Big Technology Podcast - Meta's Big Llama 3 Release, Google's New Culture, MKBHD vs. Humane

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

Alex Heath from The Verge is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) Taylor Swift's new album 2) Meta's new Llama 3 release 3) Does conversational AI work in a social media products? 4) Will the value of generative AI be realized in foundational models or products? 5) Zuck's new icon status 6) Bearded Zuck 7) The risks of open sourcing massive AI models 8) Sundar Pichai writes a stern letter to Google employees 9) Google fires 28 employees involved in office takeover protest 10) Is a new Google culture taking hold? 11) Should product reviewers be kinder when products suck. ---- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack? Here’s 40% off for the first year: https://tinyurl.com/bigtechnology Questions? Feedback? Write to: [e-mail]

Met has introduced its new Big Lama 3 AI model. Google fired 28 protesting employees for taking over its offices, and do reviewers like MKBHD have a duty to not kill companies whose products suck. All that and more coming up right after this. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday edition, where we break down the news in our traditional cool-headed and nuanced format. We have a great guest for you today. Alex Heath has fresh off a conversation with Mark Zuckerberg talking about the Lama News.

He's the deputy editor of The Verge and he's the author of the Command Line newsletter and he's here with us today to break down everything that's happened this week. Alex, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me, Alex. Always good to have a double Alex pod. Two Alexes.

This should be an epic week. First of all, like we're continuing our cycle of every Friday or every week having a big celestial event happened. We had three weeks ago an earthquake last week in Eclipse. This week, Taylor Swift's new album is out the tortured poets department. So we're keeping up this streak. Have you gotten a chance to listen to it

today? You know, I actually started playing it like an hour ago. And I don't know, man. I really feel like I shouldn't weigh in here unless you, unless you have something like overwhelmingly positive to say about Taylor Swift. I've realized it's best to just not put opinions on the internet. So I'm not going to be afraid with my thought here. And I'll tell you this. I hit play. I was eager to see what she had. It's obviously been a very hyped album. And I realized that I am Taylor Swifted out. Between the exposure at the NFL and the fact that she's become this mega, even bigger than mega celebrity, I am, I think I'm good for the time being on new Taylor Swift music. And I'm not ashamed to admit it. It doesn't mean she's not great at what she does. But I've had my share of

Taylor Swift. I'm ready for something new. RIP your mentions, Alex. All right, well, we'll take your silence here as telling, but we won't put you on the spot. Something that you will be able to comment on is this new meta-Lama-3 model. Obviously, it's really, when you talk about like Lama 1, Lama 2, Lama 3, it's a large language model, but it's really more than one model. They've released two models this week's, two smaller models. And they're working on a massive one that's set to come out this summer. And of course, you know, we have GPT4 and Claude.

These are not open-source models. are. And, you know, it's a very big strategic moment for them in terms of putting these out. So we'd love to hear your reaction to what this, what meta is doing here and where it puts them in the conversation in the broader AI world. Yeah, I mean, I'd also be curious to hear what you think. I think they have been considered a leader in open source AI, especially with Lama 2 last year. But now with Lama 3 and the assistants and putting that everywhere in WhatsApp, Instagram, if you start using the search box and Facebook and Instagram, you're going to see meta AI, at least in the U.S. and a bunch of other countries. So that's a big bet. That's a lot of real

estate. And I think, you know, I talked to Zuckerberg this week about it. And I think he wants to use kind of their massive distribution to kill Chad GPT in the cradle, if he can, so to speak. I mean, I think they, he sees this area of, you know, AI chatbots, agents as something that meta has to be in. And I don't know, man, it's not, it's not super obvious to me that that is a thing that makes sense inside a social media app. I think the jury is still out on if people want to be using like a chat GPT like experience next to their friend chats and WhatsApp. Right.

So I think they've got to prove that. This is now, they're in the like, I don't know, this week was the like firing gun of the race and now they have to prove that they can execute and that people actually want this. And so I think the pressure is on. Well, let's talk about that right from the start. And I definitely want to talk a little bit about these models and their capabilities, but I think the productization is really the key here. So your point about whether this should live within a social media company, well,

it's a messaging company, I think, first and foremost. right meta had this pivot to privacy basically the company figured out that people don't really want to share as much on news feeds they want to share privately within messaging groups and so they've you know you think about what facebook is today and the big blue app is much less important i would argue than the messaging apps messenger and what's and what's happened to some extent instagram is is a messaging app with the media sort of front end and so if you're thinking about where one of these bots is going to live Naturally, wouldn't it be in a messaging app where you would effectively your messaging with your friends? You can call it in, you know, to conversations with your friends when you're like trying to find something to do or trying to answer a question. And then also it is a conversational interface. So why not have that live within a messaging app? Yeah, I guess just the mental model that I have for these chat bots is that there are things that you go to separately, right? like the chat gpt app and i think of them more as like utilities right now than i do

like another friend almost um that would live next to like where my mental model is when i go into what's app is like to talk to people or groups of people and so adding in like a chat gpt type experience that feels a little strange i know like in the virgin newsroom there was a lot of heated opinion about whether this was a good idea and people had a lot of strong opinions that they didn't want this in their WhatsApp. So they have to prove that people want it. And what Zuckerberg told me was they see the feedback loop of this. So basically getting this out to more people, having more people engage with it and then learning from that and how they can improve from that as being one of their key differentiators over time versus like an anthropic or a chat GPT, which just has

less surface area and less potential users to reach by default of just not having a network of 3 billion plus daily users that Meta has. So it makes sense why they're doing it from like a, you know, if you really believe that these AI agents are the future and that's how we're going to be interacting with competing. You want to get it out there. Meta has a mixed track record on this stuff, right? And, you know, I think, but I think Zuckerberg sees this as like you've got, you had stories, you know, which was like a format that Snap invented, and then they grafted on to

meta-zaps, and then the same thing with Reels, which was, you know, TikTok basically, which has works now and has done really well for them. And I think he sees the assistant as the same thing for these AI chatbots. And I mean, he's very clear, like he wants this to be the most used AI assistant in the world. And they have a shot just by default of the distribution. It shows how distribution is still king. And even if you have cool tech and you start the race like opening I did, it may just come down to distribution at the end of the day. It is really important, like the type of personalities that these things take on in different

settings, right? So in meta, that might be more social within chat cheap ET, it might be more informational. Claude, you might want to like talk with your documents there. Like there's different versions of this. And it may be that, you know, because of that distribution, they They can sort of steer what this becomes. And this is sort of what you talked about, how distribution is so important, right?

We have a comment tier coming in. People don't come back to chat GPT. And it's true. I mean, chat GPT, the usage from the data that I see has really leveled off, like hit that 100 million user benchmark pretty quickly and then hasn't really blown past that. In fact, it seems to have shrunk.

And so even if meta isn't the perfect place for this, it still seems like it has chance to live out that vision that Zuckerberg wants to see because again because of that distribution right like let's say chat cheap t's at 200 million users right now right nothing compared to the billions of people that now have access to meta AI yeah I mean that's the bet we'll see right I think it's been a running joke inside meta you know for the last six months or so because they first debuted this assistant in September of last year right and it was only in the US but It's kind of a joke inside meta that no one uses it and not even like meta employees use it.

And it was also kind of hard to find though. Like you had to kind of search it out, right? I was actually shocked in the Virgin Newsroom how many people didn't even know that this assistant already existed in their WhatsApp and Messenger. And that's why meta is now putting it, I mean, literally inside the Facebook feed. So if you're scrolling and there's a video that may like recommend prompt based on what's, in the video like do you want to learn guitar like this um and same thing with the search ig search box is probably one of the most you know traffic surfaces of that app uh and the fact that the assistant's going to be right there in a lot of metis biggest markets is is a big bet and it's

um they would normally test this for a really a long time a b tested in different countries with different cohorts and they're just turning it on for everyone which means it's a it's a top down huge bet and yeah I don't know they they want to play to win here and they have a really great research group it's definitely I wouldn't say it's considered to be as elite as open AIs but they're definitely in the top you know three or four research groups in the world you've got Google open AI them anthropic so they've got a lot of the right ingredients and they've got a lot of lot of GPs. So I'm really interested to see with Lama 3, this 400 billion parameter model that they're training. I know you talk to Ahmad, their head of Gen AI on the pod this week. And

that's going to be a big deal if they open source that. There's not been a model that large and that complex that's been open sourced. And I'm curious to see like from a bigger than meta perspective picture what pressure that puts on open AI and others to either open source or not. So, Alex, what is your, I mean, you've brought up, like, a lot of the skepticism here in terms of whether this will work. What is your sense on whether it will work or not? Like, God, I don't know. I know you're a reporter and you're going to beg off this question, but just, like,

handicap it a little bit. Like the assistant or a llama three? Well, let's go, let's go both. I mean, Lama three is going to be, is a big deal. I mean, it's just, it's already, I think it's been, they said it had been downloaded like over 100 million times. It's been used in a lot of apps already. It's a huge part of the developer ecosystem for AI already. So the third, you know, Lama 3, with especially the 400 billion one when that comes out, that's a, it's a big deal for the industry.

In terms of the consumer applications of this as an assistant in meta's properties, I don't know. They have a good shop. It has to be a good product. And I'm looking forward to trying the assistant more now that it's been upgraded with Lama 3. I think there was a sense that Lama 2 was, it was barely like chat GPT 3.5 level performance. So these bots are really only as good as the models that power them. And so now that there's a model that is more approaching GPT4,

and when the 400 billion one comes out, maybe even exceeds it on some areas, that will make the assistant more compelling. You know, they've also got Google in there now, which Google's providing real-time search results, which I think they're the only chat bot besides Google's own Gemini that has that.

So they've got Bing and Google. I'm sure they'll build some other hook-ins. They've got to keep building it out and making it. I think it's pretty bare bones right now. But they've got to make it more personalized as well as something I really want. Like I've heard that they will probably let you eventually be able to generate images based on your likeness on like Instagram, for example. Oh, that's definitely coming. Yeah.

Yeah. And like that's cool and that's unique to what they do. So they need to have more kind of unique wedges that complement the fact that your internet presence is already on their apps. And they have a lot that's a lot of valuable data that they can use to personalize the assistant to you. and like if I'm you know searching on Instagram for you know ideas for like a Japan trip that I'm taking next month I would like the assistant to know that and to know what I'm already looking for and like if I ask it a question be like well you looked at this spot in Kyoto this is another one that looks you know very similar stuff like that so I think it's like we're in

the very very beginning of this stuff especially for a meta and they have to move really quickly because open AI is moving really quickly and if I talked to Zuckerberg about this if open AI puts out GPT5 later this year does that leapfrog them again and what do you said reset everything you know so it's a fast moving space that's why it's so fun to cover and what did Zuckerberg say with that to that question um the thing i mean he he can't know right I mean no one really knows what gpt 5 is going to hold but um he made the point which is fair that they put out Lama 2 after GPT 4 had already come out. And now 3 is coming out before GPT 5.

And they're about to train version Lama 4. And they're already road mapping Lama 5. They're moving very fast. Yeah, with this model, they said that they had, they're using 10 times the amount of data and 100 times the amount of compute that they used to do too. And that's what Ahmed Eldella told me on Big Tech War Stories, which is the show I do through big technology.com, like the newsletter,

separate to this one. It was a very interesting conversation where we talked about the making of these models. And of course, like, again, like we've talked about it a couple of times in this conversation. There's like the two smaller models that are out now and this bigger, a 400 billion parameter model that's supposed to come out this summer, which is like four or five times the size of what they have now. And I want to talk about that because there's questions about whether they're going to open source it. But I think this conversation also gets to the value of where, gets to where value is going to be created with these models, right? because you have, of course, the actual development of the model themselves, and that's what meta and Open AI and Anthropic and Google are competing on.

And then you have the way that it gets built into products. And there's been so much focus on the actual models. But I guess like one of my thoughts here is that the model race is going to matter less and less as these things converge because the real money is going to be made in terms of how people turn this into products. And it's almost like meta has this week even push that home even more because its Lama 3 model is good enough and it's going to be, you know, it's going to be free to everyone to use it through open source. And it's good enough that like you can get it and it's not like there's going to be riches if you build something incrementally better than it because people will just go with it. So that seems to me like we've always asked like, where's the economic benefit going to come from this AI revolution?

And more and more, it seems like it's going to be with semiconductors, like Nvidia, and then the way that you build products on top of it. So like whether Alama 3 is as good as GPT4 or not, it seems almost like beside the question. Like the real point is the one we started earlier, which was, you know, is this going to actually deliver value in a product for meta? And I think everybody who's building with AI is that, including Microsoft, is asking, is AI going to deliver value in our products? And that's the big question right now. What do you think about that? I think that is exactly right. I mean, I cover this stuff and I don't get a ton of value out of these chatbots.

You know, the hallucination problem is a big one for me. And being able to trust what it tells me, like if I'm using it for research, for a story, and I want to like compare a bunch of financials or something that are actually, it would be actually kind of hard to find all this and SEC documents, etc. and I asked the model to do it in a very specific way. And it gives me an answer, but it's like, I can't trust it. And therefore, why am I using this to begin with? Because like, then I'll have to go find all of it anyway, which I was trying to avoid by using the model.

So the more it can be grounded, the more things like search are integrated and you can, it can learn from you. I think the more valuable this stuff will become. I mean, clearly people want to use this stuff. I mean, I don't think meta would be putting this across all their products like this if this was some flash-in-the-pan interface. It's just early, man. I know I said that already, but I just feel like the industry is moving so fast, even though consumer interest in actually using these tools as valuable parts of everyday life is relatively early.

And I think I think Zuckerberg knows that and like he knows he hopes at least that the meta AI will be the first time that millions of people are introduced to conversational generative AI like this because even with chat GPT hitting that 100 million user mark as quick as they did I think that was monthly or something it wasn't daily there's a lot of people a lot of millions of meta users that have never used a chatbot, right? And it's kind of it reminds me of stories, right? Like we both covered that era with Snap and the competition there. And they really kneecapped Snap and heard its growth by taking this kind of magic thing that Snap had and introducing it to a lot of people where it's like at that point, it's like, why do I need to go download another app? If I have a really good

chatbot in my WhatsApp, why would I download the chat GPT app? Exactly. And last year I wrote this story that said Mark Zuckerberg is coming for Sam Altman and Open AI. Yeah. And it's like Zuckerberg, first of all, he's very good at seeing a product that's taking off and has mass user appeal and baking that into Facebook. And I also think there's an element of like he wants to be the alpha dog in the tech world. And it almost like it's so interesting because there's been all these different attempts for Zuckerberg to shape his image, whether that was like the tour that he did around America or, you know, the different speeches that he gave defending free speech. that stuff but it seems to finally be working for him and i think one of the signs that i've seen is that there's been this image floating around social media uh this past week uh that's sort of a photoshop of his actual announcement video where he like gave the llama three update um clean cleanly shaven but with a chain and a t-shirt and someone photoshopped this beard onto him and it's been going wild and there's all these uh great memes of it like somebody wrote

wrote, I think they posted the picture and they did quote, you're the only girl I'm talking to with Zuckerberg and the beard. And it is interesting. It sort of goes to the image of Zuckerberg, which is kind of an important part of this whole thing. He's almost become, and I'm curious what your take is on this, this like kind of tech icon in a strange way where he's being worshipped in Silicon Valley as someone I think who's taken a beating. kept on shipping and has this kind of don't give a, you know, fuck attitude in terms of like what he's going to do. And that's sort of like the new Zuckerberg and it seems to be working.

What's your perspective on that? Yeah, I mean, I think it's certainly working. I think his comps team is thrilled. Yeah, it's, I don't know really what to attribute to. I mean, you said he's like an icon. I don't know if icon has positive or negative connotations. I think it can have both. But like, I think he's always been an icon.

I think he's always been like. But there's a different level to it now. Well, now he people like him. There's worship of him going through the timeline right now. Yeah, people in tech like him now, which is different. And he's seen as like an innovator, which is what he desperately wants and needs for recruiting and for all these reasons. And also just personal, you know, gratification and ego, right?

We all want to be loved. Yeah, man, I don't know. Like he, he's in his like, what is it? like chat era. I don't know. He's really just letting his hair down literally. And it's working from a perspective of like he seems to be more out there and willing to engage in a way that he felt really robotic and really closed off for a very long time. And we're both members of the press. I wonder what you think about this idea that this might be part of his ability to like he took a real beating from the press over the past few years.

Like there was a moment where you could say anything negative you wanted about Zuckerberg and no one would come after you. And sort of some of it became a little excessive. So he took this beating from the press. You know, he's continued to remain relevant, relevant through Facebook. He made these difficult year of efficiency decisions within Facebook. And then like, you know, almost to solidify his reputation as a fighter, right? Started doing UFC stuff or whatever his, his MMA.

do you think that's part of it that just that that's all connected the m a yeah yeah for sure i mean i think the mma literally was like it was the pandemic and he found a hobby a little bit but um yeah i mean i think he you know there's something he said i interviewed him around their connect event last year in the fall and there was something he said at the end about i just want to be like building awesome stuff again like i think he'd felt really pulled away and distracted by everything from Cambridge Analytica on through like 20 really into the pandemic that time period was all about politics scandals government he's spending a lot of time in policy world and not like he is an engineer and a product guy

at the end of the day and I think he feels like he's finally able to like focus on that because the reputation of the company is it constantly under fire like it used to be they're always like one scandal away from that happening right like they're i know they're they're terrified of a gemini diversity type scandal with the assistant for example like if that were to happen that's a whole another you know the metaverse stuff was rough in terms of kind of getting out ahead of their skis on messaging on that and then everybody kind of realizing there's not a lot there yet um but now that he's moved on to AI and that's what everyone cares about You know, they're able to position themselves as like a key, and it's true, they are a key

leader in the space. Yeah, I don't know. I just think he's like becoming more comfortable. Right. Oh, definitely appears that way. Yeah. Let me tell you where I think the potential misstep here is their commitment to open sourcing these models. Now, the argument that they're giving is that if this technology is going to be super powerful, better to give it in every everybody's hands versus allow one sort of unchecked actor to have it. And, you know, that sounds good in when you say it as a line. But then when you think about, think about it a little bit deeper like this, the fact that this technology, which is so powerful, can really be used by anyone if you open

sources, open sources. And you have really little recourse if someone goes against your rules. Like that is a, that seems like a potential vulnerability. And when I was speaking with Amid Aldela about the, I'm sorry, the metagenerative AI head about it, I said, well, are you gonna open source this 400 billion parameter, right? This massive model that's going on,

that they're gonna build and release in summer. They're training it right now. It wasn't a definitive yes. And that, I think that even shows this sort of discomfort that meta might have with what open sourcing all these models might have. Now I'm pro open source. I think it's obviously good,

be silly to be anti-open source, but it also goes to the point where like where you're, when you're spending these hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe billions of dollars to train these models, and they can do crazy things. How open do you want to make that? And I think there are potential downsides, like potential things that can explode in a negative way if this stuff is so freely released. I talked to Mark about that. And I do think they're going to open source the big model. They have to go through safety evaluation once it's done training. So they just can't say that until in case they're, I mean, he basically said barring any like really

unforeseen anomaly in the output of the model. It'll be open source. He wants to open source that they just can't, they can't definitively say it until they've evaluated it, which I think is like the responsible way to approach this. I think it would actually be even scarier if they were saying we're going to open source any tech we make, no matter even if we don't know. like what the model in state is going to be. But he did say like image generation, for example,

they made some big leaps in image generation with the new assistant in Lama 3. And he was saying, you know, different modalities of these models when you get out of text. So video output or text output, we may not open source those. And he specifically called out, you know, that it's an election year. And they were concerned about the image generation. being kind of just out there and freely available for developers to use in potentially, you know, more nefarious ways. So they may open source part of these models, but not the multimodality, which I think is interesting. But yeah, he's not like he wants to be out there as the open source leader, but he doesn't want to be dogmatic about it,

which I think is actually a nuanced position that I don't know, I'd rather him be thinking about it that way than being like dogmatic about it and going to open source nomadic. matter what. Yep. And it's been interesting, like the financial impact on the company. The stock jumped a bunch yesterday when they released the model and today down three and a half percent. So we'll see. I think just to recap, it looks like this model definitely puts them in conversation as one of the providers of the best models out there. I mean, we'll see what happens when GPT5 comes out. You're right. There might be this race. They get the distribution in the product. It's good for recruiting and and again it just kind of shows that like it's got to be productized if it's productized well it's valuable if it's not productized

well you're not you're not left with much yeah I mean I think you nailed it I remains to be seen if they will if they'll make it a good product that's kind of what they have to do now and if they don't this is a massive overreach in terms of what they thought they were there is there like reality lab spending going from VR to AI I don't I don't think it's, I don't think it's that simple. We actually, I talked about when he bought all the GPs he did. So there are, I think, maybe the first or second largest customer for NVIDIA.

I think they're maybe tied with Microsoft. 650,000 GPU equivalents by the end of this year. And he bought all of those like at the very end of, I think, 2022. So before GPT4 even came out. And this was when meta stock was at like $90. It had bottomed out. And he was placing this massive multi-billion dollar GPU. order and he said it was actually for reels um for doing recommendation videos for reels they were

crunched on that and they needed more compute and he was like but i just doubled the order because i didn't want to be in this position again where there was a big new thing that we needed to build for me didn't have the compute we needed for it that turned out to be pretty smart it turned out to be pretty smart something that really only like accompanied that scale with like founder control founder control could do i could imagine at google that getting shot down by like the CFO um but he made the call they did it and yeah i now they have all this compute um that they're using for llama three and four and five um and it was prescient to to kind of get that compute because now it's very hard to get h one hundreds um and so yeah i don't know they they're

definitely well resourced um they just they need to be seen as the leading place for the best in the industry to come. And I think that's part of why you see him so out there doing all these interviews with me and others is, I mean, he was open about this with me, you know, that the best people want to work on the biggest problems with the most impact, right? And so he wants meta to be that place.

Yep. And so you mentioned the Gemini thing. And obviously Google has been working behind the scenes to try to clean that up, clean up the structure. They promised structural changes. And those structural changes came this week. And there was a number of things. that happened. First of all, Sundar, which I had this, like, pretty remarkable memo that he sent

out to Google, and they published it, which means they want the world to see it. It's called building for our AI future. And one of the sort of least noted things that I think is really important is they're moving this responsible AI team in research to Google DeepMind, and Sundar says it's to be closer to where the models are built and scaled. Now, I don't know this for sure, but if I was to take a guess, I think this group had a lot to do with some of like the safety things that were placed into Gemini after it was built within Google Deep Mind, at least that's what I've heard and sort of led to this, you know, embarrassing moment for Google where this thing was just like getting everything historically wrong in terms of its image generation.

So now like that group is going to have a boss in Damasis Abbas, the head of Google DeepMind and won't be able to have such a big imprint. Obviously we'll do some checks on the product, but won't be able to like guide the product before it ships. So I thought that was pretty interesting from Sundar. And then there was another thing that he put, it seems like he kind of wrote this in the last a few days, like as he was like putting this together. But he had these four components. The shifts in AI were one. They also merged like Chrome and hardware and Android together. But he ends this note with this statement called mission first. And I've never seen this from Sundar and I think it's pretty important. I'm just going to read it.

He says, one final note, all the changes referenced above will help us work with greater focus and clarity towards our mission. However, we also need to be more focused in how we work, collaborate, discuss, and even disagree. We have a culture of vibrant, open discussion that enables us to create amazing products and turn great ideas into action. That's important to preserve. But ultimately, we are a workplace and our policies and expectations are clear. This is a business and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers. or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics. This is too important moment as a company for us to be distracted.

That's obviously kind of him putting his foot down in terms of all the internal political debate that's happened within Google. I'm curious what you think, A, about these changes, the structural changes, and B, this kind of like new tone that Sundar seems to be taking. I don't know, man. I don't know if I agree that it's a new tone. and it's fairly it's fairly normal for him which is like i don't know um milk toast i guess like it's it's kind of it feels a little i know he probably wrote it but it feels a little written by committee um i know goglars feel this way google employees um when they get memos from him um i mean we're skating around why he wrote that which is that they fired 28 employees um

I mean, not skating around, setting up. Well, I just, that's, I mean, let's talk about it, though. That didn't come out of nowhere, right? And, like, I thought the more remarkable memo was the one that came out the day before from Google's head of security announcing to the whole company that they fired 28 people, which, to my knowledge, for a sit-in protest over Google Cloud's Israel contract, I've never seen anything like that. I don't know if you have in covering tech for as long as we have. I've never seen a tech company fire that many people at once, especially in connection with a protest over something like this. Definitely was meant to send a message.

And the way the memo was warranted was very stern and had this warning saying, for those of you basically who are thinking of maybe doing something similar, like this is going to be your fate as well. And there were nine of them arrested to be physically dragged out of the offices. they were sitting in, you know, a couple days before. So, yeah, I mean, Sundar's flicking at that in that memo, which is really about a reorg of parts of the company. But I don't know, I mean, Google just feels so, I mean, I know you've been covering this

as well. It feels like so precarious right now. And so the culture is just very, very tense. And a lot of. dissenting in the ranks, a lot of frustrations with management at how the layoffs, the rolling layoffs have been handled, the Gemini stuff, the general just kind of slowness around adapting to new technology, the fact that Google invented the transformer, the T and chat GPT, and that they kind of missed this wave and are now playing catch-up, even though they

have arguably the best research group in the world. It's tough. Sunders in a really tough place. And I think he feels like he's got to get his arms around the rank and file. And I think that's part of what that memo was saying. But the employees definitely feel more emboldened than ever. I mean, Google's also, I mean, it's always been a pretty, I don't know, like bottoms up culture, especially when Larry and Sergey were there. And, you know, there's been many protests over the years, you know, they got Google to stop working with the Pentagon years ago. But now it's, you've got the, this pot of all this stuff happening and people already mad about the layoffs and things just feel really heightened. And I don't know,

what's your take on it? I mean, I'm going to make the argument. I'm going to push back here and make the argument that this is a new culture for Google. And I think that you can read Sundar as lines as a pretty powerful exclamation of where he wants this company to go. Now, from the Larry and Sergey days, Google's always been this place for free expression, bring your whole self to work, sort of setting the tone for that in Silicon Valley. And that includes political stuff. I mean, you remember in the leaked video that we have from after the Trump election, the Larry and Sergey especially, I think was up there talking about how devastated he was

that Trump was elected. And that was sending a signal to the employee base that Google was a place for, you know, effectively to do exactly what Sundar is saying that you can't do right now, saying that you can't use the company as a personal platform, right? That's exactly what they were doing. Sergei was doing after the election, and here we are. And now the employees have done it. And I think that for maybe the past, I don't know, seven years, Google has had a tremendous amount of political advocacy, happened within the company and trying to use the company for political advocacy. And maybe even to the extent that some people within that Gemini group

built their own political views into the product and sort of that backfired in a way. And I think this is a moment where Sundara said, you know, this has kind of gone too far. And that's why both him and Chris Rakow, his head of security, have to emphasize that it's a place of business. And in the past, where they might have tolerated employees, sort of taking over offices and making political statements about Google's projects, they're not doing that anymore. I mean, that's a shift. And you're right to reference this memo from Chris, Chris Rakow, the head of security. Here's the paragraph where he really tells people, enough is enough. He goes, we are a place of business and every Googler is expected to read our policies

and apply them to how they conduct themselves and communicate in our workplace. The overwhelming majority of our employees do the right thing. If you're one of the few who are tempted to think we're going to overlook conduct that violates our policies. Think again, the company takes us extremely seriously and we will continue to apply our longstanding policies, take action against disruptive behavior up to and including termination. I mean, basically what happened is they called the cops on the people that were occupying these offices, offices including the CEO of Google Cloud, including, yeah, Google Cloud CEO is Thomas Curion's office, and they got them arrested, and then they fired them.

And they might have even gone a little too far, like there's now some talk about people who were outside the building as part of this protest, but not inside the offices might have also been canned. But this definitely seems like a shift from the Google we've known under Sundar, which would tolerate this stuff and just doesn't seem like it's going to tolerate it anymore. So that's my perspective on it. I agree with that. I guess my point was more just that totally. Yeah. Sundar is not becoming like on the spectrum of Zuckerberg to, I don't know, pick, your most docile CEO imaginable.

I don't think Sundar's getting closer to Zuckerberg. He's definitely putting his foot down, as you said, in the way of just saying, you know, we're not going to allow this stuff. But I don't know, man. I think he hasn't gotten his hands around the company and the cultural backlash there that is so strong. And could maybe mean more frank and more take charge? I don't know.

this line was buried underneath a long thing about a rework you know it's a good point so so yeah i don't know sundar i'm really curious to see what happens with google uh in the next you know 12 months because they have so much advantage strategic advantage that they built up over the years and it's really like theirs for the losing um all of this so yeah i don't think they're out of the woods yet at all no but i do think that this is my perspective is that this is a good thing for the company. And by the way, I think also for the employees. Like, lots of employees don't want to be distracted by the stuff. And the ones that want to enact politics through the company are going to realize that it's actually not the most effective way to do things. And that the ballot box,

just speaking about this this week with some folks who asked me about, like, how political stories are going to play out through these companies. It's actually the ballot box in mainstream political organizing that actually ends up being the most impactful, you know, not trying to do stuff like this within companies. Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, I think there's a place for workers being able to protest things that they disagree with at the company. But at the end of the day, like, your ultimate protest is quitting, is taking your effort and your time to another company. And not thinking that, like, you're actually going to be able to change the high level strategic decisions of a multi-trillion dollar conglomerate. It's just not going to happen.

I know that they got the Pentagon project canceled. That was a different era. That was the era where Sergey was crying about. about Trump in front of the whole company. And now we're past that. I think you're totally right to point that out. And this is also just a bigger cultural shifting corporate America that I think is happening.

But ultimately, I don't know, yeah, that's how I feel. I feel like if I really disagree with something my employer is doing, I can push behind the scenes for change, but ultimately what I can do is leave. Yeah, and it seems like these employees were surprised they got fired. And that to me is also surprising because it's like your job is to, you know,

do your work for the company not to sort of take over your executive's offices. And it's also, by the way, it goes to the same thing with this NPR editor, Erie Berliner, who, you know, was suspended for writing this memo about how MPR is too woke and then eventually quit when you didn't like what the CEO said about him. Like, what was your expectation there exactly? Like, you're going to go to another publication and you're going to write about how your publication is too woke and expect to stay employed and, like, good standing there. like that's also crazy media is insane right now man i don't that's god i don't know if i can

say anything that won't get me in trouble um uh yeah i think there's a lot of it'd be good for everyone to focus on what their jobs are i agree with you on that yeah and like but it's it's good to push for change it's good to push for things you can't you like you want to stand up for i'm not saying like muzzle yourself but like find the right avenue for it i guess i guess there's a lot of misplaced energy. I'm not saying the energy itself is bad and it just seems it's displaced. No, the energy itself is democracy. Like that's like being part part of the political process is important. But I guess my main point is trying to, you know, pull a paycheck from a place that hired you to do one thing and instead, you know, doing political advocacy is

never going to end well for you. And if that's, if that's the case, like maybe that's okay. Like maybe you can actually go full time and dedicate yourself to the cause. So, Anyway, let's talk again about how media is crazy and what media should and shouldn't do when we discussed this big debate over Marcus Brownlee, aka MKBHD's negative review of both the Humane Pin and Fisker and the backlash that he's gotten for effectively what people say is trying to kill a company. That's coming up right after this. Hey everyone, let me tell you about The Hustle Daily Show, a podcast filled with business, tech news, and original stories to keep you in the loop on what's trending. More than 2 million professionals read The Hustle's daily email for its irreverent and informative

takes on business and tech news. Now, they have a daily podcast called The Hustle Daily Show, where their team of writers break down the biggest business headlines in 15 minutes or less and explain why you should care about them. So, search for The Hustle Daily Show and your favorite podcast app, like the one you're using right now. And we're back here on big technology podcast with Alex Heath. He's the deputy editor of the verge and he's the author of command line. We've talked in the first half a little bit about how Facebook and Google have both been, you know, trying to develop AI and the cultural challenges

they've had. And now on our front door is another sort of controversy, if you could call it that, surrounding Marcus Brownlee, who is a YouTuber, a reviewer who has written, has produced produced two pretty negative reviews in the past year. One about this Fisker car, which has effectively kneecapped Fisker. It was that bad. And then he said that this you main pin, which is this AI device that we talked about last week, that this device was the worst product he'd ever reviewed yet. And there was a debate about whether it was appropriate for someone with such a large audience. He has millions of, I think, 12 million followers on YouTube to, whether it was appropriate for him to write such a negative review. There was this ex-AWS engineer tweeted this tweet that's

been dunked on ruthlessly. I find it distasteful, almost unethical to say this when you have 18 million subscribers. Hard to explain why, but with great reach comes great responsibility, potentially killing someone else's nascent project reeks of carelessness. First, do no harm. So this large debate about whether, you know, Marquess Brownlee should be, should be, you know, producing these incredibly negative reviews about products that have, let's be honest, have not been good. And it's also interesting because it's like some of this criticism about that's gone to the media, oh, they're too negative, they're out to kill, is now like going to YouTubers and where does it end?

Are you allowed to criticize it all these days? What's been your perspective of watching this play out? I just laugh, man. This is so ridiculous. Like, I do think this whole media cycle around this is because just some, a couple tech bros got really mad online and had some viral posts. I don't think most people, if you were to seriously ask them, do you think reviewers should be positive about products even when they don't feel that they are positive products? Like, I don't think most people would be like, yes, that makes sense. Like, no, it's actually like it's Marquez's job to honestly review these products.

It's why he has such a huge platform. It's why we at the verge people trust our reviews. It's because we are honest about our opinions. You know, our David Pierce for us also trashed the Humane Pin. That was a fun review. I enjoyed watching that. You got a four out of ten. And arguably, I think he wishes he gave it a three out of ten.

So, yeah, reviews don't kill products. Bad products kill products. And that's always been the case. It will always be the case. And I just thought that post that you read by the former Amazon guy was hilarious. It shows a complete lack of understanding of what journalism actually is, why people seek it out, why people watch Marcus' reviews. I think he addressed this in a follow-up video, which I thought was very good. But, yeah, it's a bad product.

I mean, they'll figure it out or they won't, and they'll go under. That's like, that's this happened so many times. Like, also, it's not like it shouldn't matter, but humane has brought a lot of hubris onto this, like from them. You know, they debuted themselves through a TED talk. They talk very grandiosely about replacing the smartphone. You know, if you're going to set expectations as high as they have, don't be surprised if the product doesn't cut it. and you get torn down. That's like just how it is, you know?

And that's not personal. It's just, this is a $7, $800 hyped gadget that reviewers have an obligation to be honest about. It helps people make purchasing decisions, helps the industry move forward, make better products. And so, yeah, if you're mad that MKBHG didn't like the humane pen, I mean, I don't know what to tell you. Well, okay, but for the sake of argument,

let me throw this out there, right? His headline was the worst product I've ever reviewed or something like that. That's his opinion. He has this platform of 18 million people. Don't you think you could just, do you think that, I mean, there's a way to write it as saying it's negative or, and there's a way to write it that, you know,

it may be a kill shot for a company. I'm just throwing this out there. Like, let's debate this because this is effectively the idea behind this AWS, ex-AWS engineers post. It is an illogical argument to think that a review is going to kill a company because the review is reviewing the product. The product is what is killing a company if it's bad. So if the product was good, he would have said it was good because he's a good reviewer and it would be fine. Like blaming it him for potentially killing a product in the crib is ridiculous because if he was lying, everyone would know it because other reviewers would be saying that the humane pen is great.

you will notice like there are no good reviews of the humane pen like find me one i dare you so no i can't find so knowing that to be true um he can't kill humane only humane can kill humane or a competitor who makes a better product so um journalists don't take like the hippocratic oath like this like first do no harm thing was really ridiculous i miss that in j school like we that That's not what we're here to do. We're not doctors. And we're not Spider-Man either. So, yes, with great power comes great responsibility.

But your responsibility is to be honest and fair to the companies you cover and to your audience. And MK saying that this is the worst product I've ever reviewed is honest and fair. He's not saying also like the people humane are horrible, right? He's talking about the product. Do you think he's a journalist? I mean, I don't know. I think the line is blurring a little bit. Yeah, the line is blurring, man.

I mean, I would think you would call yourself a journalist. You don't work for a traditional. Oh, I definitely am, for sure. Yeah, you don't work for a newsroom. You don't work for a, what a, like a traditional media brand. Yeah, no, I'm an independent journalist. You're independent. Yeah.

He is independent as well. I think the line gets blurry when money is involved. So when you're reading ads for companies you cover, if you're investing in companies you cover, I think what journalism is versus like commentary is impartiality. Right. And so if you're able to keep impartiality and, you know, he said that in his videos, like my first and only responsibility is to the viewer. And I think that's right.

And I think that's why he has such a large audience is because people trust him. If anything, this makes me more credible in terms of the stuff that he says going forward. And I know, like, people think he's deferential to Tesla or something because he likes the cyber truck or whatever. I don't know. I know other people who like the cyber truck. I know plenty of people who hate it, too. But as long as he's being honest and disclosing conflicts. And that's why, like, all this, like, direct to audience stuff with VCs, the all-in guys, people like that, like saying people can be citizen journalists.

Like, you can't do that. Like, really for it to be journalism, it has to be not, I think, you have to remove that financial piece of it. You can have opinion, but if you're swayed behind the scenes in ways that influence coverage, then you're just like a commentator or a pundant at best. So as long as like his reviews are sound and he's not, you know, there's not a condition from an advertiser that he has to say a certain. And I don't think he would do that. then yeah i think he's a journalist yeah and we have i mean he's interviewing ceos he's he's interviewing ceos of huge companies and um i don't know it's it's tough when um i don't know there's a lot of conflicts it's a messy thing but i i don't i don't think it's fair to call him not a journalist

i guess right we have one comment here that sums it all up which is the horse was already pretty dead. Yeah, that's what I'm saying, like reviews don't kill products, bad products kill products. And who knows? Maybe they'll turn it around or maybe they will fold. Maybe they will. That's what makes this fun. All right, Alex, do you want to let people know where to find command line? Oh, yeah, thanks so much. Yeah, I send it once a week. I think anyone who listens to the show will enjoy it. It's just theverge.com slash command line, all one word is where you can find it and sign up. Part of the interview with Zucka's in there this week. And yeah, otherwise on the verge, threads X, all that stuff.

But yeah, I really appreciate you having me, Alex. This was fun. Awesome stuff. Thanks so much for coming on. Thanks for the great stories this week. It was fun to read them and especially to speak with you about them. And we hope you come back soon, Alex. Yeah, no, I appreciate it.

All right, everybody. Thank you so much for listening. We will be back on Wednesday with a new show with M.G. Seagler talking about Apple's AI play. So that'll be a fun one. And of course, we'll be back here next Friday, breaking down the week's news. The week's news. Until next time, we will see you then on Big Technology Podcast.