2 (13:34):
I don't know. I mean by not going to stand
in line at five am at a federal courthouse, I
guess I mean it's it's really hard. I don't know
how you two feel about it, but I feel like
every if you take a week off, you're just you're
all of a sudden playing catch up, and you know,
it's just constant. I think you have to be sort
of zen about it, honestly, like just sort of like
(13:56):
you know you're going to miss a few things here
and there, but it's it is like the the whole
landscape change is constantly.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
I will say, like I feel like covering influencers and
online like TikTok drama has given me this like capacity
for drama that is so high and I can't even
believe that a lot of these tech executives are like
approaching that level of drama. But like the AI boom
has made tech so dramatic, but I still think it's
(14:23):
not quite as dramatic as the YouTuber TikToker world somehow,
although I think elon Is would could get us there.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
It's like not as dramatic, but the landscape change is fast.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
Maybe Elon And I mean there is a lot of
drama and a lot of change. I just I think
it's like, I don't know, I feel like we're in
this like especially dramatic time because it's this like race, right,
like they're all sort of chasing the same goal. I
guess which is Agi or who know. You guys would
know better than me. But it's like they all just
seem like in this like really fierce competition that we
haven't seen in a while. Like we just haven't seen
(14:54):
that in the tech industry. We've had like Google and
Meta sort of tacitly and competition, but not in this
like there's not this like you know, bitter thing. I
think I brought this up before, but it reminds me
so much. I covered Tinder and Bumble in the early
days in the twenty tens, and it really does remind
me of that because both of these companies were just
in this like locked in this like aggressive like emotional
(15:16):
kind of like competition with each other.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Yeah, I think it's happening simultaneously, where the expectation of
like what it is to be a tax CEO is
also different, like you're supposed to be you know, like
masculinity means like kind of getting in the Twitter fray
and you know, like challenging your opponents, like the idea
of being a board appointed executive who like doesn't create
(15:43):
any controversy that almost goes against your valuation. Now, so yeah,
all of these things are coinciding at once. I would
say too, like the the valuations are so high that
you can put like a multi billion dollar like I
was just like, oh, let me put a pin in
the cursor act with I'll figure it out later, because
there's you know, like multi billion dollar deals happening everywhere
(16:07):
in the ecosystem at the same time.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Just to come back to the trial before we go
to the next story, I mean, what how we expecting
how do they pick the jury because I mean it
must have been hard to find nine jurors who who
weren't predisposed to in this in this issue and this
is literally just a popularity contest between two very unpopular people.
Like if presidential elections, say or well.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
They did have some trouble with the jury because they
were i think, asking if they were using AI and
what their thoughts were on AI. And there's so much
public sentiment against AI right now. I think it was
like half the jury uses AI, half of them don't.
But it's interesting that, you know, this jury selection was
happening amidst all of these larger like cultural conversations about
sort of.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
The role of AI. I think, and if you if
you spray painted a tesla, you could still be on
the jury, but if you lit it on fire, then
that was you were biased as too by.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
That's not true. That's a I don't know why, very dry.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
This is very serious.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
I think the judge actually in this case, like that's
been a problem with some of the Texas lawsuits, but
the judge in this case was like, Okay, people have
strong opinions about Elon and we're just going to have
to go forward with it.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
I think she herself made some jokes. I mean, she
seemed to also, for a judge, be quite attuned to
the inherent comedy of the situation, right right right.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yeah, she's we covered her, you know, back in the
Apple epic trial. She presided over that, so that was
another one. She's you know, she's, she's she's used to this,
like high profile tech trial.
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description box Well Natasha Changing gears. The Pentagon continues to
(18:56):
negotiate with Silicon Valley, and this week it was Google's turn.
They signed a deal to provide the Pentagon with AI
models for quote classified work, something that Open AI is
also done. Anthropic famously has not done tells about the
deal with Google.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Yeah, so the deal is actually an amendment to an
existing contract two hunt that was up to two hundred
million dollars in sign last year. And what's different here
is the ability to work on classified documents, classified work.
And this also followed a open letter to CEO Sun
(19:34):
Dar Pichai from six hundred or so employees, including some
of the top researchers at Google DeepMind, who highlighted that
you know, if they entered into classified work, Google would
not you know, be able to know exactly how its
technology was being deployed. You know it. They referenced the
(19:58):
Anthropic Pentagon fight, but they said, you know, the concerns
about domestic mass surveillance and lethal autonomous weapons aren't where
it ends. They emphasize that this technology makes mistakes. And
then the next day we heard that you know, Google
had approved it for or agreed to use their technology
for classified work.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
We gratefully received your letter.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
However, Yeah, it's just I mean, I just find the
like symmetry between the Google protests. Back around when Project
Maven what first, you know, first became this touch point
(20:39):
within the technology industry. You know, there was a Google
letter back then that talked about not wanting to be
in the business of war. And there's a great book
out right now by Katrina Manson from Bloomberg that looks
at Project Made in the whole history of it from
the perspective of the Pentagon and a lot of the
people working inside the Pentagon to push for it. And
(21:02):
it's so interesting because the Google workers at the time
were really framed as kind of naive. You know, what
did you think your multi billion dollar corporation was doing POTTA?
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Just for the benefit of those of us who don't
know what was Project Maven and when was it and
how is it similar and how is it different to
what's going on now?
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Sure, so Project Maven it was around twenty seventeen, I'm
if I'm remembering correctly, But basically it was the idea
of using computer vision to go through all this drone footage,
like the Pentagon had amassed all of this information and
they were having trouble processing it in a timely fashion.
(21:43):
You know, this was just more than a human being,
you know, more than any of their employees could go through.
And Google argued at the time, you know, this is
just about efficiency, it's about accuracy. And Katrina's book really
reveals that from the beginning. Actually they they did think
about this as a as a prelude to using AI
(22:06):
for targeting and as a prelude to using AI as
a as a weapon of war. And now we're seeing,
you know, the same. The whole Pentagon anthropic debate is
also around Maven and I should say, like the the
kind of resurgence of defense tech within Silicon Valley. A
lot of the rhetoric around that was talking about like
(22:28):
not wanting to be like these Google employees who objected
to Pentagon work. You know, they were framed as unpatriotic,
you know, uh not in support of Western values and
kind of you know, these like.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
The Western value of blowing people up you know, abroad
with drones.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Yeah, it's you know, it's just like for those of
us who covered that original Google letter and that original protest,
the idea that like the you know, so many of
these top companies are now out vying for you know,
very publicly and willing to make compromises with the Pentagon.
Is I just think I mean, it's not something I anticipated.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
I think Meredith Whittaker, who's the CEO of Signal now,
was a big part of the original Project Maven protests
at Google and then left and now obviously runs Signal,
and it seemed like the Project Mayven protest, there was
like a moment where it was like, oh wow, like
could the tech workers or the workers these big corporations
kind of come together and you know, as corporate citizens,
(23:32):
kind of change the course of corporate governance. And I
guess they lost, right. The answer was no, And so
this letter is interesting, but I'm not sure. I mean read,
how do you see that moment versus this moment in
terms of tech workers and their leverage.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
I mean you could see their response that Google had
to the employees the Kent Walker, you know, basically wrote
a letter to the employee saying, we're proud to support
the Pentagon, and I mean they're just going to ignore
They're just to ignore the employees. And I think the
I think what they've realized, which maybe at the time
they didn't like fully appreciate. Is like, this is not
the majority of Google employees, right, It's a there's a
(24:12):
there's a small chunk of you know as a percentage,
a tiny little sliver of employees who don't like the
fact that they do work for the government, specifically the military,
and it's not really that big of a deal. I mean,
I think that's how the company views it.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Have you spoken to anyone read Taylor Natasha within Google,
any of the kind of people who work signatory to
the letter about how they're feeling.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
I haven't spoken to signatories, but I do think it's
interesting the way that different companies are being stigmatized and
the you know, the anger that people have, Like for instance,
you see a lot of public backlash against people that
work for open Ai. Because of all this, I think
people are starting to realize that all of these tech
companies are evil because you'll see people like you'll see
people in the comments of post being like, Okay, but
(24:59):
you work for Microsoft, you work for Google, you work
for whatever.
Speaker 5 (25:02):
I mean is that with open Aye?
Speaker 4 (25:04):
But like, you know, I think like people are starting
to realize, like the public is starting to realize that
all these tech companies have business are going to be
in the business of war, and not that that's okay,
but it's it's I think it's harder and harder for
people to.
Speaker 5 (25:19):
Avoid that if you want to work in tech.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
I think you know, ultimately, yeah, I mean these companies
like tech companies, and I mean Silicon Value was built
by the military essentially, right, I mean that's that's who
it's the original customer for all these semiconductors.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
And it was Dupper, right, I.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Mean sure, I mean one of them. Yeah, And I
think you know, it's just I think it's just part
of it, right, You're building the high tech industry in
the US is always going to have to work with
the military. And honestly, like I don't I don't really
know why it's so controversial, to be honest, Like it's
it's not like, you know, it's not like militaries out there.
(26:01):
I mean, I I I Taylor made the comment that
you know about blowing people up, but like this is
you know, this is the US military. Like there's oversight
and there's there are processes to you know, to make
sure obviously, Like you don't.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Know, you don't know why it's controversial, like especially after
the bombing in Iran. I mean, like you know, that's
still an open question.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
The bombing school, I mean of the yes, yes, yeah, Well,
first of all, Claude didn't have anything to do with
that bombing. But second of all, like there you know,
there's there's an investigation to that bombing. It's not like
that wasn't a that wasn't a I've done a bunch
of reporting on that, Like I mean, I've talked to
people in various you know, parts of the government and
(26:50):
adjacent to the government about that bombing, and I mean
it was it was human error. Like that school was
on the target list for probably decades and know did
they didn't realize that the if anything, AI could have helped, right,
If anything, AI could have helped improve the targeting of
that of that school. But that's a tragic incident. That's
not the US saying, hey, we're gonna go bomba school.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Now wait, I'm sorry to be the president is say
we're going to bomb bridges and infrastructure and power plants.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
I mean, the president can say whatever he wants, but
if you understand the way the military works, like no
one in the Pentagon, no one in the military was like,
you know what, who cares, Let's just bomb away and
like not care about civilians, Like that's not what's going on.
So like you can you can, you can say that
and it's fine, and the president can go say whatever
he wants on truth social but like you can actually
(27:40):
do the reporting as well, like talk to people, which
I have done, And like I don't debate.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
That you're that you haven't done reporting, and I don't
debate that a lot of people in the military are,
you know, like you're saying. I don't think every single
person that works at the Pentagon is like blood thirsty.
But I do think America has a quite atrocious record
of behavior in the Middle East, especially and as we're escalating,
you know, things with Iran, our alliance with Israel, what's
(28:06):
going on in Lebanon right now. I do think that
these are really important questions to ask. I mean, Israel,
who we are tightly aligned with and continues to be
a military partner of ours, does continue to bomb schools.
I just think like it's worth asking these questions. How
is AI being integrated? Maybe in that case, you're right,
maybe you're right, read like that could have improved maybe
it could have saved us, you know, from bombing that school.
(28:28):
But I think we need a lot more oversight. And
when the President is making comments like that, it does
cause you can understand why the public would be alarmed.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Right, more oversight is great, Like I'm all for that, Like, like,
that's that's a totally different issue. Like if you think
there's not enough oversight, Like I think that we live
in a democracy, like you can you know, citizens can
get involved in that and like push, I mean you
have to remember, like these people work for us, right,
this is a this is a democracy. So if you
(28:57):
want more oversight into how targeting happens in the military,
you should advocate for that. I think it makes total sense.
But it's I think it's a separate issue.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Natasha, Well, I just if we back up and look
specifically at this most recent Google letter, I think, you know,
this was an opportunity to think about like who are
there tech workers that still have market power, that are
still able to you know, win some concessions from management.
(29:29):
And it was in particular like Emil Michael, you know,
the the under sectretaria of the Department of War. He
has talked about having you know, he kind of compared
it to moneyball. He was like, there's these thousands of
researchers who get traded back and forth between these top
AI companies, and they are the ones that have, you know,
power to push back against the CEO of Anthropic or
(29:52):
at Open AI. And these people, you know a lot
of them come from the like quote unquote AI safe
D community, you know, and they have been very public
about I mean, they have a specific set of concerns.
But I think it's very interesting. You know, obviously, the
mass layoffs in tech push back against any kind of
(30:14):
employee activism has really dampened, you know, the ability for
like the market power of tech workers, I mean cursor,
you know, like there's there's so many reasons why they
don't have the same market power. But it was supposed
to these few thousand researchers were supposed to maybe still
be able to exercise that amount of control to hold
(30:36):
a company to its stated values. And so I do
think that this letter in particular is interesting because it
had a lot of these top Google Deep Mind people
and and you know, we haven't seen what anthropic workers
might do yet if they feel like the CEO is
not is not you know, fighting for the standards that
(30:57):
that they would like to see.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
What's interesting here though, is once you get to the
point of an open letter, it's sort of it's a
concession of defeat, right Like these Opening Eye sorry, these Gemini,
these Deep Mind researchers could have gone to Demis and said, hey, Demis, like,
if you don't say to Sunda that we're not going
to do this, we're not gonna work for you anymore.
(31:19):
And maybe that would have led to a different outcome.
But like, it's one thing. I mean, there's clearly either
they don't only person within Deep Mind to has leverages
is Demis, or those team members would write an open letter,
but they wouldn't actually threaten to quit or leave his team.
I mean, there's some there's something from this story where
like either you're right where they literally have no leverage,
(31:39):
or they had one position in public but in the
end didn't really want to leave their jobs.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
No, I think that's such a good point. They are
basically yeah, they are basically kind of speed running what
we saw at Google. Like the reason that the first
open letter was such a big deal is that because
like previously, Google workers felt like we can have this
open conversation with our executives. You know, we have these
(32:06):
we have these weekly meetings. They'll tell us candidly, you know,
the compromises that they have to make and why they're
making these decisions. And the idea of going public was
kind of you know, it was it was a it
was a break from tradition. So it's true once you're
going public, but you know that means like, so you
have a few leverage like uh, you know, levers to
(32:29):
pull right. You can quit, you can try to publicly
embarrass your company, or you know, like gather bad press.
Obviously that has also lost a lot of its juice
in the current era. So yeah, I think you're right
at the point where you're going public, relying on on
Google's public you know, concerned about public reputation right now,
(32:50):
they're concerned about public reputation. Is like, we are a
good American company, We are a good player. They gave
their services to the Pentagon at a day count, you know.
Emil Michael, for all of the criticism around Anthropic, has
talked about how like Google has kind of made up
for the whole original Project mabe An incident. So yeah,
(33:11):
I'm not surprised that they that this was the company's
response to the letter.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yeah, I mean I was obviously have been following the
King's trip to the United States this week with more
interest than the average person in America. I would think
even he's uh, you know, our dear leader. But there
was a meet There was a sort of meet and
greet in the British Embassy in Washington, d C. And
the pictures were of the King hanging out with Jensen
Lang and Tim Cook. I was like, this is this
is so bizarre, Like he is meeting the administration. The
(33:38):
administration is the tech CEOs?
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Probably true?
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Yeah, read you broke some news about how anthropics investors,
in particular Amazon have been distinctly muted on their support
for the conflict.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
With the DoD Yes, that's true. Actually I broke the
story of the of the of anthropics fight with the Pentagon,
just the record. But you know, I think, no, I mean,
I look, I yeah, I think behind closed doors this
is to your point. I think you and na Tasha
both made this point, which is like, I mean, behind
(34:13):
closed doors, people are just not as upset about this
as they as they seem to be publicly. Because I
agree like if the top researchers, if all the top
researchers at Google and deep mindset, we're we're actually going
to walk out the door if you don't stop working
for the US government. I mean, I think Google would
have no choice. Like I think they do have a
lot of leverage, but that's not what they're doing. And
(34:35):
I think there's a lot of like, you know, hey,
we want to sort of like I think, speak to
a certain audience publicly on social media. But then I
think they realize, like this is just you know, this
is the way it is. Like it's you know, I
don't think they're nobody's gonna lose. They're going to give
(34:56):
up their career, like really put their neck on the
line for this.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
This Taylor, we being too cynical here.
Speaker 5 (35:04):
Now you can never be too cynical about.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Zach.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
We're just just just just to close on this story.
What what's your call? Read Natasha on where the anthropic
thing goes from here? Like do they does it do
that kind of disappear as a thing a bit like
the TikTok ban or like or what a thing? Well,
I guess it's I guess it didn't disappear that it
(35:31):
kept getting rolled over until it was handled out friendly hands.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Yeah, I think it well, if I had to guess,
I would say that, yeah, it does sort of blow over.
I think this lawsuiting it synthropic is ridiculous. I mean,
it's clearly not actually a supply chain risk. They don't actually,
no one depending on actually thinks it's a supply chain risk.
And you know, ultimately it's it's always been about trying
to get them to sort of, you know, remove any restrictions.
(36:00):
They'll they'll they'll get pulled back into the fold. But
I think the act the question I keep asking people,
and so far no one's like taking the bait and
no one no one said yes. It's like, will the
Pentagon eventually say we have to be in control of
our own technology, like we have to develop our own
you know, our own models. Whatever that looks like that
can't be touched or you know, somehow curtailed by people
(36:23):
in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
We gotta take a short break.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
Now.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
When we come back, Taylor is going to unpack the
girl bussification of Ali. Stay with us, Welcome back to
Tech Stuff. Taylor. You had a recent episode of your
(36:59):
podcas Power user title the girl Bossification of AI, which
is a fantastic title. What does it mean?
Speaker 5 (37:07):
Yes, the girl bossification of AI.
Speaker 4 (37:11):
It's basically just this really concerted effort that the major
AI companies are making right now to attract women. So
they have been just going overboard. Anthropic has been hosting
influencer dinners with like influencer girlies in the West Village and.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Oh wow, all over New York.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
Yes, it's become a very hot ticket. Actually a lot
of influencers are like clamoring to get it invited. And
you know, the companies like higgs Field are working more
closely with fashion influencers to push their products. You see
a lot of AI startups partnering with women. There's this
effort also to sell moms on the idea of AI
and get it integrated into their lives and their children's lives.
(37:51):
So I think, you know, as I talked about in
my piece, women are really essential for consumer technology to
become sort of mass market and popular. And I think
that the men hopped on board right away, especially these
like young you know, hypertech kind of pilled men in
San Francisco.
Speaker 5 (38:09):
But but now they're trying to get a.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Lot of like read guilty teen girls and moms.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
I you know, I crossed the I bridge that gap tailor.
I built a school dashboard that my wife and I
use now. So it has a chat feature. You can
talk to it and tell it to add things to
the calendar. It's great, that's awesome.
Speaker 4 (38:29):
I mean, just get an agent to raise your child soon, right, Like,
I think that's what I could.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
I would not there yet, I want to.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
So the kind of trend piece idea here is right
that in the beginning if in the beginning, you know,
when the earth was formless, seventy percent of AI uses
were men, right, And the idea is that AI companies
wanting to bridge that gap and make it only fifty
to fifty.
Speaker 4 (38:53):
Yeah, they want they want to bridge that gap, and
they also want their products to be culturally relevant. It's
it's a lot easy, especially when it comes to pr
to be seen as less of a threat. Let you know,
people have a more positive kind of view of you
if you come in through like the lifestyle lens. I
think this is why Open Eye also recruited Charles Porch
(39:14):
from Instagram, who was the leader of all their sort
of celebrity partnerships Reese Witherspoon says that she wasn't paid
to promote AI recently, but she did this very viral video.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Okay roll tape on Reese.
Speaker 6 (39:28):
I was with ten women in a book club yesterday
and I said to the ten of them, how many
of you guys use AI?
Speaker 5 (39:34):
And only three of them used AI.
Speaker 6 (39:36):
So if three out of ten women are the only
ones using AI, that means seventy percent of that group
is not keeping up. I think we should learn the
basics together and learn some really good tools that are
going to make our everyday lives easier and better.
Speaker 5 (39:53):
Do you want me to share what I'm learning with you?
Speaker 2 (39:55):
It's time.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
It's time, people. This was not a paid post.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
This was allegedly not a paid post. But you know,
there are a lot of other influencers that that are
doing paid partnerships with these companies. There's a lot of
AI companies that are seeking to work with influencers, specifically
young female lifestyle influencers.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
I thought it was so interesting that it was read
sorry Reese, because sorry, because I had written this about
the girl bossification of Crypto, and it was Reese Witherspoon,
Gwyneth Paltrow Mila Kunis who were also doing you know,
(40:35):
uh like groups of women talking about n f T
s and how you really really really need to get
on board. And I mean, I feel very differently about
this current wave of technology, and I do think, like,
you know, the way that it's being pushed you, you
will suffer economically if you don't know how to utilize
(40:56):
the technology it's being you know, implemented everywhere. But I
just think it's really really interesting that it is the
same set of women, you know, as we know, like
their representatives at CIA and other agencies. You know, they're
also looking at AI and how to implement it. And
I'm sure also looking at these partnerships that are that
(41:19):
the companies are are embarking with. It's so funny because
we analyze those like terrible Super Bowl ads all the time.
But Anthropic has a very good relationship with AI influencers
and a number of women. If you look at like,
you know, partner with Claude, the people who come up
are often women.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
I'm desperate to hear here, they've been doing a good job.
The curtain raised on these influence that dinner is hosted
by Anthropic, Like what's the what's the vibe, Like what
happens is it like a kind of like there's a demonstration,
is actually like using the technology practically? It is more
like kind of permeating the idea about AI through culture,
like what happens at the or it just literally get together.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Who's been to one?
Speaker 4 (41:57):
I have certainly not been invited to one. I don't
think they're inviting journalists to these things, but but they
you know, they seem to be like pretty popular. One
substack influencer this week, who's known for covering sort of
like fashion lifestyle business, wrote a substack post I got
invited to Claude's first ever supper club, and she writes,
(42:19):
you know, about the experience in her substack. So I
do think it's like become this clout thing. You'll see
a lot of like overhead shots of the menus, and
it all looks very aesthetic, very clawed and and sort
of like elevated.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
It's interesting that you wrote the globalsification of Crypto piece
and attachment to Taylor's written written this piece. I'm curious
if there's anything's any it was all similarities or if
there's any differences.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
No, I think it's extremely similar. You know, we also
saw uh uh frustration with the lack of adoption from
women around crypto and you know, this was also I
think around the time when the super Power were happening,
so they had you know a number of political goals,
(43:04):
you know, bills that they wanted to pass in Washington.
I will say though, that AI companion apps like character
AI and some of those other ones that like young
people use to chat with, you know, oftentimes like anime
characters or like different user generated versions of characters they like,
that had huge adoption from young women and women of
(43:27):
all ages. Like I don't you know the data, the
exact data is really hard to find. But when I
had talked to Sensor Tower about character AI, like I
think it was December twenty twenty four, it was like
seventy percent women compared to Claude, which was like you
know Claude and Open AI and chat ept where where
(43:48):
the difference was kind of in the opposite way. So
I do think, you know, part of it is just
the executives being a little bit divorced from how their
technology is being used by real people. Uh And yeah,
now they can't kind of they can't let that knowledge
(44:09):
gap continue. They have to figure it out and pressure
the demographics to their favor.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
There was a there was a story that you just
reminded me of this, Natasha. Like a couple of years ago,
I wrote this story about one of these not character
ab but it was called janitor Ai, which is I, oh, yeah,
I know what that name is all about. But someone
gave me a tip that Martin Screlly, you know, the
farmer bro was like invested in this company called janeited
Ai and it was not safe for work chatbots, and
(44:38):
I'm like, oh god, this is like too good not
to write. So I like look into it and I
was just expecting I don't know what I was expecting,
but something really rauchy and mostly guys. And it was
like you said, it was like all these people I
talked to were all women. They're like young women who
were like, you know, inventing these sort of these kind
of like romantic partner chat bots. And they would do
(45:00):
it together like as a group. They'd event like a
character and then have conversations. But then it was really
opened my eyes to the whole to the whole thing.
So I think you're right, like it seems like there
are corners of it where it's actually more women than men. Granular.
Speaker 3 (45:16):
Yeah, and I think like even early adopters, like a
lot of social media managers, Uh, we were pretty quick
to adopt this stuff. Like if you looked on TikTok.
I think it's just like the executives are always looking
on Twitter. You know, they're very ex pilled. Also, channit
Ai continues to be like super super popular.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
It is.
Speaker 3 (45:37):
I would say, like a lot of the companion apps
are just as explicit. Uh, but yeah, it's all these
you know, it's kind of like fan fiction, interactive fan fiction.
Is I think how they like why it has developed
this a similar audience.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Tyler, what was the kind of main takeaway of your piece?
Speaker 4 (45:57):
Just that like kind of like Natasha said, I mean,
women are this like highly relevant audience. I saw some
pushback on Twitter. People were like, no one ever had
to sell women on cell phones or sell women on
the internet, which is hilarious because there was so much
mass marketing to women to get, you know, to adopt
cell phones. Cell Phones were initially seen as this kind
(46:19):
of corporate thing that like business people would have. They
were clunky and expensive, and then of course you had Nokia,
you had all these companies redesigning, you had the Charlie's Angels,
you know, Raiser Special so and same thing with the Internet.
There was this aggressive effort to show women that like, hey,
there's value. Come here for parenting advice, come here for cooking,
you know, all these sort of traditionally female coded purposes.
(46:41):
And I think you're seeing that with the I I
think that the tech industry has unfortunately cried Wolf a
little bit. As Natasha said, So, I think a lot
of women, you know, are seeing this and being like, oh, what, well,
I just learned about crypto and NFTs and that was nothing.
So I'm just going to kind of ignore this AI thing.
And as Natasha said, and I agree, like that's a
each mistake because this is not They have a lot
(47:03):
of bs, but this is not it.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
None of you are very entertained by my wolf story
at the beginning. But I think I've been sent to
in on the list.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
I think there's a lot of crying, crying Wolf's going on,
and I that, yeah, there's we could we could talk
about that all day. But I I was just surprised,
I really surprised how hard it is for people to
kind of like just look at a technology for what
it is as opposed to like the messenger. It's like, well, well,
I Silicon Valley brought us crypto, and therefore everything Silicon
(47:32):
Valley brings us is like a useless scam. It's like
I wasn't into like NFTs, like I was this is
stupid now, but I'm totally into AI because it can
save me a lot of time. It's like, why, well,
why is that so hard for people?
Speaker 5 (47:45):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (47:45):
I would not. I think that the average consumer is
a lot smarter than that you were given. I mean,
the way that they marketed these chatbots is very unique.
You know, they weren't saying here is a way to
save time. They were saying, here is you know, like
the stepping stone to AGI, and you figure it out,
You figure out what the use case is, and you know,
(48:06):
devote your weekend to reading up on this, watching a
bunch of YouTube videos, you know, figuring out how to optimize.
Like the idea that you know, like moms or women
need to save time and have a more efficient approach
to their online life is so obvious, and it wasn't
as though anybody was pushing that use case or making
(48:28):
it simple or accessible. So I don't think it's like
oh these crypto people. I think it is once again
a technology where the where the implication for your everyday
life was not made clear to people.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
And you know, but I also disagree that you have
to that if you're like falling behind, like the point
that Reese was saying this idea that oh my god,
you should be freaking out because you're going to fall behind, Like,
you know, I think, I think this stuff is great.
I love playing around with it. But at the same time,
like it's just getting easier and easier to use. This
(49:05):
isn't like DOS or something like you don't have to
learn that much like you literally download you know, codex
on your computer and just tell it to make something
for you and it just does it. Like it's not
this is like the easiest technology to adopt and it
will just get easier. So I don't I just don't
think people should be fazing out.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
It's barely a product. I would not say it's the
easiest technology to adopt it. Yes, I agree the way
the way that the industry is pushing FOMO, like you
must react to the latest, you know, the latest release
is completely false. But I will say, just like talking
to a number of tech workers who are not in
you know, who are working in marketing, who are working
(49:45):
in trust and safety in other fields, if you take
any time off or you go for a new job,
the way that they the way that HR talks to
you about like are you are you up on the
latest thing? Like can you code? Like do you know?
Like you you know? This is this is why, Like
this is technology for the bosses and they have pushed
this fear down through through the ranks. So if you can't,
(50:10):
like it's almost worth it just to learn the lingo
and make people feel assured that you can, you know,
play along with the latest. But this is like people
are being asked this in roles where it is not urgent,
not relevant, where you could wait until they have a product.
Speaker 1 (50:27):
But by the way, I had a conversation with Ali Islami,
who's one of the senior distinguished research or at deep
Mind last week in London on the stage of the
Royal Institution, which is actually quite a cool experience where
they dissected mummies in eighteen twenty one and discovered sodium.
But he said that you know, basically as an AI researcher.
Every week you're interacting with a different AI, Like it's
(50:50):
changing so fast. So he's not a booster, he's not
in the marketing team, and he's genuinely saying like the
experience of my life is to observe and try and
figure out this things. So I totally agree with you, Tasha.
There is this like bosses absurd, like Foamo driven, Like
if you were you know, if you were if you
didn't spend your weekend trying to make an open tooll,
you know, you should rethink about whether you you know
(51:12):
you're the right fit for this organization. On the other hand,
like it just it's also just they fact show true
that this thing is changing so fast that if you
don't keep up with it, you're not up with it.
So it's kind of an interesting thing.
Speaker 2 (51:23):
Yeah, but like, yeah, of course the guy deep mind
has to be that's his job, Like he has to
be up on all this stuff. I'm surprised. Honestly, I
went to this is like off the record, so I'll
be vague about it, but like I went to this
thing yesterday where a bunch of journalists were getting taught
how to use a tool an AI tool, and I
was like, I'm gonna be like the most behind person here,
(51:45):
Like these are all like young journalists who like don't
have kids, a lot of them, and they're and they're
covering AI like they're going to be doing all this
crazy stuff, and I'm gonna be like this dumb dad
who's like, well, I made a school dashboard, and I
like I was one of the only people even downloaded
this stuff on my computer.
Speaker 1 (52:02):
Like I'm like, because you are you would actually actually
be looking for ways to save times.
Speaker 2 (52:07):
Yes, exactly, No, But I mean, honestly it's my job too,
like I have to I write about AI and technology,
like I have to know how to at least I
have to at least try this stuff as much as
I can. And it's like, I mean, I can't afford
to token max and spend six figures a you know,
a week on tokens, but like, you know, I should
at least be somewhat familiar with this, and like people
(52:29):
just aren't. And I but I honestly don't think it's
like it's I think it is easy to use, Like
I've used technology my whole life, have had to like
go through all these different technology waves. This is like
the easiest one to use because it's like, what are
you talking about?
Speaker 3 (52:44):
You could wait, you could wait, like they could have
waited to launch until it was like push a button
to make a website, you know, push up.
Speaker 2 (52:52):
But that is what happens now. It's like not even
push a button, like just talk.
Speaker 3 (52:57):
I don't think that the way that it's marketed, the
way that interface it like they're still bringing in consumer product.
People share your theory.
Speaker 2 (53:08):
This is my conspiracy theory and why it's my unproven,
no evidence conspiracy theory for why they are not marketing
it because if they did, if they marketed it in
the right way there, they wouldn't have enough tokens, like
you can't. There's not enough infrastructure to have everyone on
the planet building their very own user interface for their life.
(53:29):
That takes like however many tokens, so.
Speaker 1 (53:32):
Reach theories, the spoils go to the vanguard. Natasha disagrees,
that's all we have time for this week, and it's
actually more than Taylor had time for, which's why you
haven't heard her voice for the last couple of minutes.
She had to had to drop out just to close
the best week in Tech, Worst week in Tech, we
talked about crypto crying Wolf. My my worst week in
(53:53):
tech goes to SBF whose whose request for a new
trial was dismissed. Best week maybe Semaphore with the announcement
of the Silicon Valley and the World event in November, Reid.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
I can't argue with that. I think we definitely, I
think we definitely had the best speak of tech. I
think we're looking forward to, you know, a very special event.
So thank you for blagging that. And if you're interested
in coming, let me know if you're a you know,
if you're a global world leader ahead of State.
Speaker 3 (54:23):
I was going to say as having the best weekend
tech because he was, I guess, the coolest dad at
this event. They need women. I wasn't invited.
Speaker 5 (54:31):
What the fuck?
Speaker 2 (54:32):
There are a lot of women there. You should definitely.
I will talk to you all the time and get
you invited to the next thing. But honestly, you're probably
way too advanced for it. But you know, hopefully the
next one will be more advanced. Natasha, anyone else with
the worst we.
Speaker 3 (54:47):
Can take Manis or Meta.
Speaker 2 (54:50):
Oh god, that's a really good one. That's a really
manis is. Yeah, we'll be right. Yeah, I mean, manis
got The Chinese government was like, we're not going to
let you. Well, I don't really know how this works.
They're like, we're not going to let you be acquired
by Meta, but like apparently the money's already been wired,
like it's already like it's already happened. So I just
(55:11):
it's like basically, I think some of the founders just
can't leave China. Is the is the end result, but
it's more of like a it's more of a chilling effect,
Like I don't think there's all these Chinese companies that
have like moved to Singapore in hopes of getting some
kind of exit or access to the Western markets, and
like it's just not going to happen.
Speaker 3 (55:30):
I think, yeah, I think exactly a chilling effect to
close this loophole, and like, uh, you know, saber rattling
for any other Chinese AI startups that want to get
acquired by US companies. So like the mechanics of this
particular deal are rest less relevant than just like oh
you know that the Chinese government might go after you
(55:50):
even if you're based in Singapore, Hong Kong or or
the deal's already closed.
Speaker 2 (55:57):
What's interesting is like the child's like, you saw this
with the H two hundreds, with US selling H two hundreds,
and then China's like, well, no, we're not even gonna
let our companies by the H two hundreds. And it's
this constant back and forth of like, oh, I'm I'm
gonna cut you off and no, I'm cutting you off first,
and it's just like these markets are so despite what
(56:18):
I think. There was some rumblings of like, oh, maybe
that maybe things are loosening up a little bit, but
it's clearly just not happening. I mean, these markets are
totally separate, and you know will be for some time.
Speaker 1 (56:33):
For text stuff. I'm as vlos in. This episode was
produced by Eliza Dennis and Melissa Slaughter. Executive produced by
me Julian Nutta and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrin
Novel for I Help Podcasts. Jack Insley mixed this episode
and Kyle mudop Rodot theme song, but he phraseder engineered
this session. Special thank you to Natasha Tiku, Read al
(56:53):
Bergotti and Taylor Renz. Please check out all their excellent work.
Thank you
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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