April 18, 2025 • 42 mins
How would Salvador Dalí have used generative AI? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and Karah dig into this year’s most common uses for generative AI, the rise of code editor, Cursor, and how Google DeepMind’s Veo2 interprets a surrealist screenplay. On TechSupport, The Washington Post’s staff writer, Naomi Nix, discusses the first week of Meta’s antitrust trial.
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of iHeart Podcasts and Kaleidoscope.
I'm as Valoshian and today Cara Price and I will
bring you the headlines this week, including some surprisingly rapid
changes in the way people are using generative AI. Then
on tech Support, we'll talk to the Washington Posts Naomi
Nix about the first week of the Meta antitrust trial.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
This latest trial is a Now they're a piece of
evidence that the companies haven't yet, to put it crudely,
gotten what they've paid for.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
All of that. On the Weekend Tech It's Friday, April eighteenth,
Hello us, Hello Cara.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
So I was thinking about you this week. I was
seeing something Oliver Instagram, which is my preferred social media platform.
Your preferred social media platform has nothing to do with socializing.
It's called Lincoln.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Well, maybe you're too old for TikTok and I'm too
old for Instagram. So yes, LinkedIn is my absolutely.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Right, at least you're not using Facebook. So on this
I saw action figures. Yeah, that looked a lot like
my friends, like my friend who works at Tory Birch.
There was like there was an action figure of like
a jewel and an iced coffee and a Tory Birch handbag.
In a weird way, I've looked at it as a
sort of LinkedIn's own version of the Jibbli portraits that
(01:29):
we talked about a few weeks ago. You know, to
make these, you upload a picture of yourself to chat
GBT and prompt the model to turn you into a
picture of a toy action figure.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Imagine going into a toy store in nineteen eighty four
and you have plastic packed action figurines like could be
a Bobbie, could be a Gi Joe with some special
swag that the character has which reflects on who the
character is.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Yeah, and I think in a weird way, it sort
of acts as this like pictorial resume of like this
is who I like. I am podcast fundraiser, I have
jim bag, I have a six sneakers.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
What are you talking about?
Speaker 3 (02:07):
I am here asking for some money. I don't know
what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Do you know what's very interesting? I used to work
for a branding agency. I know that you know that,
and our business cards were a pictorial representation of us
and then a few representations of things that were important
to us. So I had like a British flag and
like a tennis racking or.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Whatever one visa on visa.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Exactly, you know. And there was like kind of a
talking point at the beginning of the meeting and this
is kind of the LinkedIn meets chatchybt version of that,
and it's going completely viral.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
It's going completely viral and people love. I don't know
if it's uncanny. I think it is uncanny Valley, like
people love to see themselves represented in an animated format
because it's sort of like the last frontier of like
reality turned into surreality one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
I'm sure you've seen The Real Housewives as Pixar characters,
which is so good.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Which they're starting to look like anyway with all the
filters that you can use to post them on Instagram.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
But you know what this is what is driving something
extraordinary that happened, which is that CHATGPT excluding games, became
the most downloaded app in the world last month.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Yeah, and actually at last week's TED conference, Sam Altman
let slip that the usage of chat gbt had doubled
in just a few weeks, indicating it now has eight
hundred million weekly active users.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yeah, I mean, it is an extraordinary number, and I
think you use the word indicating advisedly because he said
it was about ten percent of the world's population. You know,
at the beginning of this year, we were talking about
would the business model for these charative ami companies ever work.
There's a story in Information this week that the revenues
at OpenAI are picking up dramatically. They've grown thirty percent
(03:53):
so far this year, So that's in one quarter to
around four hundred and fifteen million dollars per month in revenue.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Which is very interesting for a company that built itself
as a non brop no. But in some ways, I'm
not surprised because it feels like there's a new use
case for chat GBT every week. I'm more invested in
it every week, and so I am sort of always
interested when I see the data reflected in my own personal.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Use I mean, you get hooked on, oh my god,
what would my family photo look like as a Pixar movie?
And then it's like, huh, you know, I what if
I put this legal contract through chat GPT and asked
it to advise me on what were the key points
I should be paying attention to, which I did for
the first time last week after I used the image
generation feature. So I mean, it's a remarkable moment where
(04:40):
I think a true consumer adoption is creating the business model,
or could be beginning to create the business model, which
is a question some people had, would that ever really
actually happen? But we are not the only people observing
what's happening. There was something actually fascinating I read last
week in the Harvard Business Review that might shock you.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
So tell me about something fat fascinating that you actually
were able to find in the Harvard Business Review.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Well, the article was about AI use cases, and according
to Harvard Business Review, the most common reason for generative
AI usage over the last twelve months was therapy and companionship.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
It's actually very funny you say this, and this is
not a setup. I've actually met a woman the other
day who told me she'd created her own therapy bot,
calling it a GPT. And I've been seeing a ton
of stuff about using AI models for therapy everywhere, and
I was honestly starting to wonder if all these articles
on AI relationships were a bit blown out of proportion,
(05:39):
But it seems to be a very real trend.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Well, you've taken endorsement after slamming me for being fascinated
by the Harvard Business Review, You've been swayed by their
validation of your worldview.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Judge where information comes from unless it's the Harvard Business Review.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
So this is a study and the methodology is quite interesting.
Some might question it, but I thought it was interesting.
They're basically a tool to scrape online forums like primarily
Reddit but also kra and a few others that scrape
for every single mention of how people are using AI,
categorize them and then counted the number of posts about
(06:14):
each use case, you know, filtering out the garbage and
whatever else, to come up with the stat rank of
the top one hundred use cases that people are talking
about how they use AI.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
And so Reddit really is the treasure trove of this discovery.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
I think it is, and I think you know there's
a reason why is because people post without using their
real names in a very unfiltered way on Reddit, and
so I think as a proxy for how people are
using technology, you could do a lot worse than Reddit.
And in fact, I also read in the Harvard Business
Review that today ten percent of reddits revenues actually come
from selling its user generated content as training data to llms,
(06:50):
so you know that there is.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Just like our friends of the Atlanta though there's.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Gold in them hills. This is actually the second time
this study has been published in the Harvard Business Review.
It's published in twenty twenty five as well. What I
found really really interesting was what change from twenty twenty
four to twenty twenty five. Thirty eight new use cases
have been added to the list, and last year's top
use case was generating ideas, which has now fallen down
(07:15):
to sixth place. This year, the second and third most
popular use cases were new entrants to the list. They
weren't in the top hundred mentions last year and now
they're in second and third place. They were organizing my life,
followed by finding purpose.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
You know, I think this speaks to something which is
that people are lonely, and people don't know how to
talk to other real people about these things. And I think,
sort of like tinders the game game right that we
did last week, it's much easier to kind of test
these very human interactions on computers.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Absolutely or in a computer no judgment judgment free zone.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
The other thing that I would mention is that regular
therapy the kind that you have with the human therapist
will put your bank account into negative numbers, absolutely, And
so you may not want to constantly burden your friends
with your issues and be the carry Bradshaw in your
friend group. And so I can see why a person
would turn to AI to help them through a hard time.
(08:15):
I actually don't judge it at all.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
No, no, me neither. But on the contrary, I mean,
I think what the HBr sort of pointed out as
the kind of larger takeaway in the twenty twenty four
versus twenty twenty five comparison was that in twenty twenty four,
the most popular use cases were all around quote unquote
technical assistance and troubleshooting, whereas this year they're in quote
unquote personal and professional support, which kind of mirrors what
(08:41):
we were talking about just a few minutes ago, which
is how AI has become more ubiquitous and therefore like
normal people are using it for more normal reasons.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
I think, more ubiquitous and also like imbued with our
own humanity as opposed to like a place where we
find how do I fix this thing?
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Right?
Speaker 3 (08:58):
I think it's changed from how do I fix this thing? Too?
How do I fix myself, which to me is both
a little bit scary and also a little bit exciting.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Absolutely, there is one really important exception to what we've
been talking about just now, which is that two use cases,
firstly generating code and secondly improving code, both had meteoric rises.
So generating code was down in lowly forty seventh place
on last year's list, is now in fifth place. And
(09:27):
that brings me to my next headline, which is by Bloomberg.
Under the headline AI Coding Assistant, Cursor draws a million
users without even trying. So there's a hot new AI
start up in town, one that you've probably never heard of,
because I hadn't heard of it either until now. Its
Bloomberg story. But also they don't advertise or market. Bloomberg
(09:47):
reports that Cursor hasn't spent a single dollar on paid marketing.
The startup behind it is any Sphere, Inc. And they
make this AI powered coding editor called Cursor.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Yeah, it's this popular tool for both formally trained computer
programs and this thing that I love, Vibe coders. A
coding editor, from what I understand, is a program that
does things like check your code for errors. Think of
it like spell check for coding, and then on top
of that, more recent AI coders like Cursor can also
(10:17):
suggest lines of code for you based on what you've
previously written.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
So Gen one is like spell check and Gen two
is shifted response for emails.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Exactly, And that's what vibe coding actually is. You just
like accept all of the suggestions versus having to correct
your code, sort of like writing a whole email and autocomplete,
which I do when I send an email says thank you, Comma,
Jennifer exclamation point. That is an email that's written entirely
by autocomplete. And just to be clear, as of today,
vibe coding does not generate code at the level of
(10:47):
real coding.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Nonetheless, Cursor has quietly become one of the fastest growing
startups of all time. It's even used by programmers at
companies like OpenAI, Instacra, and Uber. Although most of the
revenue you comes from individuals people using it and not
using it through corporate descriptions. They're getting their own subscription
to help them with their work. As it turns out,
(11:08):
coders are wanting to pay cash for a good user
interface and adaptability. The passion is real for the product
back In January, any Sphere reached one hundred million in
annual recurring revenue. By March that number of doubled and
over a million people are now using Cursor every single day.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
I mean, we've talked about this many, many times that
there's a lot of anxiety about AI replacing people's jobs.
Cursor is actually interesting because it's being used to help
people with their jobs. It's a productivity tool, and it's
what these AI companies have been parroting all along.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
It's an interesting paradigm thing here where it's not like
here's a new product to make your redundant. It's like,
here's a new product that makes you better so much
so that you pay your own money to use it
to make you better at your job. I mean that
is I think, sort of a high watermark for what
we can hope for from AI use cases.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Yeah, and it's actually a concept that investors are falling
in love with. Any Sphere, which is, as we said,
the parent company has raised one hundred and seventy five
million dollars in the likes of Andrees and Horowitz as
well as one of open AI's co founders, among many others.
Any Spheres and talks to raise more money at evaluation
of nearly ten billion.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Yeah, I mean it's very competitive space. Open AI and
Anthropic both seem to be eyeing the arena for their
own AI for coding tools, but nothing beats user adoption.
So we'll see how this story unfolds. The CURSA. We're
going to take a quick break now. When we come back,
carasches a rather surreal headline. Stay with us.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
So as we're back, and I'm warning you that our
next story is something that you're really gonna love.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Okay, tell me. So.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Google has a generative video model called VO two, and
the way it works is you type in a prompt
or feed it some media like an image, and VO
two will generate a video based on these materials. So
late last year, Google announced that they were launching a
new version of the model, which includes a better grasp
of physics and more quote nuances of human movement and expression.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
When a tech company tries to capture the nuance of humanity,
it's always you always know there's going to be some
excitements in store, yet.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
They still try to do it. The news is that
Google recently showed off the updated VO two at the
Google Cloud next conference, which we were not invited.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Two our invitations must have got lost in the mail.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
And maybe they could have made a bigger splash if
they invited us. But they did want to make a splash,
so they decided to appeal to both you and the
art community.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
High risk bet the art community and not notoriously such
big fans of the big tech world.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Are you going to ask me what they show?
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Yes? What did they show?
Speaker 3 (13:54):
So they showed a trailer based on Salvador Dolly's unmade screenplay.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Salvador Dolly's unmade screenplay? What's that about?
Speaker 3 (14:02):
So let me set the scene. I was not there,
but it's nineteen thirty seven. You're Salvador Dolly, you're in
your early thirties, you're my age, and you were hanging
out with Harpo Marx, one of the Marx brothers, who
I adore.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
This is a great collection of characters, and it's like,
you can make it up that these people were hanging
out together and thinking how do we make a movie?
Speaker 3 (14:22):
And my favorite character, who's of course the naysayer, also
factors into this. So you, as Dolly, write a fantastical
screenplay for the Marx brothers to star in. But when
you bring it to MGM, Louis B. Mayor of MGM
kills the project and the screenplay is never realized as
a film.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Was there a reason for spiking it?
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Well, in a world where now tent pole films are
very important, and then being able to sell a film
was very important. Pitching a film called Giraffes on Horseback
Salad is not exactly something that they think jumps off
the screen.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
The biting Dali and the Marx brothers hands off for
this one.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
They weren't umping at the salad fit for I'm sorry,
I couldn't help myself. But the movie itself was a
kind of broadly about an aristocratic man who falls in
love with a woman from a world where dreams are reality,
and it's so surreal it was likely unfilmable at the time.
The other important piece I think that kind of made
me laugh is that some of the Marx brothers like
(15:21):
didn't even think it was funny.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
They were like, eh, so it never got made, no until.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Now, until now, Google is trying to at least right now,
it's just a trailer because this is a big feat. Uh,
it's a trailer that is produced by the Dolli Museum
and Gooldbee Silverstein and partners. And I'm gonna play you
just a little sample of the trailer, and then you're
gonna tell me if you think this is true to
one of your I don't know if he's one of
your favorite artists, but you do like him Catalan culture.
(15:48):
So let's see.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Let me tell you how the strangest movie never made
the world wasn't ready for into No.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
I called it.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Horseback Solid. Prepare yourself because the impossible is coming to life.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Tell me a little bit about what you saw.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Well, there's a giraffe on fire. There is obviously Salvador
Daly's voice recreated. It does have the kind of vibe
of a movie trailer. However, the esthetic is one that
I think would make Salvador Dahi personally turn in his grave,
because it is basically what you might imagine one of
(16:36):
the camps at Burning Man might reinterpret Salvador Dali through
the lens of It is so on the nose quote
unquote surrealist, with people wearing like funny hats.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
It looks like clouds people on fire.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
It's got a very Burning Man vibe.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
It also has a very google commercial vibe, yes, which
I think isn't the greatest thing ever, But yeah, I
think fever dream is how I describe it. And actually,
as you said, the narration is supposed to be Salvador,
there's enough of his audience.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Does he actually sound like that? Who knows? Did we
did in fact shake his voice?
Speaker 3 (17:11):
We did? I did listen to it. Well, I did
listen to him on radio program a little bit later,
and he does sound a little bit like you know,
But I always think about him twirling his.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Mustache actually character in Rettaitui.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
There's no evidence to me that this is exactly what
Salvador Dolly sounds like. But I think they definitely tried
to recreate his voice, which we know by now is
like what.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
They tried to do it. They probably did do it. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
According to Art News, this isn't the first time that
there's actually been an AI generated Dolly. The same Dolly
museum who's co producing this movie, actually had an exhibition
called Ask Dolly that allowed museum goers to talk to him,
meaning to talk to an AI created based on his voice.
At the time. The museum COO said that if these
(17:57):
technologies had been around when Dolly was alive, he would
have played around with them.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
My take was, it's not horrible, but it's pretty horrible.
And I don't disagree that Darli would have played around
with AI tools if he were around today, but I
don't think he would have used them like this. I mean,
the whole point of Dahali as a painter was that
he made the medium new. He basically reinvented the media
of paintings through his incredibly interesting and unforgettable serialus take.
(18:26):
So I think if he did use Jennet of AI tools,
he would come't with the considerably more interesting application than this,
which ultimately feels a bit druotism. You would imagine if
an artist like Darli used Jenet AI, he would have
done so to critique or to push the medium forward,
or to make us really think, versus to kind of,
you know.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Make a gimmick, make a gimmick. Yeah, that's very true.
Can we run through the rest of the headlines?
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Yes? And can you start yes? So Ours Technica reports
that Nvidia is producing AI chips for the first time
outside of Taiwan. Blackwell chip and are now being made
at TSMC. That's the Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company at their
plant in Phoenix, Arizona, and other companies in the state
(19:10):
will test and package these chips. Nvidia also announced that
they plan to build complete supercomputers on us soil, and
their reports of the promise of up to five hundred
billion dollars of investment in us AI infrastructure having been
agreed to at a dinner between Jensen Huang and you
know who recently at Mari Lago. In return, Kwang reportedly
(19:33):
hoped to avoid yet more stringent export controls on chips
to China, but seemly that hope has not materialized.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
I do wonder what's going to happen there, so please
keep me posted. I also do wonder if the food
is good at mar Laga.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Yeah, I bet it's old school.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Well, it's food that has to benefit a discussion about semiconductors,
so it can't stand out too much. So if you
are a big enough nerd to be covetous of Sam's
Sung technology, but you're loyal to the Apple ecosystems, it's
a very it's slender. There may be a phone for you.
(20:09):
Nine to five Mac reports that there are rumors of
and this is very mind blowing a foldable iPhone, which
has been dubbed very surprisingly the iPhone fold be like
I need the fold pro. I have to say this,
and I hope it's not too embarrassing. If I do
(20:30):
get this, I will be walking around saying my iPhone,
don't jiggle, jiggle it folds.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
But no.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
According to the one report, the rumored phone may look
like a normal iPhone but expands to roughly the size
of an iPad Mini when unfolded to its full size.
It also might feature a touch ID enabled power button.
The most important thing in the reporting here is that
I plan to use it as a picnic blanket in
Central Park if it ever does come to fruition and
(20:58):
does an overheat. I hate an overheated phone.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Yeah. You have to wonder what this one is. Is it
really going to come out or is it gonna be
another one of these Apple projects. Since Steve Jobs, may
he rest in peace, past that have never seen the
light of day.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
And speaking of Dolly rolling over in his grave, this
is the stone pillow in Steve Jobs's grave.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
I always like to talk about tech stories that inspire
me and capture my imagination, and there was a report
in the Washington Post this week about scientists who have
been using technology to uncover the remains of past civilizations
in the Amazon. So, this team of archaeologists in South
America is using lidar or light detection and ranging, which
(21:40):
is basically a laser sensor that can see through dense
forests from above, either with planes or drones to find
hidden structures beneath the canopy. You know, you don't need
to be Indiana Jones anymore. You can just fly drones.
The team has found a lost Portuguese colony ceramics made
by an indigenous society. And what I find particularly cool
(22:01):
here is that these findings are being used to protect
the rainforest from clearing and logging. You can't protect the
rainforest on its own term, sadly, but if it has
archaeologically significant ruins beneath, it turns out you can.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
Finally, if you live in Silicon Valley, you may have
heard eerily familiar voices when crossing this I'm obsessed with
this story. While crossing the street last weekend, Palo Alto
Online reports that some crosswalk buttons seem to have been hacked,
which is something I would notice immediately. I just wish
they were hacked by Almo. Some people cross the street
to the sound of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, who
(22:35):
I now call Mark x Infandel.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
So you press the button and rather than a walk
sign is on.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
It's like walk signs on. I don't know who. I
don't know if that was a Zuckerberg or an Elon Musk.
I can't really do a Musk impersonation, but some in
Silicon Valley heard an impression of Elon Musk welcoming them
to Palo Alto, while others heard fake Mark Zuckerberg say
it's normal to feel uncomfortable, even violated, as we forcefully
(23:01):
insert AI into every facet of your conscious experience. And
I just want to assure you you don't need to
worry because there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
I love this gorilla anti tech marketing campaign. I have
no idea how you hack a crosswalk light, but props
to these people.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
If there's any place it's going to happen, it's palle Alto.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
I like your Zach impression. Elizabeth Helmes reminds me of
one of the most iconic ever Zuckerberg moments, when he
was testifying before the Senate a few years ago and
was asked how Facebook's business works, to which he responded, well, ads,
Sir Mark Kackerberg back in the spotlight this week because
(23:42):
Meta is facing an anti trust trial brought by the Federal
Trade Commission, and Zackerberg has been on the stand this
week in Washington. Naomi Nicks of the Washington Post has
more on the trial when we come back, stay with us, So, Carot,
(24:12):
it seems like every week that we make this show,
there are headlines we cover, and then there's a kind
of the headline that kind of emerges as the biggest
story of the week.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Right last week was tiff Mania, which is the gift
that keeps giving.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
And this week it's Meta's day in court, or rather
many weeks in court. And the trial's actually been nearly
five years in the making.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
It's been one of those news stories that's been like
in the back of my mind, like I will just
be going about my business and then say, oh wait,
did the government soon matter? What happened to that?
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Yeah? And it's also I mean when you and I
first started working on kind of tech journalism together in
twenty eighteen twenty nineteen, the ideas that the government would
ever effectively regulate technology companies was at best a fantasy
or a pipe dream, and now it seems to be
happening in real time, albeit slowly. And this also comes
(25:04):
at a time when people are questioning whether the judiciary
will continue to be, you know, a functioning pillar of government.
But right now, at least in the realm of business,
it sure is. Back In twenty twenty, the Federal Trade
Commission sued Meta, as you said, and if you recall,
Meta had previously purchased Instagram and WhatsApp in the years
(25:24):
leading up to this. The FTC argued that Meta had
acquired these companies specifically in order to strangle competition, which
is illegal under anti trust laws.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Yeah, the lastuit began on Monday in federal court, and
over the next many weeks, DC will be filled with
some star witnesses, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who took
the stand this week.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Hit Hops Understand how we got here and what's going
to come next? Is Naomi Nicks. She's a staff writer
at The Washington Post, where she covers social media companies,
particularly Meta. So Naomi, I can imagine this has been
an absolutely crazy week for you.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Yes, it's been very busy, but it's been very interesting.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
I can only imagine. But take us back to twenty
twenty when the FTC sued Meta and how this will begin.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
So remember at the time, there was a lot of
conversation among regulators about whether big tech companies had gotten
too big, right, whether they had stifled competition from upstarts,
whether they were prefacing their products over potential competitors, and
so a lot of big tech companies were sort of
wrapped up in that uproar and Meta was one of them.
(26:32):
And back then the FTC under the tail end of
Donald Trump's administration, sued Meta, challenging to break the company
up apart from Instagram and WhatsApp, and we've been sort
of locked into this anti trust battle ever since.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
So this is a continuation of that same case.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
It is.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
So what happened was the judge initially put out a
ruling that said, you know, I don't think the FTC
has given enough evidence to establish that there's really a
case here. And so when the Bide administration took over,
Amena Khan was chair of the FTC, the commission filed
an amended lawsuit and at that point the courts allowed
(27:16):
it to proceed, and you know, they said, look, I
think you now have established enough evidence that there is
a potential case that Meta has a monopoly and the
personal social networking market.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
So this is potentially bipartisan enforcement, which I want to
come back to. But just first off, as somebody who
hasn't been following this that closely, why were Meta allowed
to buy Instagram in twenty twelve and WhatsApp in twenty
fourteen and didn't the regulators in a sense like, isn't
this a case of building a stable after the horse
has gone? If they didn't block these transactions at the time.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
That's certainly a case in an argument that Meta has
been making. They're like, you know, one of the dangers,
they argue, is that what the message of the FTC
is sending to the general marketplace is that that no
merger is final. That after an anti trust regulator deems like, yeah,
you're allowed to buy that market, that a decade after
the fact, they can decide to change their minds. And
(28:10):
in some ways that is what's happening here. But I
do think the politics around anti trust law and the
conversation about whether the United States anti trust laws are
up to date with the current technology industry. Is one
of the reasons both Republican and Democratic nominated anti trust
regulators have been willing to take a chance in this case.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
So you've been in the courtroom the past few days.
What is the FTC's argument against Meta right now?
Speaker 2 (28:41):
They're making a couple of points. One is they're saying, look,
we actually think that Meta has a monopoly. And what
the FTC has decided is called a personal social networking
market that's mostly relying a market of tech pokforms that
are designed to facilitate person communication among your friends and families.
(29:02):
And so what the FTC is saying is they actually
think that Meta's next biggest competitor is Snapchat. They don't
include TikTok in that, they don't include YouTube, in that
they don't include x in that they're saying that Meta
has a monopoly in that market. And they're saying that
the company acted anti competitively when it bought WhatsApp and Instagram.
(29:24):
And they rely on a lot of internal emails to
suggest that the goal that Mark Zuckerberg had at the
time wasn't necessarily to improve Instagram or to help users
have more choice in the social media market, but to
neutralize a potential competitor. And they're saying that all those
actions have hurt consumers, that if Meta hadn't done these things,
(29:46):
that we as Internet users would have more vibrant social
media options at our disposal.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
What is Meta's counter argument here?
Speaker 2 (29:54):
They say that the FTC misses the mark when it
defines the marketplace, that they're not just competing agains Snapchat,
that they are competing against TikTok and YouTube and all
these other Internet platforms, and that that ecosystem is robust
and vibrant.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
The attention economy, so to speak.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. You know, Mark Zuckerberg earlier sort
of talked to the court about how when TikTok was rising,
the company really had to double down and introduce its
own product called Instagram Reels, right, and that that has
been a competitive space for the company ever since. As
a piece of evidence to show that like this industry
(30:34):
is quite thriving.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Now without getting to inside baseball, I mean, the history
of antitrust in the last few years before Lee Na
Khan came in as the FTC chair under President Biden
was basically all around consumer price like harm was defined
as consumers having to pay more because of monopoly. However,
meta services are free. And I think one of the
(30:57):
interesting things here is the FTC d position visa via
the tech industry was considered to be a big reason
why the tech industry broke for Trump so dramatically in
the most recent election. So there's a kind of irony
here around the kind of the FTC's theory of the
case being so consistent with how the lots of administration
viewed regulating monopolies. Can you speak a little bit about.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
That, Yeah, I mean it's interesting. There's both sort of
a political element here and a legal element. It is
true that, like the courts have traditionally relied on price
as a measure of harm, and what they're doing here
is kind of novel. They're saying, actually, we think harm
can be measured in the fact that, you know, meta
maybe didn't improve users' privacy. You know, what are the
(31:40):
points they've made in their opening arguments. Was like after
Cambridge Analytica, consumers were really unhappy with Facebook and yet
they still used it, which means they didn't have enough options.
But I think there is a political element here. To
your point, which is the tech companies and Meta. Mark
Zuckerberg in particular made a big bet on Trump right
(32:01):
in the election, and you know we've reported and other
news outlets have reported that, you know, he went to
the White House in hopes to encourage the Trump administration
to encourage the FTC to resolve the lawsuit before a trial,
but was ultimately unsuccessful. In order to drive this point home,
remember back to when Trump was first elected in twenty sixteen,
(32:21):
how the tech industry reacted then, right like we saw
them come together and form forward the Immigration Reform Organization.
There was really this sort of groundswell of activity by
the tech industry both workerwed but also CEO led to
be willing to kind of stand the ground in the
face of potential attacks from the Trump administration. And this
(32:45):
time around we saw much different tone. Right, So, Mark
Zuckerberg called Trump a badass during the campaign over how
he handled the shooting attempt on his life. The company
gave a million dollars to the inauguration committee, he dined
with Trump, and then I think in January he backed
up that rhetoric with a lot of policy. They scrapped
the fact checking program, the NDDI programs. He said in
(33:09):
a video that they were hoping to partner with the
Trump administration to go after international regulators who are introducing
what he terms was like onerous regulations. And so the
tone has been really, really remarkably positive and has attracted
some compliments from Trump allies and Trump himself, But the
(33:32):
compliments only go so far. What the company obviously wants
is regulations to change, and so that so far hasn't
been an outcome of this olive branch from Mark Zuckerberg
and Meta. And I think this latest trial is another
piece of evidence that the companies haven't yet, to put
(33:52):
it crudely, gotten what they've paid for.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
So can you tell us a little bit about the
atmosphere in the courtroom this week? You know, we're taping middanday.
What have the first few days been like in the courtroom.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
Cara, sorry to jump on you, but also we all
saw the photo of Mark Zuckerberg arriving in what looked
like a presidential limousine and was in beast mode wearing
his own Meta ray bands, looking very much sho.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
I heard the success in theme music as he arrived
to the courtroom.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
It has been you know, on the point about Mark's look,
it's been interesting because he's had to look at videos
like talking about some of these mergers in the past,
and so you're seeing sort of like a new book,
you know, looking back in the old version of him.
But particularly I think on Tuesday, there was a really
heated exchange I think between the FTC lawyer and Mark Zuckerberg,
(34:45):
and we saw repeatedly the lawyer really tried to pin
Mark Zuckerberg down to essentially admit to some of the
reasonings that he weighed out in his emails at the
time for wanting to buy Instagram, you know, because the
reality is he does talk about it in those competitive terms.
Back then, Met at the time was trying to build
its own camera app and it wasn't going so well.
(35:09):
They were disappointed with the results of that program, and
so at the time, Mark is like, maybe we should
just like buy Instagram.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Right, I was going to say, in the scheme of things,
it's actually much better that they just spent a cool
billion dollars to have one of the most popular apps
in the app store.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Yeah, and it is also rapidly becoming their key to
retaining a really important audience, which is young people in
a way that Facebook is not.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
Can you talk a little bit more about some of
the other high profile cases against big tech that are
going on right now, Like where do these lawsuits stand?
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest example is Google, right,
you know there Right last year, a federal court century
ruled that the Justice Department was right to say that
Google violated in a trust clause because it had created
these sort of restrictive contracts with Apple and other device
makers to essentially require them to install Google as the
default search engine on their smartphones anyone. What the judge
(36:09):
said is like, you know, this prevented rivals from competing
on a level playing field. And so Google had argued, look, actually,
our search engine has lots of competition. People are looking
for information in lots of different places, whether it's on
Amazon and TikTok and Reddit other Internet you know search engines.
But essentially the judge ruled against him, and so where
(36:30):
we are now is we have to figure out like
what the remedy is to that anti trust violation. I think,
you know, one of the things that's a little bit
easier about that case in this case, which is it
probably was easier for the Justice Department to establish that
Google had maintained a monopoly in the search business in
a way that I think the discussion around what defines
(36:52):
social media and what defines the social media market for
meta is a little bit more fraught. But this is
like one of the biggest wins right for ntrust rigilators
against a big tech company in two decades since the
Microsoft case. And whether that will continue, whether the Justice
firement at FTC and in to circulators around the world
(37:14):
will be able to continue to rack up as an
open question.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
What I find is so personally fascinating about this story
is it has both the drama of the TikTok of
week by week politics and of courtroom testimony and stuff,
but it also exists in this kind of grander sweep
of the history of the twentieth century. I mean, you
had IBM subject to anti trust action in the sixties,
which led to them unbundling their hardware and software business,
(37:42):
which created a software marketplace, which in turn allowed Microsoft
to rise. Microsoft intern was subject to anti trust legislation
the late nineties early two thousands, which meant that they
couldn't force Internet Explorer down consumers throats who were using
Windows operating system. This in turn allowed Google to emerge,
and now Google and Meta are facing antitrust action of
(38:03):
their own. So I was wondering if you can kind
of reflect on where this sits in the history of
tech and government.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
I think at a time when the industry is really
focused on artificial intelligence and generative artificial intelligence, these cases
that are going on now really have the power to
kind of reset the competition among who's going to rise
and fall in this marketplace, Who's going to have the
ability to make the right deals, make the right mergers
(38:33):
in order to assume top place in the AI race,
which they all want to do. And I think it's
also unclear how a spinoff would affect the company right.
There was a really poignant moment on Tuesday in which
Mark Zuckerberg is being asked about an internal message he's
sent in twenty eighteen where he said, and I'm just
(38:53):
going to read the quote as calls to break up
the big tech companies grow, there is a non trivial
chance that we will be forced to spin out Instagram
and perhaps WhatsApp in the next five years. And he
later said, well, most companies resist these kinds of breakups,
companies actually performed better after they split up. And if
you think about it, people might have written Microsoft for
(39:15):
dead right years ago after their ANIHS battle. Is anyone
really saying that now? No, this is just one part
of that story.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
This is the first week of what might be a
two month trial, and we are nowhere near ruling. Just
in your opinion as somebody who is attending these things,
like what do we think could happen and what are
the things that you're looking out for.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
I think one thing I'm going to be really paying
attention to is how the judge asks questions about market size,
because I think the definition of the market is one
of the hardest parts that the FDC has to prove
that the market that Meta operates is this sort of
personal social networking market, and I'm not sure that the
(40:01):
tech industry has understood it that way, and certainly Meta
hasn't understood it that way. His own lawyer asked him
if he had even heard of that phrase before the
FTC's lawsuit.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
She said no.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
And so I think how the judge asks questions about
how the marketplace is structured and defined is like one
issue that I'm going to definitely be paying attention to
another thing is just like Honestly, these top executives that
were expected to hear from We're expecting to hear from
Cheryl Samdberg, We're expecting to hear from Instagram head Adam Masseri.
(40:34):
We might expect to hear from Zakoyo Capital and Google
and whatnot. And so I am very curious to see
how they talk about how they were thinking about these
mergers at the time. If there is some more relenting
from meta executives about their true motivations for making these purchases,
I think that'll be interesting to watch and then like
(40:57):
it's boring, But I think how THEUS talk about harm
and how users are harmed or not harmed, And it
feels like this game of like what if, right, what
if these mergers hadn't happened. What would have happened to Instagram?
Would it be as popular as like Snapchat is right now?
Or would it be an even bigger global industry threat.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
What's a fascinating moment, Naomi, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
That's it for this week for tech Stuff. I'm as
Valoshian and I'm Kara Price.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis and Victoria Domingez.
It was executive produced by me Oz Valosian and Kate
Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvel for iHeart Podcasts. The
Engineer is Bihied Frasier and Kyle Murdoch mixed this episode.
He also wrote our theme song.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Join us next Wednesday for tech stuff The Story when
we'll share an indepth conversation with the former editor of
The Financial Times, Lionel Barber about his book, Gambling Man.
It's all about the enigmatic founder of SoftBank mas Son,
and we'll also talk about Masayshi Son's relationships with Sam
Altman and the Stargate Project.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
Please rate, review, and reach out to us at tech
Stuff podcast at gmail dot com. We want to hear
from you.
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of iHeart Podcasts and Kaleidoscope.
I'm as Valoshian and today Cara Price and I will
bring you the headlines this week, including some surprisingly rapid
changes in the way people are using generative AI. Then
on tech Support, we'll talk to the Washington Posts Naomi
Nix about the first week of the Meta antitrust trial.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
This latest trial is a Now they're a piece of
evidence that the companies haven't yet, to put it crudely,
gotten what they've paid for.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
All of that. On the Weekend Tech It's Friday, April eighteenth,
Hello us, Hello Cara.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
So I was thinking about you this week. I was
seeing something Oliver Instagram, which is my preferred social media platform.
Your preferred social media platform has nothing to do with socializing.
It's called Lincoln.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Well, maybe you're too old for TikTok and I'm too
old for Instagram. So yes, LinkedIn is my absolutely.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Right, at least you're not using Facebook. So on this
I saw action figures. Yeah, that looked a lot like
my friends, like my friend who works at Tory Birch.
There was like there was an action figure of like
a jewel and an iced coffee and a Tory Birch handbag.
In a weird way, I've looked at it as a
sort of LinkedIn's own version of the Jibbli portraits that
(01:29):
we talked about a few weeks ago. You know, to
make these, you upload a picture of yourself to chat
GBT and prompt the model to turn you into a
picture of a toy action figure.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Imagine going into a toy store in nineteen eighty four
and you have plastic packed action figurines like could be
a Bobbie, could be a Gi Joe with some special
swag that the character has which reflects on who the
character is.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Yeah, and I think in a weird way, it sort
of acts as this like pictorial resume of like this
is who I like. I am podcast fundraiser, I have
jim bag, I have a six sneakers.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
What are you talking about?
Speaker 3 (02:07):
I am here asking for some money. I don't know
what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Do you know what's very interesting? I used to work
for a branding agency. I know that you know that,
and our business cards were a pictorial representation of us
and then a few representations of things that were important
to us. So I had like a British flag and
like a tennis racking or.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Whatever one visa on visa.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Exactly, you know. And there was like kind of a
talking point at the beginning of the meeting and this
is kind of the LinkedIn meets chatchybt version of that,
and it's going completely viral.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
It's going completely viral and people love. I don't know
if it's uncanny. I think it is uncanny Valley, like
people love to see themselves represented in an animated format
because it's sort of like the last frontier of like
reality turned into surreality one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
I'm sure you've seen The Real Housewives as Pixar characters,
which is so good.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Which they're starting to look like anyway with all the
filters that you can use to post them on Instagram.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
But you know what this is what is driving something
extraordinary that happened, which is that CHATGPT excluding games, became
the most downloaded app in the world last month.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Yeah, and actually at last week's TED conference, Sam Altman
let slip that the usage of chat gbt had doubled
in just a few weeks, indicating it now has eight
hundred million weekly active users.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yeah, I mean, it is an extraordinary number, and I
think you use the word indicating advisedly because he said
it was about ten percent of the world's population. You know,
at the beginning of this year, we were talking about
would the business model for these charative ami companies ever work.
There's a story in Information this week that the revenues
at OpenAI are picking up dramatically. They've grown thirty percent
(03:53):
so far this year, So that's in one quarter to
around four hundred and fifteen million dollars per month in revenue.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Which is very interesting for a company that built itself
as a non brop no. But in some ways, I'm
not surprised because it feels like there's a new use
case for chat GBT every week. I'm more invested in
it every week, and so I am sort of always
interested when I see the data reflected in my own personal.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Use I mean, you get hooked on, oh my god,
what would my family photo look like as a Pixar movie?
And then it's like, huh, you know, I what if
I put this legal contract through chat GPT and asked
it to advise me on what were the key points
I should be paying attention to, which I did for
the first time last week after I used the image
generation feature. So I mean, it's a remarkable moment where
(04:40):
I think a true consumer adoption is creating the business model,
or could be beginning to create the business model, which
is a question some people had, would that ever really
actually happen? But we are not the only people observing
what's happening. There was something actually fascinating I read last
week in the Harvard Business Review that might shock you.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
So tell me about something fat fascinating that you actually
were able to find in the Harvard Business Review.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Well, the article was about AI use cases, and according
to Harvard Business Review, the most common reason for generative
AI usage over the last twelve months was therapy and companionship.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
It's actually very funny you say this, and this is
not a setup. I've actually met a woman the other
day who told me she'd created her own therapy bot,
calling it a GPT. And I've been seeing a ton
of stuff about using AI models for therapy everywhere, and
I was honestly starting to wonder if all these articles
on AI relationships were a bit blown out of proportion,
(05:39):
But it seems to be a very real trend.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Well, you've taken endorsement after slamming me for being fascinated
by the Harvard Business Review, You've been swayed by their
validation of your worldview.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Judge where information comes from unless it's the Harvard Business Review.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
So this is a study and the methodology is quite interesting.
Some might question it, but I thought it was interesting.
They're basically a tool to scrape online forums like primarily
Reddit but also kra and a few others that scrape
for every single mention of how people are using AI,
categorize them and then counted the number of posts about
(06:14):
each use case, you know, filtering out the garbage and
whatever else, to come up with the stat rank of
the top one hundred use cases that people are talking
about how they use AI.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
And so Reddit really is the treasure trove of this discovery.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
I think it is, and I think you know there's
a reason why is because people post without using their
real names in a very unfiltered way on Reddit, and
so I think as a proxy for how people are
using technology, you could do a lot worse than Reddit.
And in fact, I also read in the Harvard Business
Review that today ten percent of reddits revenues actually come
from selling its user generated content as training data to llms,
(06:50):
so you know that there is.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Just like our friends of the Atlanta though there's.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Gold in them hills. This is actually the second time
this study has been published in the Harvard Business Review.
It's published in twenty twenty five as well. What I
found really really interesting was what change from twenty twenty
four to twenty twenty five. Thirty eight new use cases
have been added to the list, and last year's top
use case was generating ideas, which has now fallen down
(07:15):
to sixth place. This year, the second and third most
popular use cases were new entrants to the list. They
weren't in the top hundred mentions last year and now
they're in second and third place. They were organizing my life,
followed by finding purpose.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
You know, I think this speaks to something which is
that people are lonely, and people don't know how to
talk to other real people about these things. And I think,
sort of like tinders the game game right that we
did last week, it's much easier to kind of test
these very human interactions on computers.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Absolutely or in a computer no judgment judgment free zone.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
The other thing that I would mention is that regular
therapy the kind that you have with the human therapist
will put your bank account into negative numbers, absolutely, And
so you may not want to constantly burden your friends
with your issues and be the carry Bradshaw in your
friend group. And so I can see why a person
would turn to AI to help them through a hard time.
(08:15):
I actually don't judge it at all.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
No, no, me neither. But on the contrary, I mean,
I think what the HBr sort of pointed out as
the kind of larger takeaway in the twenty twenty four
versus twenty twenty five comparison was that in twenty twenty four,
the most popular use cases were all around quote unquote
technical assistance and troubleshooting, whereas this year they're in quote
unquote personal and professional support, which kind of mirrors what
(08:41):
we were talking about just a few minutes ago, which
is how AI has become more ubiquitous and therefore like
normal people are using it for more normal reasons.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
I think, more ubiquitous and also like imbued with our
own humanity as opposed to like a place where we
find how do I fix this thing?
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Right?
Speaker 3 (08:58):
I think it's changed from how do I fix this thing? Too?
How do I fix myself, which to me is both
a little bit scary and also a little bit exciting.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Absolutely, there is one really important exception to what we've
been talking about just now, which is that two use cases,
firstly generating code and secondly improving code, both had meteoric rises.
So generating code was down in lowly forty seventh place
on last year's list, is now in fifth place. And
(09:27):
that brings me to my next headline, which is by Bloomberg.
Under the headline AI Coding Assistant, Cursor draws a million
users without even trying. So there's a hot new AI
start up in town, one that you've probably never heard of,
because I hadn't heard of it either until now. Its
Bloomberg story. But also they don't advertise or market. Bloomberg
(09:47):
reports that Cursor hasn't spent a single dollar on paid marketing.
The startup behind it is any Sphere, Inc. And they
make this AI powered coding editor called Cursor.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Yeah, it's this popular tool for both formally trained computer
programs and this thing that I love, Vibe coders. A
coding editor, from what I understand, is a program that
does things like check your code for errors. Think of
it like spell check for coding, and then on top
of that, more recent AI coders like Cursor can also
(10:17):
suggest lines of code for you based on what you've
previously written.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
So Gen one is like spell check and Gen two
is shifted response for emails.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Exactly, And that's what vibe coding actually is. You just
like accept all of the suggestions versus having to correct
your code, sort of like writing a whole email and autocomplete,
which I do when I send an email says thank you, Comma,
Jennifer exclamation point. That is an email that's written entirely
by autocomplete. And just to be clear, as of today,
vibe coding does not generate code at the level of
(10:47):
real coding.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Nonetheless, Cursor has quietly become one of the fastest growing
startups of all time. It's even used by programmers at
companies like OpenAI, Instacra, and Uber. Although most of the
revenue you comes from individuals people using it and not
using it through corporate descriptions. They're getting their own subscription
to help them with their work. As it turns out,
(11:08):
coders are wanting to pay cash for a good user
interface and adaptability. The passion is real for the product
back In January, any Sphere reached one hundred million in
annual recurring revenue. By March that number of doubled and
over a million people are now using Cursor every single day.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
I mean, we've talked about this many, many times that
there's a lot of anxiety about AI replacing people's jobs.
Cursor is actually interesting because it's being used to help
people with their jobs. It's a productivity tool, and it's
what these AI companies have been parroting all along.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
It's an interesting paradigm thing here where it's not like
here's a new product to make your redundant. It's like,
here's a new product that makes you better so much
so that you pay your own money to use it
to make you better at your job. I mean that
is I think, sort of a high watermark for what
we can hope for from AI use cases.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Yeah, and it's actually a concept that investors are falling
in love with. Any Sphere, which is, as we said,
the parent company has raised one hundred and seventy five
million dollars in the likes of Andrees and Horowitz as
well as one of open AI's co founders, among many others.
Any Spheres and talks to raise more money at evaluation
of nearly ten billion.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Yeah, I mean it's very competitive space. Open AI and
Anthropic both seem to be eyeing the arena for their
own AI for coding tools, but nothing beats user adoption.
So we'll see how this story unfolds. The CURSA. We're
going to take a quick break now. When we come back,
carasches a rather surreal headline. Stay with us.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
So as we're back, and I'm warning you that our
next story is something that you're really gonna love.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Okay, tell me. So.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Google has a generative video model called VO two, and
the way it works is you type in a prompt
or feed it some media like an image, and VO
two will generate a video based on these materials. So
late last year, Google announced that they were launching a
new version of the model, which includes a better grasp
of physics and more quote nuances of human movement and expression.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
When a tech company tries to capture the nuance of humanity,
it's always you always know there's going to be some
excitements in store, yet.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
They still try to do it. The news is that
Google recently showed off the updated VO two at the
Google Cloud next conference, which we were not invited.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Two our invitations must have got lost in the mail.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
And maybe they could have made a bigger splash if
they invited us. But they did want to make a splash,
so they decided to appeal to both you and the
art community.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
High risk bet the art community and not notoriously such
big fans of the big tech world.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Are you going to ask me what they show?
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Yes? What did they show?
Speaker 3 (13:54):
So they showed a trailer based on Salvador Dolly's unmade screenplay.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Salvador Dolly's unmade screenplay? What's that about?
Speaker 3 (14:02):
So let me set the scene. I was not there,
but it's nineteen thirty seven. You're Salvador Dolly, you're in
your early thirties, you're my age, and you were hanging
out with Harpo Marx, one of the Marx brothers, who
I adore.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
This is a great collection of characters, and it's like,
you can make it up that these people were hanging
out together and thinking how do we make a movie?
Speaker 3 (14:22):
And my favorite character, who's of course the naysayer, also
factors into this. So you, as Dolly, write a fantastical
screenplay for the Marx brothers to star in. But when
you bring it to MGM, Louis B. Mayor of MGM
kills the project and the screenplay is never realized as
a film.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Was there a reason for spiking it?
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Well, in a world where now tent pole films are
very important, and then being able to sell a film
was very important. Pitching a film called Giraffes on Horseback
Salad is not exactly something that they think jumps off
the screen.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
The biting Dali and the Marx brothers hands off for
this one.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
They weren't umping at the salad fit for I'm sorry,
I couldn't help myself. But the movie itself was a
kind of broadly about an aristocratic man who falls in
love with a woman from a world where dreams are reality,
and it's so surreal it was likely unfilmable at the time.
The other important piece I think that kind of made
me laugh is that some of the Marx brothers like
(15:21):
didn't even think it was funny.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
They were like, eh, so it never got made, no until.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Now, until now, Google is trying to at least right now,
it's just a trailer because this is a big feat. Uh,
it's a trailer that is produced by the Dolli Museum
and Gooldbee Silverstein and partners. And I'm gonna play you
just a little sample of the trailer, and then you're
gonna tell me if you think this is true to
one of your I don't know if he's one of
your favorite artists, but you do like him Catalan culture.
(15:48):
So let's see.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Let me tell you how the strangest movie never made
the world wasn't ready for into No.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
I called it.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Horseback Solid. Prepare yourself because the impossible is coming to life.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Tell me a little bit about what you saw.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Well, there's a giraffe on fire. There is obviously Salvador
Daly's voice recreated. It does have the kind of vibe
of a movie trailer. However, the esthetic is one that
I think would make Salvador Dahi personally turn in his grave,
because it is basically what you might imagine one of
(16:36):
the camps at Burning Man might reinterpret Salvador Dali through
the lens of It is so on the nose quote
unquote surrealist, with people wearing like funny hats.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
It looks like clouds people on fire.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
It's got a very Burning Man vibe.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
It also has a very google commercial vibe, yes, which
I think isn't the greatest thing ever, But yeah, I
think fever dream is how I describe it. And actually,
as you said, the narration is supposed to be Salvador,
there's enough of his audience.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Does he actually sound like that? Who knows? Did we
did in fact shake his voice?
Speaker 3 (17:11):
We did? I did listen to it. Well, I did
listen to him on radio program a little bit later,
and he does sound a little bit like you know,
But I always think about him twirling his.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Mustache actually character in Rettaitui.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
There's no evidence to me that this is exactly what
Salvador Dolly sounds like. But I think they definitely tried
to recreate his voice, which we know by now is
like what.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
They tried to do it. They probably did do it. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
According to Art News, this isn't the first time that
there's actually been an AI generated Dolly. The same Dolly
museum who's co producing this movie, actually had an exhibition
called Ask Dolly that allowed museum goers to talk to him,
meaning to talk to an AI created based on his voice.
At the time. The museum COO said that if these
(17:57):
technologies had been around when Dolly was alive, he would
have played around with them.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
My take was, it's not horrible, but it's pretty horrible.
And I don't disagree that Darli would have played around
with AI tools if he were around today, but I
don't think he would have used them like this. I mean,
the whole point of Dahali as a painter was that
he made the medium new. He basically reinvented the media
of paintings through his incredibly interesting and unforgettable serialus take.
(18:26):
So I think if he did use Jennet of AI tools,
he would come't with the considerably more interesting application than this,
which ultimately feels a bit druotism. You would imagine if
an artist like Darli used Jenet AI, he would have
done so to critique or to push the medium forward,
or to make us really think, versus to kind of,
you know.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Make a gimmick, make a gimmick. Yeah, that's very true.
Can we run through the rest of the headlines?
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Yes? And can you start yes? So Ours Technica reports
that Nvidia is producing AI chips for the first time
outside of Taiwan. Blackwell chip and are now being made
at TSMC. That's the Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company at their
plant in Phoenix, Arizona, and other companies in the state
(19:10):
will test and package these chips. Nvidia also announced that
they plan to build complete supercomputers on us soil, and
their reports of the promise of up to five hundred
billion dollars of investment in us AI infrastructure having been
agreed to at a dinner between Jensen Huang and you
know who recently at Mari Lago. In return, Kwang reportedly
(19:33):
hoped to avoid yet more stringent export controls on chips
to China, but seemly that hope has not materialized.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
I do wonder what's going to happen there, so please
keep me posted. I also do wonder if the food
is good at mar Laga.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Yeah, I bet it's old school.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Well, it's food that has to benefit a discussion about semiconductors,
so it can't stand out too much. So if you
are a big enough nerd to be covetous of Sam's
Sung technology, but you're loyal to the Apple ecosystems, it's
a very it's slender. There may be a phone for you.
(20:09):
Nine to five Mac reports that there are rumors of
and this is very mind blowing a foldable iPhone, which
has been dubbed very surprisingly the iPhone fold be like
I need the fold pro. I have to say this,
and I hope it's not too embarrassing. If I do
(20:30):
get this, I will be walking around saying my iPhone,
don't jiggle, jiggle it folds.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
But no.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
According to the one report, the rumored phone may look
like a normal iPhone but expands to roughly the size
of an iPad Mini when unfolded to its full size.
It also might feature a touch ID enabled power button.
The most important thing in the reporting here is that
I plan to use it as a picnic blanket in
Central Park if it ever does come to fruition and
(20:58):
does an overheat. I hate an overheated phone.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Yeah. You have to wonder what this one is. Is it
really going to come out or is it gonna be
another one of these Apple projects. Since Steve Jobs, may
he rest in peace, past that have never seen the
light of day.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
And speaking of Dolly rolling over in his grave, this
is the stone pillow in Steve Jobs's grave.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
I always like to talk about tech stories that inspire
me and capture my imagination, and there was a report
in the Washington Post this week about scientists who have
been using technology to uncover the remains of past civilizations
in the Amazon. So, this team of archaeologists in South
America is using lidar or light detection and ranging, which
(21:40):
is basically a laser sensor that can see through dense
forests from above, either with planes or drones to find
hidden structures beneath the canopy. You know, you don't need
to be Indiana Jones anymore. You can just fly drones.
The team has found a lost Portuguese colony ceramics made
by an indigenous society. And what I find particularly cool
(22:01):
here is that these findings are being used to protect
the rainforest from clearing and logging. You can't protect the
rainforest on its own term, sadly, but if it has
archaeologically significant ruins beneath, it turns out you can.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
Finally, if you live in Silicon Valley, you may have
heard eerily familiar voices when crossing this I'm obsessed with
this story. While crossing the street last weekend, Palo Alto
Online reports that some crosswalk buttons seem to have been hacked,
which is something I would notice immediately. I just wish
they were hacked by Almo. Some people cross the street
to the sound of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, who
(22:35):
I now call Mark x Infandel.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
So you press the button and rather than a walk
sign is on.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
It's like walk signs on. I don't know who. I
don't know if that was a Zuckerberg or an Elon Musk.
I can't really do a Musk impersonation, but some in
Silicon Valley heard an impression of Elon Musk welcoming them
to Palo Alto, while others heard fake Mark Zuckerberg say
it's normal to feel uncomfortable, even violated, as we forcefully
(23:01):
insert AI into every facet of your conscious experience. And
I just want to assure you you don't need to
worry because there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
I love this gorilla anti tech marketing campaign. I have
no idea how you hack a crosswalk light, but props
to these people.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
If there's any place it's going to happen, it's palle Alto.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
I like your Zach impression. Elizabeth Helmes reminds me of
one of the most iconic ever Zuckerberg moments, when he
was testifying before the Senate a few years ago and
was asked how Facebook's business works, to which he responded, well, ads,
Sir Mark Kackerberg back in the spotlight this week because
(23:42):
Meta is facing an anti trust trial brought by the Federal
Trade Commission, and Zackerberg has been on the stand this
week in Washington. Naomi Nicks of the Washington Post has
more on the trial when we come back, stay with us, So, Carot,
(24:12):
it seems like every week that we make this show,
there are headlines we cover, and then there's a kind
of the headline that kind of emerges as the biggest
story of the week.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Right last week was tiff Mania, which is the gift
that keeps giving.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
And this week it's Meta's day in court, or rather
many weeks in court. And the trial's actually been nearly
five years in the making.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
It's been one of those news stories that's been like
in the back of my mind, like I will just
be going about my business and then say, oh wait,
did the government soon matter? What happened to that?
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Yeah? And it's also I mean when you and I
first started working on kind of tech journalism together in
twenty eighteen twenty nineteen, the ideas that the government would
ever effectively regulate technology companies was at best a fantasy
or a pipe dream, and now it seems to be
happening in real time, albeit slowly. And this also comes
(25:04):
at a time when people are questioning whether the judiciary
will continue to be, you know, a functioning pillar of government.
But right now, at least in the realm of business,
it sure is. Back In twenty twenty, the Federal Trade
Commission sued Meta, as you said, and if you recall,
Meta had previously purchased Instagram and WhatsApp in the years
(25:24):
leading up to this. The FTC argued that Meta had
acquired these companies specifically in order to strangle competition, which
is illegal under anti trust laws.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Yeah, the lastuit began on Monday in federal court, and
over the next many weeks, DC will be filled with
some star witnesses, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who took
the stand this week.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Hit Hops Understand how we got here and what's going
to come next? Is Naomi Nicks. She's a staff writer
at The Washington Post, where she covers social media companies,
particularly Meta. So Naomi, I can imagine this has been
an absolutely crazy week for you.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Yes, it's been very busy, but it's been very interesting.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
I can only imagine. But take us back to twenty
twenty when the FTC sued Meta and how this will begin.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
So remember at the time, there was a lot of
conversation among regulators about whether big tech companies had gotten
too big, right, whether they had stifled competition from upstarts,
whether they were prefacing their products over potential competitors, and
so a lot of big tech companies were sort of
wrapped up in that uproar and Meta was one of them.
(26:32):
And back then the FTC under the tail end of
Donald Trump's administration, sued Meta, challenging to break the company
up apart from Instagram and WhatsApp, and we've been sort
of locked into this anti trust battle ever since.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
So this is a continuation of that same case.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
It is.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
So what happened was the judge initially put out a
ruling that said, you know, I don't think the FTC
has given enough evidence to establish that there's really a
case here. And so when the Bide administration took over,
Amena Khan was chair of the FTC, the commission filed
an amended lawsuit and at that point the courts allowed
(27:16):
it to proceed, and you know, they said, look, I
think you now have established enough evidence that there is
a potential case that Meta has a monopoly and the
personal social networking market.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
So this is potentially bipartisan enforcement, which I want to
come back to. But just first off, as somebody who
hasn't been following this that closely, why were Meta allowed
to buy Instagram in twenty twelve and WhatsApp in twenty
fourteen and didn't the regulators in a sense like, isn't
this a case of building a stable after the horse
has gone? If they didn't block these transactions at the time.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
That's certainly a case in an argument that Meta has
been making. They're like, you know, one of the dangers,
they argue, is that what the message of the FTC
is sending to the general marketplace is that that no
merger is final. That after an anti trust regulator deems like, yeah,
you're allowed to buy that market, that a decade after
the fact, they can decide to change their minds. And
(28:10):
in some ways that is what's happening here. But I
do think the politics around anti trust law and the
conversation about whether the United States anti trust laws are
up to date with the current technology industry. Is one
of the reasons both Republican and Democratic nominated anti trust
regulators have been willing to take a chance in this case.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
So you've been in the courtroom the past few days.
What is the FTC's argument against Meta right now?
Speaker 2 (28:41):
They're making a couple of points. One is they're saying, look,
we actually think that Meta has a monopoly. And what
the FTC has decided is called a personal social networking
market that's mostly relying a market of tech pokforms that
are designed to facilitate person communication among your friends and families.
(29:02):
And so what the FTC is saying is they actually
think that Meta's next biggest competitor is Snapchat. They don't
include TikTok in that, they don't include YouTube, in that
they don't include x in that they're saying that Meta
has a monopoly in that market. And they're saying that
the company acted anti competitively when it bought WhatsApp and Instagram.
(29:24):
And they rely on a lot of internal emails to
suggest that the goal that Mark Zuckerberg had at the
time wasn't necessarily to improve Instagram or to help users
have more choice in the social media market, but to
neutralize a potential competitor. And they're saying that all those
actions have hurt consumers, that if Meta hadn't done these things,
(29:46):
that we as Internet users would have more vibrant social
media options at our disposal.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
What is Meta's counter argument here?
Speaker 2 (29:54):
They say that the FTC misses the mark when it
defines the marketplace, that they're not just competing agains Snapchat,
that they are competing against TikTok and YouTube and all
these other Internet platforms, and that that ecosystem is robust
and vibrant.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
The attention economy, so to speak.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. You know, Mark Zuckerberg earlier sort
of talked to the court about how when TikTok was rising,
the company really had to double down and introduce its
own product called Instagram Reels, right, and that that has
been a competitive space for the company ever since. As
a piece of evidence to show that like this industry
(30:34):
is quite thriving.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Now without getting to inside baseball, I mean, the history
of antitrust in the last few years before Lee Na
Khan came in as the FTC chair under President Biden
was basically all around consumer price like harm was defined
as consumers having to pay more because of monopoly. However,
meta services are free. And I think one of the
(30:57):
interesting things here is the FTC d position visa via
the tech industry was considered to be a big reason
why the tech industry broke for Trump so dramatically in
the most recent election. So there's a kind of irony
here around the kind of the FTC's theory of the
case being so consistent with how the lots of administration
viewed regulating monopolies. Can you speak a little bit about.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
That, Yeah, I mean it's interesting. There's both sort of
a political element here and a legal element. It is
true that, like the courts have traditionally relied on price
as a measure of harm, and what they're doing here
is kind of novel. They're saying, actually, we think harm
can be measured in the fact that, you know, meta
maybe didn't improve users' privacy. You know, what are the
(31:40):
points they've made in their opening arguments. Was like after
Cambridge Analytica, consumers were really unhappy with Facebook and yet
they still used it, which means they didn't have enough options.
But I think there is a political element here. To
your point, which is the tech companies and Meta. Mark
Zuckerberg in particular made a big bet on Trump right
(32:01):
in the election, and you know we've reported and other
news outlets have reported that, you know, he went to
the White House in hopes to encourage the Trump administration
to encourage the FTC to resolve the lawsuit before a trial,
but was ultimately unsuccessful. In order to drive this point home,
remember back to when Trump was first elected in twenty sixteen,
(32:21):
how the tech industry reacted then, right like we saw
them come together and form forward the Immigration Reform Organization.
There was really this sort of groundswell of activity by
the tech industry both workerwed but also CEO led to
be willing to kind of stand the ground in the
face of potential attacks from the Trump administration. And this
(32:45):
time around we saw much different tone. Right, So, Mark
Zuckerberg called Trump a badass during the campaign over how
he handled the shooting attempt on his life. The company
gave a million dollars to the inauguration committee, he dined
with Trump, and then I think in January he backed
up that rhetoric with a lot of policy. They scrapped
the fact checking program, the NDDI programs. He said in
(33:09):
a video that they were hoping to partner with the
Trump administration to go after international regulators who are introducing
what he terms was like onerous regulations. And so the
tone has been really, really remarkably positive and has attracted
some compliments from Trump allies and Trump himself, But the
(33:32):
compliments only go so far. What the company obviously wants
is regulations to change, and so that so far hasn't
been an outcome of this olive branch from Mark Zuckerberg
and Meta. And I think this latest trial is another
piece of evidence that the companies haven't yet, to put
(33:52):
it crudely, gotten what they've paid for.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
So can you tell us a little bit about the
atmosphere in the courtroom this week? You know, we're taping middanday.
What have the first few days been like in the courtroom.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
Cara, sorry to jump on you, but also we all
saw the photo of Mark Zuckerberg arriving in what looked
like a presidential limousine and was in beast mode wearing
his own Meta ray bands, looking very much sho.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
I heard the success in theme music as he arrived
to the courtroom.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
It has been you know, on the point about Mark's look,
it's been interesting because he's had to look at videos
like talking about some of these mergers in the past,
and so you're seeing sort of like a new book,
you know, looking back in the old version of him.
But particularly I think on Tuesday, there was a really
heated exchange I think between the FTC lawyer and Mark Zuckerberg,
(34:45):
and we saw repeatedly the lawyer really tried to pin
Mark Zuckerberg down to essentially admit to some of the
reasonings that he weighed out in his emails at the
time for wanting to buy Instagram, you know, because the
reality is he does talk about it in those competitive terms.
Back then, Met at the time was trying to build
its own camera app and it wasn't going so well.
(35:09):
They were disappointed with the results of that program, and
so at the time, Mark is like, maybe we should
just like buy Instagram.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Right, I was going to say, in the scheme of things,
it's actually much better that they just spent a cool
billion dollars to have one of the most popular apps
in the app store.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Yeah, and it is also rapidly becoming their key to
retaining a really important audience, which is young people in
a way that Facebook is not.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
Can you talk a little bit more about some of
the other high profile cases against big tech that are
going on right now, Like where do these lawsuits stand?
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest example is Google, right,
you know there Right last year, a federal court century
ruled that the Justice Department was right to say that
Google violated in a trust clause because it had created
these sort of restrictive contracts with Apple and other device
makers to essentially require them to install Google as the
default search engine on their smartphones anyone. What the judge
(36:09):
said is like, you know, this prevented rivals from competing
on a level playing field. And so Google had argued, look, actually,
our search engine has lots of competition. People are looking
for information in lots of different places, whether it's on
Amazon and TikTok and Reddit other Internet you know search engines.
But essentially the judge ruled against him, and so where
(36:30):
we are now is we have to figure out like
what the remedy is to that anti trust violation. I think,
you know, one of the things that's a little bit
easier about that case in this case, which is it
probably was easier for the Justice Department to establish that
Google had maintained a monopoly in the search business in
a way that I think the discussion around what defines
(36:52):
social media and what defines the social media market for
meta is a little bit more fraught. But this is
like one of the biggest wins right for ntrust rigilators
against a big tech company in two decades since the
Microsoft case. And whether that will continue, whether the Justice
firement at FTC and in to circulators around the world
(37:14):
will be able to continue to rack up as an
open question.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
What I find is so personally fascinating about this story
is it has both the drama of the TikTok of
week by week politics and of courtroom testimony and stuff,
but it also exists in this kind of grander sweep
of the history of the twentieth century. I mean, you
had IBM subject to anti trust action in the sixties,
which led to them unbundling their hardware and software business,
(37:42):
which created a software marketplace, which in turn allowed Microsoft
to rise. Microsoft intern was subject to anti trust legislation
the late nineties early two thousands, which meant that they
couldn't force Internet Explorer down consumers throats who were using
Windows operating system. This in turn allowed Google to emerge,
and now Google and Meta are facing antitrust action of
(38:03):
their own. So I was wondering if you can kind
of reflect on where this sits in the history of
tech and government.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
I think at a time when the industry is really
focused on artificial intelligence and generative artificial intelligence, these cases
that are going on now really have the power to
kind of reset the competition among who's going to rise
and fall in this marketplace, Who's going to have the
ability to make the right deals, make the right mergers
(38:33):
in order to assume top place in the AI race,
which they all want to do. And I think it's
also unclear how a spinoff would affect the company right.
There was a really poignant moment on Tuesday in which
Mark Zuckerberg is being asked about an internal message he's
sent in twenty eighteen where he said, and I'm just
(38:53):
going to read the quote as calls to break up
the big tech companies grow, there is a non trivial
chance that we will be forced to spin out Instagram
and perhaps WhatsApp in the next five years. And he
later said, well, most companies resist these kinds of breakups,
companies actually performed better after they split up. And if
you think about it, people might have written Microsoft for
(39:15):
dead right years ago after their ANIHS battle. Is anyone
really saying that now? No, this is just one part
of that story.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
This is the first week of what might be a
two month trial, and we are nowhere near ruling. Just
in your opinion as somebody who is attending these things,
like what do we think could happen and what are
the things that you're looking out for.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
I think one thing I'm going to be really paying
attention to is how the judge asks questions about market size,
because I think the definition of the market is one
of the hardest parts that the FDC has to prove
that the market that Meta operates is this sort of
personal social networking market, and I'm not sure that the
(40:01):
tech industry has understood it that way, and certainly Meta
hasn't understood it that way. His own lawyer asked him
if he had even heard of that phrase before the
FTC's lawsuit.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
She said no.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
And so I think how the judge asks questions about
how the marketplace is structured and defined is like one
issue that I'm going to definitely be paying attention to
another thing is just like Honestly, these top executives that
were expected to hear from We're expecting to hear from
Cheryl Samdberg, We're expecting to hear from Instagram head Adam Masseri.
(40:34):
We might expect to hear from Zakoyo Capital and Google
and whatnot. And so I am very curious to see
how they talk about how they were thinking about these
mergers at the time. If there is some more relenting
from meta executives about their true motivations for making these purchases,
I think that'll be interesting to watch and then like
(40:57):
it's boring, But I think how THEUS talk about harm
and how users are harmed or not harmed, And it
feels like this game of like what if, right, what
if these mergers hadn't happened. What would have happened to Instagram?
Would it be as popular as like Snapchat is right now?
Or would it be an even bigger global industry threat.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
What's a fascinating moment, Naomi, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
That's it for this week for tech Stuff. I'm as
Valoshian and I'm Kara Price.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis and Victoria Domingez.
It was executive produced by me Oz Valosian and Kate
Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvel for iHeart Podcasts. The
Engineer is Bihied Frasier and Kyle Murdoch mixed this episode.
He also wrote our theme song.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Join us next Wednesday for tech stuff The Story when
we'll share an indepth conversation with the former editor of
The Financial Times, Lionel Barber about his book, Gambling Man.
It's all about the enigmatic founder of SoftBank mas Son,
and we'll also talk about Masayshi Son's relationships with Sam
Altman and the Stargate Project.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
Please rate, review, and reach out to us at tech
Stuff podcast at gmail dot com. We want to hear
from you.
TechStuff News
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Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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