Microsoft's Shift Away From OpenAI

Will Apple finally get AI right at WWDC. Anthropic is worried about runaway AI improvement and Microsoft and openpen AI once partners. are in head on competition That's coming up on a big technology podcast Friday edition after this In the face of ongoing disruption and opportunity, TMT leaders need to deliver tangible results, not just ideas. When pace and performance matter most, PWC combines market insights and deep sector experience with AI, cloud, and emerging tech to accelerate your transformation and drive measurable ROI from strategy to execution PWC can help you anticipate what's next, outpace disruption, and compete. For more information, visit pwc. com Welcome to B big Technology Podcast Friday E dition where we break down the news. In our traditional cool headed and nuanced format, we have a lot of news to break down for you this week, including a full preview of seemingly everything that's going to happen at WWDC Apple's big Cornerstone event. On Monday, we also have news that Anthropic is worried about runaway AI improvement. I'm sure Ron Joon is going to buy that Hoke Line and Sinker. and then we're also going to talk about Microsoft and Op AI Once partners now competing head on. Joining us is always on Fridays, Do do it is Ranan Roy of Margins, Ran Jan. G good to see you. All right, you already got me there. Hookline and sinker I was pasting that story into our document and I was with every paragraph like anticipating your reaction I'm saying that it's marketing. so we'll have an interesting segment coming up T Dock is just one long opportunity for you to trigger me, Alex my God that's startarting with service Sory, then go to Anthropic and then I don't know where you stand in Microsoft thing All right, but let's build some tension here. It's gonna an exciting final segment Let o let's build on amission here. Legendary debate Okay, but seriously should talk about the Si thing. I'm actually so so I'm about to fly out to San Francisco for Well, I thought it was going to be WWC. It looks like I am on the bandn list this year, but anyway, wait really? I'll be in proximity if if nothing else Wait wait hold on. I'm trying to remember. did you go last year where you already I have been yes. I've been to WWDC at least the last two years So This year. Not in my luck No Nool luck But'm it's not him anymore.'s just Turnis, Turnus All right, I'm going to cross my fingers and maybe I'll get in and have a report from you for you from the ground then. But you know what? Maybe you don't even need to be in Cupertino to get the WWDC a rundown because it looks like Mark Germman has like every detail of what Apple is about to announce. And we're going to run through all the big announcements that Apple's going to make at WWDC and give you our perspective on it. And I'll start off saying that I read this and left immediately extremely optimistic about where Apple is heading, it seems like The company is finally understanding the way that it can use artificial intelligence in its products h And the fact it doesn't need to build everything And let me start with before we get into the actual announcements, Ranjon, if you will, let me start just with the context here for Apple because you know, while we've said that WWDC and the AI work that they're doing is the most important thing the company can do at this moment At least in the near term, it hasn't been the case, right? Company is surging right now on the back of iPhone seventeen sales It did one hundred forty plus billion in the first quarter, which is sort of a traditional Q four for everybody else. one hundred eleven billion do in the most recent quarter. It stock is up fifty six percent over the past year. and this is all pre AI There's no AI competitor device. So before we get into this, Si announcement because we will spend a lot of time on that Let's just talk about the big framing here Am I right in thinking We shouldn't get toooo crazily concerned for Apple to think speaking specifically about the company and the business. about AI because up until now it hasn't factored No I think Apple still is an iPhone selling machine E though myself and Plenty of others have questioned whether this is actually a sustainable business model and I have not upgraded since the fifteen, even though up. I bought every new iPhone for like a ten year period. I mean, it's clear the business is healthy, at least on a relative basis. The core businesses, I mean, it's when I say healthy, it's still generating ungodly amounts of revenue on a continued basis. So We have to give them that separate from the entire AI conversation. And to their credit They're doing it without any genuine innovation on the actual product side either in a number of years. Apple Congratulations on Just having us all locked into your ecosystem and continuing to sell as products. My left AirPod keeps buzzing. and I'm probably just going to go out and buy the AirPods three Pro. So They got us Do you think it's healthy business The business Absolutely start there. Yeah, absolutely, it is. And by the way, I think you're underrating the seventeen, I think the seventeen. is a crazy machine and it's much better than any phone to come before it. So I'm happy to have it. But okay, hold on sorry, you are saying Do you believe there's been genuine product innovation from Apple, arere you gonna to stand by that statement that the iPhone seventeen is truly a revolutionary product No, it's no I've always said they are refiners, not revolutionaries under Tim Cook, and that's been the case. But they have refined. they've made the camera better, they've made the battery life better, the computing more powerful. and through refining all this, they've made a Yeah, great device. And by the way, the revolutionary devices no one's built them Despite OAI trying to do it, despite meteta trying to do it, despite Google trying to do it, despite Amazon trying to do it, we don't have any revolutionary AI computing device yet It's not here. I still the meta, the metag glasses, I genuinely I consider okay, it's not like Maybe it's not as magical as when the first iPhone came out, but there's devices out there. I'm going to put let me think, metaglasses Certainly, the Apple Watch I will give credit was in its time, revolutionaries as well, AirPods when they first came out Foldable phones right now. There are it's happening J let me reframe this for both of us, right? Okay Okay. Maybe the revolutionary AI device is going to be the iPh And And when you look through the announcements, you start to see a different strategy from Apple. The first was, you know, the Apple intntelligence rollout two years ago was this big rollout like let us dream up what AI could do and sort of put together this visionary ambitious plan. This is a much more scaled back version of that But it seems to be at least in accordance with what the technology can do So let me give you a couple of examples of what's going to happen. This is from the Germman story Uh There's a new serory. it was known as Project Campo internally. It sits at the center of Apple's renewed AI strategy. The idea is to transform the assistant from a voice control system to a do it all companion letting users handle tasks across IiOS, iPadOS and MacOS through the day It will also be easier to control both in house and outside apps using Siri T power this new assistant, Apple is relying on a Gemini model from Google a company that is both a rival and a long time partner In addition to using Google's underlying technology as part of a billion dollar agreement The company is hosting much of the new series on Google servers Apple has long touted its ability to safeguard user data, so the arrangement may spark privacy question. Okay There's they are expanding Siri beyond this sort of weird magic trick to actually interface with devices. But now here's the thing. let me let me say it was one last thing and then turn it over to you What I am impressed by with Apple is they are realizing that they have an interface advantage. They own the mobile operating system, at least for iPhone users And they're going to use that to flex and say, all right, AI device, you an AI device., We'll build you an AI device,'ll build it right within our operating system from the Germman story. P plans to let users swipe down from the top center of the iPhone to launch a new search or askk interface The new command will open a revamped experience designed for getting things done or searching by typing through vice the voice control remains an option in the search or ask page Users can launch apps, start text messages, ask about the weather, add calendar appointments, sif through notes, trigger shortcuts within apps, or search the web using AI. That to me seems the right way to do it All right, let me try to be political here, but let me try to be nuanced This is the most basic AI stuff imaginable. This is this is like the most basic user experience stuff imaginable Like, yes, we are all able to dictate to our phones. I know Apple's native dictation is bad and I use whisper flow. do most of my search via AI as well. againg. But I do recognize, as you said, The iPhone could be the AI kind of like interaction layer And there' still a lot of people who don't use AI really in an integrated manner in their day and Apple still has that opportunity Butone and maybe it's good. None of this feels All of this stuff feels like stuff that is so basic to me that it's kind of shocking that this feels like an announcement. But maybe that's actually good because that they can actually get it done rather than just haaving Bella Ramseay on an ad two years early Okay So I know it sounds underwhelming And You know, as the guy who just got disinvited from WWDC, you know, I'm far not the first one to take Apple's side on this one. But let me explain to you why I think that this makes sense, okay Alexander Wingne The guy who's running meta super intelligence labs was at the Bloomberg tech conference this week, whatever it was. He said this is a quote from Ultimately what we're really excited to build for the world B personersal agents The thing is To get to Meta's agent, you have to open up your iPhone and tap on some agent functionality. We've talked in this conversation already about a swipe down in the operating system being something that will immediately take you to Apple s AI experience where you can search and ask. That's going to be powered, by the way, they're going to bring in lots of different models. So there's going to be a model switcher. That will enable you to pick the model you want And at the top I talked about how what is Si going to be? a do it all companion, letting users handle tasks across IOS and control in house and outside apps using Siri. This is the vision of the personal agent lived out within IOS Even if Mas is better even if open AIs is better They're not going to have access to the operating system And that gives Apple a chance. Bing on top of Google technology, which isn't shabby. to sort of use the force of its advantage and maybe if not win, at least factor heavily into this AI race. All right, I'll give you that. I mean, just the value of inertia, the value of being where customers already and users already are, there is tremendous value especially at like a mass scale in the general population with AI. think I think there is a huge opportunity there. and actually, I'll admit I have started using Google's follow on AI mode where you do a Google search and then you ask questions after And I almost feel like dirty doing it, it feels like the most like just hacky, clunky. It's just not a good looking interface. It's But it's I actually have started using it more just because I still will every now and then go into Google search to quickly search something. So So the value of being there, I think is is good where I would still caution And actually back to that example around Ma and personal agents where Apple I think is potentially getting into trouble is even and I honestly hated this paragraph where it's like customers will be able to do more advanced tasks like telling Siri to write an email by giving it topics and information and asking it to pull the message together Come on, that is every that's GPT three point five right there. but Wh picked into the operating system? No, but here's where it's going to get technologically challenging having the last year and a half building eentic systems at Ryder I know where things can like break and where things are more stable and easier The idea that you're going to be able to Access any app on your phone and data across all these various systems is actually a very technologically challenging thing. I think that's probably what's held Apple back so far. If they just limited it to Like it can't even be email because then just Gmail Gmail owns your email side of it. they keep talking about. they're like for the first time users can ask Siri when they're available for appointments before scheduling something Does that have to mean that your iCal is connected to your Google calendar, if you're a Google Clendar customer Just managing that data, knowing which app to call related to a specific task is a lot easier when it's a small universe of options if they're really going to kind of own those kind of data routing systems across your entire phone. That's actually a hard technological problem to solve and adds a lot of unpredictability. So do you think they're going to pull it offr how do you think they roll it out? Do you think they do it We're just gonna have email and calendar appointments on day one Do you think I can I pull up a YouTube video prrompt via invoice prompt. How do you think they're going to do it Okay, so those are two separate questions and I think they're both worth answering separately So You know, the question is whether they can the first question is whether they can pull this off And You know, it's interesting because I was reading through the announcement. Here's another one that they have in well, it's not the announcement. It's just Gurmin, but Gurman's that good Here's another one. The company is planning to allow users to throw multiple commands at Siri at once. The feature will let people combine requests For example, asking Siri to check the weather, creating a calendar appointment and send a message all within a single prompt And I read that and I was like, this type of things that they're these things that they're talking about They're catching up to where the technology is, right? When you're in Chat GPT U It does have an understanding or in Claud, it does have an understanding of like it can handle multiple once, it kind of knows where to go. So if Apple can mirror that, then that makes a lot of sense. The question is Will they be able to? So before we get to how they're rolling it out, I think you're really keen to hit on this because are really, really incisive to hit on this becausecause ultimately It seems like the ambition is not out of step with where the technology is. the question is can they execute? Do you think they can? I What do you think first The only answer I have is they haven't shown us they can Okay, I think that was a good answer. That was a good one But the vision is not ridiculous. It's not I agree. It's not ridiculous. It's not ridiculous any company within reason of their scale and like history should execute on this. but I like how you put that They haven't shown us yet that they can then What's your gut check in terms ofether they can or or they can't. You're the one that's been asking for betteret Siri for forever. I want them to. That's why it's like I don't want tona say an abusive relationship, but It's been so many times. I've wanted to believe in them so many times starting with Bella Ramsey u kind of like ignoring not listening to her dinner companion, but still wrriting an email to them or whatever that ad was two year two years ago. I mean, the fact that they actually position themselves as being able to provide this as a service two years ago, I think actually now now it' even make me think how fundamentally they misunderstood the actual technology back then I just hope I want them to. I don't think they can Right I don't think so the question is So the question isn't this is progress for Apple. This is what I'm kind of saying. They have made progress. They understand the technology. They're actually showing us a vision that aligns with the technology's capabilities And they probably have Google, whether it's you know forward deployed engineers or whatever you want to call them or Demis himself They sure have Google in there working with them to ensure that this is deployed successfully because it's Google's reputation on the line as well All right, Google doesn't want to be part of a failure here. So the execution part is a big question But You know, at least this is something that's a target that is reachable We actually How do you think Google Apple relationship works. and the reason I ask is I have a pixel nine. ust it's not a burner phone. I just got it at some point. I think relatively inexpensively, and I wanted to like have an Android phone as well for testing. U The way Google Assistant is integrated into the overall phone is all of this. It's done all of this for the last year. And it does it well. E Alexa Plus on the Echo show does all of this really well So it should be table stakes. It's where the technology is today, but Is Google incentivized to make this work? I don't even not even looking at the agreement, you would imagine they weret. They would be because it's geminiz's nameumption there. Well, and it's consumption. at a massive scale. Like actually is Apple going to pay Google? on a consumption basis, The more people know don know The sorry, the stories seem to indicate that they basically distilled their version of Siri. Gemini. Okay But then The better this gets. The worse it is for Google's hardware business, like this still represents, again, I had not thought about moving from Apple and I get so frustrated with Siri that I've lookooked up the pixel fold a number of times and I'm not ready to drop eight hundred bucks and completely remove myself of the Apple ecosystem, but like That is a threat to them and That is an opening for Google. But I guess they're basically they just signed away the model kind of adaptation rights to Apple. But beyond that, they don't really care is what we're saying I mean, ultimately, if you're Google, right and this becomes are you asking if this becomes a defining feature of the phone Is Google hurting themselves by selling to Apple? Yeah. Yeah, yeah yeah. Yes and no. I mean, yes, they're going to power like they there there are rivals, right? It's like number one and number two in terms of phone makers , but they also have great power over Apple, right? Because They're going to make another more powerful model and Apple' going to want to distill that and they're going to make another more powerful No, that's true. And Apple's going to want to distill that. And at a certain point if they see that, oh, We have a chance to like decimate the iPhone, I don't think they're going to be making All these deals. So it's great power in the hand. Okay. I like that Okay, so now that I've made the case that Apple is thinking the right way and has a good chance of being able to execute this, even though we haven't seen them do it before so we're going U, you know, hold our praise until we see it There is a disconcerting line in German's report that I am going to read to you because you asked about the rollout And get your reaction Apple has labeled the new seri as a beta and preview internally, suggesting that the assistant won't be marketed as a fully finished software when it's released later this year The original Siri held the same description for two years. There is also the possibility of a waitlist or some sort of people who want of some sort of people of some sort for people who want to try new features and appach an approach used with the initial launch of the Apple Intelligence platform. twenty twenty four Your reaction. Oh God. I was just getting excited. And this okay, hold on The upside I would prefer they actually more strongly take this approach rather than having a heavy glossy marketing campaign that indicates that everything is perfect This is just giving me PTSD of that first Apple intelligence launch again I think nearly two years ago I remember sitting there and like enabling Apple intelligence on my phone, thinking I was going to do something and It really is one of the worst kind of product rollouts I don't want to say in history, but It's been pretty bad. so I was just starting to get excited that maybe they had a really coherent strategy and werere believing the execution. but I'm going to wait and see I'm in a wait and see and hope, but That just made me a little more Uncertain. Do you do you think does this make you more or less excited Less excited. I mean, I definitely held that out you know caveat at the end. I would say if I were to sum up this my perspective on this It is Um Three things. O AI doesn't matter as much to Apple as you know, the narrative makes it seems like at least in the short term We're really going to have to wait for an AI device to really matter for Apple Uh, to start to say that their're failures on AI are going to really stack up and add to anything. Now that's not that doesn't mean they're going to be safe forever, but they're at least safe for now pointint one. Point two is I think that the positive sign, like I said before, is that they are actually building to the technology's capabilities as opposed to like something they dreamed up. you know, in a conference room in Coopertino together. But then there's the worry. And the worry is the execution And while they should be in a better position to execute this time, That line about the the waitlist worries me. worrires me for sure. Do you think? Uh Failure of execution has been What's the term? is it Dutch disease where like It's where you have oil or o man. Natural resesource cururse Okay, it is Dutch disease. originally it was around the massive influx of foreign currency, but yeah, the idea, it's like a resource curse that When you have some specific resource, it kind of distorts your ability to kind of develop other parts of the economy. within a needo. shouldn't be because oh go ahead go ahead. No no. I mean those iPhones are still selling. They haven't Maybe you believe they have dramatically approved. I would tend to argue that it's been yeah, at least you said refining, not revolutionizing, but again, when you're selling iPhes at that clip and everyone keeps buying them and I'm about to go spend two hundred and fifty bucks to replace an airPod. like you just don't have the internal energy and incentive to actually build these kind of things If you look throughout Big tech You will see companies with natural resources And the ones these tech giants have been able to stay on top because they haven't sat on their laurels. and they've realized they have a natural resource, but they still need to innovate Oh it goes to everyone for instance, the greatest natural monopoly of all time. ex. And you can see that there they mean They've been big on AI for the last decade So to me, it's not, you know, maybe it's part natural resource curse for Apple, but I shouldn't shouldn't I don't think we should wave it away as saying it's just a natal resource curse. I think it is a cultural issue and I've been on record about this for a long time The culture of Apple is very high on its own supply And They believe that the culture that they've built is responsible for the creation of the iPhone and while it was, that also came from Steve Jobs And so they've remained this refineed jobs idea culture uh, even though they don't have jobs anymore And They are sort of so happy about the way that they do things. proud of the way they do things They will not try any other model That's why. Yeah, you're I mean, yeah, Google completely dispves my point. But I still my one of my favorite hot takes is that Google's entire AI transformation success can be traced back to the the fact that Sundar was a McKinsey alum and looks at everything in terms of like organizational Design and change management. so Basically if Tim Cook was Mcenzie, they'd be fine. I stand by thatound This is a pro McKinzie podcast now It is interesting because the McKinsey model of like like we talked about the engine room and farming it out to the product areas. I just spoke about this with MG on Monday Um, It might help make the specific products better, but the question is can you build a unified assistant with that model because you still have this centralized division working with product areas within Google like Gmail and Maps and search. If we're going to move towards a quote unquote super app You know, you're going to need these product areas to suceede their egos u to sort of make that centralized app work Right again, like you were talking previously. What's the cutting edge now It's learning what to call Right. It's learning what systems to tap into And if you have a lot of systems that you know sort of prefer that people spend time within them or prefer priority over others h it's going to be tough in the centralized assistant world. On the topic of super apppp in a bit, we're going to get to u One of the O stories where we'll discuss it more and I have some gripes. but U one of the most interesting parts of this was one of the biggest addeditions this year is a dedicated Si app. for holding conversations and continuing past chats, users can jump into the S app by pulling down on a result. So basically, Dedicated Syria, running conversations, basically your chat GPT ish style assistant Do you think Siri is going to become the super A One to two years from now I think that's Apple's ambition. I mean, that's part of the ambition for sure. Do you think there is a slide deck Siri, the super A? Super somewhere. Super A Siri I mean, I mean, the truth is IOS is a super app, right? So these apps become operating systems of their own. right? That to me is like the real the real question in terms of the viability of Apple's business model moving forward. It's if the chatbot and the AI becomes the operating system What's your answer it? So you would imagine that there're thinking about that Super abbs. suuper abbsory Okay, so we'll obviously watch and come back next week and talk a little bit about what we've seen In the meantime, we should definitely talk about anthropic telling us that AI may be close to recursive self improvement, and maybe it's time to slow it all down Of course, Microsoft and openp AI once partners now starting to battle it out for the crown. That's coming up right after this This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a fifty page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online makes sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responssees setup required compatibility and availability varies eighteen plus I cashed out my entire four hundred one K thinking someone stole my identity. A fake email cost me my dream home after I sent my personal information to a scammer. My AI agent wired thousands to an account I'd never seen. If Billions of people feel unsafe, that's no longer a security problem. It's an economic one. At Gen, we're building the trust layer for a more fearless planet. products and technologies from our global brands, Norton, Lifeelock, Avast, and Money Lion See it in action at genendigital. com Now we're back here on Big technology podcast, Friday Edition with Ron Jon Roy of Margins. As we do every Friday, Ranjan, I thought of you when I saw the headline of Anthropics's latest blog post or really an article. The headline is when AI builds itself our progress towards recursive self improvement and its implication. This is from the story Anthropic engineers on average ship eight times as much code per quarter as they did from twenty twenty one to twenty twenty five That is of course, with the assistant of AI models like Mhos. The rare occurrences of misalignment present in today's models could compound as the models build their successors, growing more frequent, but less understood we lose control of them. The argument is basically AI has made engineers much more productive than they were previously. There's still a human in the loop. There may not need to be and if there doesn't need to be There could be some problems What did you think when you saw this and the numbers, the posts, the ideas What was your reaction? I Can't even right now I actually, I think one of the things that It is funny. I feel we're at the point of the market cycle where I'm like going to be citing Eitron more who has been quite a bear and I still vehemently disagree with them on the potential of the technology itself, but I liked he had said after this announcement was like Get some fucking new material, please. I mean, it's just a We have heard this over and over again. I talked a lot about this a few weeks ago when The Mythos announcement was so and a developer eating a sandwich in the park and receiving a message that had broken out of containment. was a very clear kind of PR coordinated message push. Um, it's My question to Anthropic is as they are steam rolling ahead and obviously like to me, one of the most interesting stories of the next two to three months is who gets out first and when SpaceX anthropic open AI. How do they get out? It's this rush to get out to the public markets If you want to slow things down, you can. You don't need to raise another sixty five billion dollars at a nine hundred and fifty dollars valuation and then start kind of leaking that your S one or I guess actually fllowing your S one This is truly A risk to humanity that can pose significant societal risks. Wouldn't you stop? Why wouldn't you like what do you think It is. Do you think it's just Do you think Dario believes this? Do you think there's a large group of people that do believe this, but then The marketers and business folks and growth folks Override them Do you think this I know, I mean, we go over this a lot, but Where's your head right now as we get closer to the anthropic IPO of really is behind this messaging and what do people really believe All right, first of all, I think that we should sort of tackle the core message here And would you before we go into what's going on within the company Would you agree at least that the AI coding tools from Anthropic have gotten way better and enabled people to do much more Six months ago, yes. I think the four point eight was actually like kind of like a Pretty big dud. Okay, but the line is moing upward. No, no of course, but none of that if whatever has whatever exists in the last one month. existed in their in their line of sight six to eight months ago If that was truly the case One would hope deceent people would be like, lets let's figure this out. let's actually slow things down Again, one to two months before your actual IPO. continue this, maybe we should have Like like again, in terms of the actual qualification of risk of overall AI. I think it's just a separate conversation from this. For the sake of argument, you could argue That's such an argument you could argue ouble argue it anyway. one day any statement that starts with that I'm excited for that they did slow down to a degree by deciding not to release metthos to everybody. And a lot of this coding h, improvement has happened because of myhos internally You're saying That Okay, sore you're still for the sake of argument, you are arguing that that was the official slowdown. I don't know, like Is it de raaising this much money, pushing ahead with this intensity Organizationally, like one decision maybe meet us Is this be all end all god model that like will destroy humanity and they have no I'm not saying that. No say no, no, I mean'. Maybe it's not like, you know, so special. Maybe some of the latest open AI models can do similar things, but what it's trying to do is set this tone That's like, you know, if If you can use this model to hack through things, we should be careful about the way we roll it out No I Appreciate that. idedea But still, then you don't roll it out as we had discussed. then you don't have a big press announcement with named partners and then now there's reporting that they're apparently working with the NSA. And like again, they have the greatest PR and comps team in the world in terms of like understanding which stories can actually make it into the press, like you wouldn't do that. You would actually In the background, coordinate and kind of work with everyone who is needed to to try to actually solve this problem. It wouldn't be a PR release with a large consortium named.s That's why even that If it were real I still think it was would be handled in a more in a different way. likeike if it was real because I would not how would you handle it? You have only mean because Go ahead, gohead. H, let's say You got a new model. you suddenly Alex is sitting there in a Brooklyn apart has a bunch of as your own colossus set up and suddenly You train Kantrowitz five point seven Sddenly, you're like, oh my god This could has the potential too ose significant societal risks. What do you do next First of all, if I had a cololossus set upp in my Brooklyn apartment, I guarantee you The morning after I set it up, my wife would have every single one of those servers On the verb we would finally have space in our apartment. So I promised you the next day there would be racks and racks of Ver Rubens on the curb in Brooklyn. I promise you, it doesn't matter how much they're worth Okay, so now What would I do? And this is what I was gonna to say, only because you're so myopic about this. wouldouldn't you do exactly what they're doing? So this is the this is the argument, right? The argument is If you are why keep pushing forward if you feel the technology is potentially dangerous? You keep pushing forward because you feel the technology while you feel the technology is dangerous, because if you are building the leading models, you actually have a say in the way that the deployment works. People will listen to you. If ifanthropic was gw was like meta right now and had like, you know whatever their their their latest model is that they're delaying, by the way And they said, hey, you know, guys in the front maybe slow it down, no one will listen to them the argument is you only really have influence on the way this works if you are leading and the way that you do that is you're lied about it So you are taking the I alone can fix it I'm not I'm not first of all, I'm not taking this is you. this is you in your colossus and you have just made a significant breakthrough this on me. I was trying to talk you through the other side of this heart. I like how in this thought experiment you have just turned into this world This James Bondian villain, but continue. No, I promise you. My real world experience of this would be waking up in a Tony Soprano bathrobe and walking out, getting the newspaper and seeing like colosses black walls next to the fire eyrant. I promise you. Okay. And that was actually That slows down the destruction of humanity and that's why she did it for you. That's right. So thank you for that. Thank. but seriously Yeah. I mean, what what is your I just want to get your response to that argument you stay in the lead so people listen to you and you're loud because you want to have influence over the process Uh, my resesponse would be They have been saying this since the beginning. And I do think there was a moment that they might have believed it, but no matter who is in the lead Open AI and anthropic Sam and Dario, but now the entire organizations actually OAI has pulled back from it. You can see like pretty purposefully But this idea that this technology is so incredibly dangerous, yet I will continue to push ahead at full steam has always been kind of the narrative and it's helped them tremendously I mean, have you ever heard Sundar say that He said it's fire But uh Which would be no any hearing. No, you haven't. But obviously Sundar's perspective is going to be different than theirs Why? Why Well I guess maybe obviously is the wrong word, but Google has always been more wouldouldn't say? I mean, they removed donon't be evil, right? Like they started that way. they became a normal. you're buying into it, Alex. You're buying it. Raising sixty five billion dollars at a nine hundred fifty billion dollars valuation is about as capitalistic as it gets No, okay, no, you're right, you're right. And let me now, I was saving this, but you've now sort of forced me to spit it out. Let's do job Speaking of Google The okay, I learned a lot from Jeff Hinton when we sat down and that interview is on the feed from the Wednesday showh The thing that will probably stay with me the longest from Hinton is not him saying AI is conscious, although I thought that was really interesting It was our discussion about safety, and particularly whether Anthropic would be able to pursue its safety mission while on the public market And as Hinton points out. When you IPO You have a legal obligation to your shareholders to maximize profit and not to maximize AI safety And I just don't see how it adds up whereanthropic continues to pursue the safety mission while it's legally required to maximize profit for shareholders. Yeah, but you also have a legal obligation to not destroy humanity I mean, again, like that's that's a hyperbolic statement, but like, I mean are you on, right? No, no, no no, but u It's it's like again, if you can be Philip Morris turned ultria is a public company but still has to abide by You know, I guess those are actual regulations and they're not self imposed, but like Still we are In twenty twenty six, the whole corporationsays good Everyone kind of move past that, but like Still I think if you have a fundamental technology that can pose significant societal risks. Investors aren shouldn't like that if that were true Okay, let's just presresents a risk that presents. Let's give an example. Let's talk through an example. All right Andthropic is public. It has methos. Opening eye has just released like a dynamic coding model. Right And, you know, yes, there's a cost benefit analysis. Yes, it might lead to more hacks, but it also will end up you know, providing Anthropic with the ability to grow faster than open eye and head off this threat Couldn't there be shareholder lawsuits, if it you know, decides to hold back Mhos because there's, you know, it's not an end of the world situation. It's okay, there's a few more cyber hacks that we want to be mindful about, it becomes much more difficult to do that when you're on the public market Are you saying that OpenAI presented the risks of mythos as just a few more cyber hacks No, you're saying anthropic. sorry anthropic, Anropic Yeahah. is just a few more cyberhecks, not a big deal. Maybe u Y your squarespace site goes down a couple of times. It's up to first of all, it's up to the shareholders. and second, It becomes Wouldn't you agree it becomes much harder to hold something like that back if you're on the public That's all I'm say I I think it brings a lot more attention to it and actually the good thing is it would actually Force more transparency around the reality of the situation You just took my side. ' that's why I was trying to say the whole whole show No, but I don't think it forces them It adds I don't think the legality of a shareholder lawsuit because Anthropic in a competitive battle does not release the model that actually they have marketed themselves presents significant risks and had to like national security, like at every level. I think shareholders, the idea that they would sue that you did not release that to the general public when a competitor was being careless and callous. I don't think would happen I don't know. All right. And nowadays anything's possible in the financial markets. but so let me see if I can I think there is consistency to your position here And I think I reacted to something different in terms of Your transparency is the transparency from the company, not transparency in the industry Fair enough is your position that Right now Anthropic telling us about all these you know, models. And by the way, that we I mean, we've sort of kind of talked over it, but they did then, after saying that the models could recursively self improve, say it might be a good idea for frontier building to pause for a bit Okay. So is your position? them doing this, building and saying this is actually marketing and actually they are a capitalist company, you know, as everybody else. Yeah. and don't don't believe that stuff. It's marketing. And when they go public being public will still, you know, even though they are, you know, this a company that does good marketing and see is trying to maximize profit share, maximize shhareholder value and doesn't have a special thing about privacy a special thing about safety, they'll still be required to act withith safety in mind. So it's not inconsistent Yes, I think so. I think. I think we've aligned.. Well, I'm just repeating your point. I will say it's a vidree A you ag? Okay, okay. I'm not ready to agree just yet but I think it's a valid argument. But I want to bring it back to the beginning Do you think The average anthropic employee is genuinely believes they own and like operate technology and in their own words that pose unprecedented cybersecurity risks severe enough to cause widespread disruption to the global financial system and critical infrastructure A little more dramatic than a few cyber attcks Okay, I have this let's end with this. I have this actually from the Wall Street Journal story. a quote from one of our favorite sources, friend of the program, I guess, he's been once, Ethan Mok, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania'sarton Sch and an influential scholar on AI transformation. Here's what he told The Wall Street Journal. While some anthropic critics see fluff and marketing in their safety pronouncements, many within the company are true believers. AI labs are a mix of things, said Mollk. There is a trillion dollar company With all the normal trillion dollar company stuff like marketing teams and lawyers, there is a corps of researchers who are just building the next models. and then there is a set of people who are philosophher kings and concerned about the future and what comes next And they're all in conflict with each other at times. I think that's about as good of an explanation as I was going to get. We just talked about this. We've been talking about this for months. Ethan just He just made it all make sense to me. Any wayay, is this coexistence book going to be about this con this idea So he has a book AI coexistence coming out in the fall, according to the story. I don't think it's going to be about how these people coexist within anthropic. I think it's going to be about us. coexisting with AI, but I think we can bring him on the show and get him to talk. J just coexistence. let' let's coexist together. We shall. Oh, speaking of coexistence, wa, that was a beautiful segue. Can Microsoft and open A? co exist. Microsoft has been on like the weirdest press tour this week. I don't know if you've paid attention to it. but they had this build event where they announced a bunch of their AI announcements and the core thing was like, hey, look You know, we are we're not wedded to open AI anymore, so we can just go do our stuff and we're going to build like the best AI models. But a lot of it was like them U king about like how like we know, I mean, I guess you wantan to acknowledge that you're behind just like Google did recently with the coding apps Uh But they really got taken to the cleaners in a couple of these pieces. My favorite line was one in the Verge Um Let's see. For years, Microsoft AI business leaned hard on its early and exclusive partnership with Open AI, but the drama filled marriage slowly devolved into a situationship, and the pair effectively separated in late April But Microsoft is still opening eye's primary cloud partner for now. This year's build had the vibe of a freshly single Divor posting a thirst trap Instagram It's always fun to be at developer conferences in great times of change, Microsoft CEO Satanyia Aadeeles said on stage Tuesday, adding that events like this are about coming to grips with the new opportunity. And To do that, Microsoft has basically said, all right, we are ready to go and compete head to head with open AI. The goal is to prove that we can become one of the top four labs in the world, Mustafa Suleiman, the head of One of Microsoft AI divisions told the Verge. He said, there's three labs that matter Google Deepmind, open Eye and anthropic, We are not one of them at the moment and that's always been my intention I just love that Ma is not on there, even though I mean, we kind of know it, but still it's always interesting to see it place that definitively. I've been thinking about this so The same way Apple solely by owning the end user real estate, With the iPhone has an opportunity, Microsoft certainly I mean, we hear about this all the time time. Everyone has co pilot, the tens of millions, hundreds, millions, people, whatever it is, like If they figure it out it's interesting Do you think there's a world where Microsoft and Apple a year from now are interesting in this I'm not even going say are are winning, but Even the way Google within a year the span of a year became a player Do you think Microsoft has a chance? Do you think Microsoft Dfinitely Sure. Why not? I mean, they they have, like you said, they have office, they have access to open eyes IP I don't think they're like Well, here's a better question. I mean, like first of all, okay, let me answer your question, then I'll ask a question to sort of end this. So I think there's a chance U and they have the, like you said, the products. I think there's a chance for Apple. They have the products. Um If you're Microsoft, why do you care about building foundational AI models? I seriously don't get it. I think it's because of Sleiman. I think it's like this is one of those things organizationally, like he's there. He's not there to like build a new co pilot product feature and And my favorite still is in the most Microsoft way, which kind of Google seems to have moved past likeike, They have this new thing Microsoft IQ, but there's also work IQ, then there's fabric IQ, then there's foundoundry IQ, then there's web IQ. Just the way they kind of roll out in name products is comical at times, but I think they like that's the stuff that that laayir is not interesting. He was brought out and he has power within the organization too. be a player. and okay I think it's that simple. Do you think what I want to I want to dig a level deeper on this All right, so he was brought on to do this. Why strategically is there a reason for Microsoft to do this? And you can't go I don't think there is I In fact, I think the Apple on So I can tell you model routing has become like so dominant in conversations in my world now. Like it went from you know, like just there's you have to have the latest frontier model and they're all encompassing. And within the span of two months, everyone is like find the right model for the right problem model cost optimization, tokenomics. so So If I'm Microsoft, I actually agree. I don't think that's the right approach. I think like, you know what? let them all battle it out over there is going to suddenly make Syria a powerhouse because it's going to be called a best model at the time and we're all gonna Forget about Bellar Ramsy's ad and maybe Microsoft has a as a chance to But okay Let you give one reason why they might do it Sat D Nadeell is speaking to Ben Thompson in Statechory So Mr Ben Thompson tells Sat Nela that open Aye is a major tenant on Azure He goes, they're a major tenant, but let's face it face it, anthropic overt time or open AI over time build their own, it makes sense pretty sure that's talking about a cloud service. And openenAye has talked about building its own Cloud Service And so ultimately, if you're Microsoft, you're going to compete with open AI So opening eye can build the servers, which you have for Azure and then put the AI model on top of them The only way to compete with that is to have your own foundational models Maybe that's the re Okay. I mean I still don't buy it though Why not? I don't know, like if opening A cloud, opening eye makes open Ae AI clloud and you can't answer that, right? then maybe you do want to build your own models That's a big if. That's a a big if. I mean a lot of ambition. It is actuallyidey Mzella believes it's a possibility. Wait, that is actually interesting because ' fununny, like heading into IPO season. Hot IPO summer with Anthropic openp AI and everybody, SpaceX. No one has actually talked about AI cloud in terms of open AI's potential business model. That was like a passing comment from Sam. Like, do you think Satya really believe said or has Some information, I don't know, like the fact that he's even addressing that is kind of shocking to me. Very interesting. Yeah. sorry. I had that. I put that in the dock and forgot about it, but that to me is What you might That's a storying. That's a story. Funny enough, none of the report. I don't I didn't see any reporters outside and, you know, bring that up. U and make that connection. I mean, I guess Thompson was the best at getting it out, but still like the conversation. What does Sata know I mean, he's got to know something. He's gota know something. He has all their IP til twenty thirty two, so yeah All right. Well, well folks, forgive my voice this week. I just completely blew it out Beer authority next to port authority onm forty second Street in New York On Wednesday night, watching the N next beat the Spurs and we're about to head into Friday night and I think I'm gonna to let what's what's left of it go. So Maybe it's a good thing I'm not going be on inside at WWDC. I won't be able to speak I'm sitting here looking down at Madison Square Garden from the eighteenth floor of Penn pllaza and It's u it's there's a lot of people out there, even though they're not playing here. there's Blue and orange as far as the eye can see Are you're a Celtics fan I am. I'm rooting for the Kicks right now. I'm out of New York sports teams Like there's no part of me that could ever come around to the Yankees Giantserjettes. but I don't know, the Nicks especially this team. I mean, you can't hate And and I' I' They've I'm not saying I'm bandwagoning fully, but I'm certainly rooting for them. But as a general fan of the NBA I mean, these are the I can't root against either of these teams and it's just good to watch. So I'm enjoying. Thatuch a fun story. Yeah. Yeah.s I don't know about you. That's my weekend tonight. yell at the TV for three hours straight tomorrow, wake up get the newspaper and see a whole pack of data center servers on the curb. Sunday flight it San Francisco only to not be led into WWDC. I'm excited. I thinka did h aad I'm just gonna there was that story that NvIidia iss gonna pay people to like build data centers in their house or something? I saw that. Sign us up, Jensen. We're ready No. We're ready actually No Alex is not ready You would find my cold body on the sidewalk in the morning but I put one of those. the backyard that we don't have. Yeah. I think New York apartment owner holders are probably last on that list which we can pass on the backyard server. All right, Rjaan, have a command. Oh. And folks, Ranja and I are going to be doing the show live at the Big Technology suummit on june eighteenth. I think it's probably the last time I'll mentioned it until you hear some of the episodes because we're going to post them on the feed Um can be in San Francisco at the Commonwealth Cub Summit at bigig technology. com We're just about sold out. Thank you to everybody who signed up. It's been s pretty overwhelming the respse we've gotten, and we're going to have one hell of the day. San Francisco. So's hopeed to be doing that with you Rjon A excited Yeah, it's gonna be great, and I think we'll leave it there. So thanks everybody for listening and watching, and we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast Our head of accounting here at Fanatics Casino has filed another complaint about how rewarding we are. temh complained this month. And I quote, I feel it's my duty to bring to your attention the amount of winning that's going on with our fan cash spins game. I implore you to pull back on the rewards, Gran from acccounting. Appreciate her tenacity. We should reward her Maybe with a nice fruit basket or something. At Fatics Casino, the house always rewards G gambling problem call one hundred gambl. No pur necessary.idit it must be twenty one plus not avable states terms applies. Fan Casin I cashed out my entire four hundred one K thinking someone stole my identity. A fake email cost me my dream home after I sent my personal information to a scammer. My AI agent wired thousands to an account I'd never seen If billions of people feel unsafe, that's no longer a security problem. It's an economic one. At Gen, we're building the trust layer for a more fearless planet with products and technologies from our global brands, Norton, Lifeelock, Avast, and Money Lion See it in action at genendigital. com