Big Technology Podcast - OpenAI’s New Structure, Apple Replacing Google With AI?, Cheating With ChatGPT

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) OpenAI has another new top executive structure 2) What is Sam Altman's role now? 3) Who is Fidji Simo, OpenAI's new CEO of Applications 4) OpenAI abandons total for-profit conversion 5) Microsoft's demands on OpenAI 6) Could Apple replace Google as the default search with AI? 7) Is it an either or decision? 8) Could Apple make AI companies bid for the default search position? 9) Everyone is cheating using ChatGPT in college 10) Do people need to change or does the education system need to change? --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack? Here’s 25% off for the first year: https://www.bigtechnology.com/subscribe?coupon=0843016b Questions? Feedback? Write to: [e-mail]

Open AI shakes it up again with a new structure and a new top executive. Apple's Eddie Q says the company may replace Google with AI. And everyone in college is cheating with chat GPT. That's coming up on a Big Technology Podcast Friday edition 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 show for you today. We're going to talk about this new structure at Open AI and what it says about the company moving forward. course you know or maybe you don't but this is new news coming out this week that open

AI has abandoned its quest to become a for-profit or at least have the for-profit make all the decisions and the nonprofit will control the company moving forward we'll talk about the implications of that we also have this pretty fascinating statement from apple's eddie Q saying the company might substitute Google with AI even though the company makes a lot of money from Google and everyone of course is cheating with chat chippy t in college joining us as always on friday is ron john roy of margins ron john john great to see you welcome to the show everyone's cheating in college it's just not worth that 120k anymore alex or is it even 120k now that's probably more yeah but of course we should start with the big news that white smoke flowed from open a i headquarters this week as they

named a new CEO of applications. I guess I'm not introducing this segment very well, but it is pretty cool that there is an American Pope. Bobby Prevost from the Shai. He's really made it. He has. Did you see the Chicago Tribune headline? No, what was it?

It was just da Pope, like de bears. Ah, okay. Have you seen Conclave? Not yet, but his brother was saying, we play Wordle, we play words with friends, and I recommended that he watched the movie Conclave. So he's watched it. You've seen it?

I watched it over a Christmas break with my family, and my parents and sister said it was really boring. And I was able to hold that over them this week as the conclave began, and suddenly I was the most informed about how these things work. It was pretty good, and it was slow. But it was very Oscar-E. Okay.

So, anyway, I was personally excited. about that news and I had to find my way to shoehorn it into this show. But let's talk about Fiji Simo, the Instacart CEO. She is joining OpenAI as the CEO of applications. And I think this is interesting from an open AI standpoint because it is not just Fiji Simo joining as the CEO of applications, which is very interesting because as we've spoken about in the past, this company is nothing but applications. I mean, of course the models work, but they're moat. are their applications, but Sam Altman recently made Brad Lightcap into the head of day-to-day operations. And as he named Fiji, the CEO of Applications, he writes this message.

In this new configuration, I will be able to increase my focus on research, compute, and safety. These are critical as we reach superintelligence. He also has to note that he will remain CEO of OpenAI. kind of we talk about how this company is very interesting but also just filled with weird stuff and this was definitely weird to me to see that sam is going to remain CEO but he's starting to delegate a lot of his responsibilities to others and like core company responsibilities and he's also made Simo the person who is now the boss of Sarah Fryer, who was the OpenAI, who is the next door CEO and is now the OpenAI CFO. So Fryer comes over to OpenAI from next door to become the CFO,

and now she's reporting not even to the CEO of OpenAI. It's weird. This is now an org chart podcast in addition to a Pope podcast because we're trying to unpack this. It was interesting and also to note from the blog post that OpenAI put out, Sam Maltman will increase his focus on research, compute, and safety systems.

So that's like his main area now. Brad's going to be heading day-to-day operations and then Fiji is the head of CEO of application. So in some world, I actually see that as a good division of power and labor and like skill set. So I think that actually does make sense. I think the most interesting part of this to me is actually on our recurring, is it the product or the model? This is kind of like cementing that they want to really focus more on the product side of things. Again, master is at building great UIs and great product experiences?

but actually building a business out of it. Remember, their revenue forecasts are always just things of just incredulity. Like, I mean, on the current one, SoftBank is going to be a large, like, massive part of their enterprise business a year ago or maybe it was only six months ago. They were going to be much more heavily into consumer revenue as opposed to enterprise revenue. So my read on this is they have not been able to kind of tell a clear business story. And now hopefully Fiji Simo will try to wrap her head around that and actually come up with one. Yeah, but it's interesting because Sam, you would think that he'd want to be on the core as the CEO. But instead, he's going to be on, if you're saying that this is, that they're going to focus on applications,

he's saying I'm going to focus on the non-core if you go with your logic. So it's a very interesting moment where you have a CEO of one of the most promising tech companies in decades saying that my core focus is not going to be on the core competency of the company, which is applications. What do you make of that? Yeah, but that's, I mean, it's logical, it's accurate. That's him. That's her.

Like, that's what they both have done separately their entire careers. Again, she is a masterful operator that's, like, helped build out Facebook's ad business, was at Instacart actually built out Instacart's advertising business very well. Like, that's what she does well. And maybe now does that mean ads are coming to Open AIs and ChatchipT sooner than we thought? We could definitely discuss that. But I think overall, it's clear that's the part of the business that needs help. And to their credit, they found someone with a strong track record.

I'm curious what you mean by needing help because, like Sam has said, in testimony this week, OpenAI's Chachapit has 500 million weekly active users. Those are the most public numbers. I feel like the numbers are more. At least he's indicated that the numbers are higher. To me, I think what Sam is saying is that, you know, you could sort of delegate this type of work. and his focus on research is saying the models matter more and notice how he says

these are critical as we approach superintelligence and not AGI right so he's already he's now leveling this up from AGI to super intelligence yeah okay I agree that the idea of like he does believe

there will be one model to rule them all it will be the all powerful model and he wants to drive building that But I think recognizing again, like when 500 million users is great, revenue is going to be what matters at a certain point, like net income will start to matter. Maybe this is a sign of maturity that he's starting to recognize these kind of things. Like if you think about on one hand, they've had incredible product rollouts, but from a pricing standpoint, it's all over the place. Like, again, $200 is deep research part of it. Now deep research is part of the $20.

And I get this stuff is all fluid. And everyone like Gemini and workspace was $20 a seat. Now it comes with it. Like this stuff is fluid at many levels. But this is the kind of area. They're going to have to get their house in order if they're going to actually become the business they say they are. So I don't think this is like a recognition by him that this is kind of like a throw role and still it's going to be one business and one model to rule them all that's going to bring us

to ASI and that's going to be the end-all BL. I think he doesn't probably, I agree. I don't think he wants to do that stuff. But I also think he found someone who can do that stuff. What do you think about the fact that the CFO is going to report into Fiji CMO? That seems more than just a CEO of application. In terms of stuff, he probably doesn't want to deal with. I think the operational financing, the line by line financing, like, come on. Do you think that's what Sam wakes up and wants to do? Well, no, I don't think so. So I think I should take a moment to talk about Fiji because I've gotten a chance to interact with her a few times when she was at Facebook. So she's going to come in. She's going to be the CEO of applications. This is, of course, we talked about how

Open AI is a consumer business. This is going to be her tripling down on OpenAI's consumer business. You need someone that understands consumer applications if you're if you have a lead and you really want to build on it and she is that person in my conversations with fj i found a few things to be true number one she's a pretty clear communicator and a very clear thinker about the role of product we talked about on the blue app on facebook even though it's had its ups and downs the role of groups there and i believe that groups has really reanimated the facebook product in a way that a few tweaks have in a long history since it's languished after the French sharing moment. So I would say credit to her for that.

The other thing that I have known about Fiji is that she is not like a Game of Thrones style corporate operator. She won't make a run for the CEO job. She will be very loyal and supportive of Altman. She's been on the board for a while, just as she was an incredibly, loyal executive for Zuckerberg. And obviously that parlayed, she was able to parlay that into the CEO of Instacart. And she, of course, ran the Facebook app for a while. The one thing I'll say is that Sam at OpenAI has really struggled to keep a number two. We know that Ilya left. We know

Muradhi left. We know that Greg Brockman had to take time off. So everyone, there's that meme of the picture of these are the founders of open AI and they all disappear and sam altman is left and he really needs stability in his lieutenants and of course he's been able to keep light cap for a while and fryer and now simo and i think this is actually quite a positive sign that he's decided to bring fiji in because if anyone seems like they can ride the chaos of that company out it's her yeah i agree I mean, I think it shows a level of stability. It shows, again, Sarah Fryer, very senior executive at some pretty large companies. But, I mean, VG Simo has been a very powerful executive at the largest consumer companies in the world.

So I think it, I agree on that. It's going to be very interesting to watch how it plays out, how she even communicates her own role. Because, again, like, the announcement came out in a kind of amazing way that she sent an email, I believe, internally at Instacart because it was going to be leaked into the press and published. So she wanted to get ahead of the story. But she still didn't give a lot of clarity. We have Sam Altman's blog post on the OpenAI blog that starts to explain this a bit. But it will be very interesting kind of how she talks about her role with Open AI publicly. Right. And so I gave all the spiritual reasons why Fiji might make sense for this job. But Ranjan, I'm actually curious to

hear your perspective as, you know, thinking about someone who was the Instacart CEO or who still is, who will be the Instacart CEO for a moment, is it interesting? And of course, she was on the board, but is it interesting that somebody coming from a partner that Open AI would have to integrate if it was going to be like the catch-all app for all computing? She's going to run applications. Like it almost seems like Fiji will say to the door dashes of the world and any other company that chat chippy tea might gobble up look i was on the other side as the instacart ceo i worried about traffic to my app and all this other stuff but here's how i would think about it as someone in your shoes you know if this this to me is one of the biggest signs ever that open a i wants to be

effectively the everything app uh with chat chpt or even the new internet i mean altman again was in washington this week testifying that he thinks ai could be bigger than the internet which I guess is something you would say if you're doing full-time marketing, you know, now that you don't have to have the CFO reporting to you. But it just seems to me like that is another signal as to where this is going. And I'm curious what you read into it. See, I disagree. I don't think this is WeChat style everything app.

My call on what this means for me. And it's the same thing. When she went over to Instacart, the big conversation was around. Instacart had started to build out their advertising business. store dash had uber had basically all these consumer apps with thousands or i mean sorry hundreds of millions of users that had commercial intent within them realized we can start to inject advertising so they started to build out these businesses do you know how much uh instacart's ad revenue is right now i don't have it right here do you yeah of nine uh billion dollars like they got up to one billion

So like she built that out from over the last few years. It had started growing. The foundation was there. She scaled it. So my call on this, ads are coming to chat GPT in some way. And in reality, like, I do believe there is going to be some kind of advertising model that is that enters this whole world. Perplexity has, I think, started to launch some ads where they certainly talked about it. And they have like, they've been pushing an advertising model that is, that enters this whole world. Perplexity has, I think, started to launch some ads where they certainly talked about it. And they have like, they've been pushing an advertising. advertising model. Sam has said he like doesn't want ads like Larry and Sergei once did. Like it's coming. I think and if someone cannot again figure out a creative way to do it, I think she could be the one to crack what does advertising look like in an AI chat. Well, if this is the case, this has made me tremendously depressed because I don't know if you caught my conversation with Gary Marcus this week, but towards the end, on Wednesday we talked about how these things people are opening up to them in a way they never did to Facebook and what like you're going to now start telling it all your intimate secrets

and all of a sudden this AI that every night you're going to talk about Mark Zuckerberg talking about how AI could be your friend or your therapist like if you use it for these purposes you're going to share more with chat chip PT than you would with any service on the internet and that data is going to be used for ads I mean it's it's like Maybe I'm naive in being upset about this because this was obvious. We have a headline from the Financial Times in December 2024 saying that OpenAIs exploring ad revenue. But it just feels like ad revenue from a chat bot that many people are going to view as a friend,

a companion, a therapist is an extremely tricky road to go down because of the amount of data and intimate thoughts people are sharing with these bots. So I'm curious what do you think about this. Am I right to be depressed? You're right to be depressed on it, but I'll also go with the naive to be depressed, because come on, like, come on in terms of the idea that Open AI would not go down that road, given the sensitivity of a lot of the chat, I think, I mean, they almost cannot do that given their valuation, but I'm not sure ethically they would actually be against it anyway. But I think overall, it is going to be interesting to me that people are more personal because there are not ads. So then you get into a, would they become less personal if they're worried about ads? Like I think maybe that does start to degrade the overall intimacy of the product a bit.

But to me, I guess first, it feels like, I mean, that is inevitable or the ethical boundaries will never have. have stopped that and has never stopped advertising. And then also, even though we're not like Google search has a more intimate knowledge of you than Facebook posts, but in the end, maybe I'm too cynical, but I feel advert. The ad ecosystem knows everything and anything about all of us. But even still, a lot of the ads that we get don't feel so tailored to us, don't feel personal. And wouldn't you agree that if they do this the wrong way, that this is a potentially catastrophic hit to their brand? Of course. I mean, definitely. Like, and first of all, like, I feel meta to their credit, even after iOS 14.5 and, like, identity tracking was supposed to be

more difficult. It's, like, ungodly how good their ad algorithm is, Twitter and slash X, worst ad algorithm imaginable. So, like, people are able to do. it and figure it out. But I do agree that it could be a risk where, okay, let's say they start to get too weird and sensitive in terms of the ads that they show you given the type of data that they'll have on you. In a way, they have to be extra careful because one, that can affect their overall, like, the utilization of the product. But two, in terms of overall privacy concerns, remember, at the enterprise level, like, it's always the starting point that people worry open AI is going to train on your data or doesn't respect privacy, their branding on that, and we've

talked about this a lot, is not great. So I think they could blow any goodwill they have up if they go down the wrong path with this. And I also think it's worth pointing out that there are various degrees of targeting that you can do with each degree higher becoming more lucrative for you. So let's just talk this out. The bottom level here is just, you know, sort of broad targeting the type that you do in TV. So that could be like, you know, targeting for basically location, maybe age, gender, but really audience and frequency. Right?

The reach and the frequency, that's the basic level of targeting. And chat TPT can definitely do that with 500 to, let's say, 800 million users that it has now. The second level is intent-based targeting, right? And this is similar to Google. So that would be OpenAI, potentially use. using the chats that you are engaged in at the moment to surface things to you. For instance, like, let's say you say, I need some help researching a car that I'm interested

in buying. Well, in the moment, opening I could say, all right, well, here's like Hyundai and Toyota, but you might also be interested in Nissan, which is a partner of ours, but I found a good deal for you. Okay, so that wouldn't be too different from Google, and I think it could get away with it. but there's this third type of targeting that's the most lucrative that is also i think the most dangerous to open ai uh and our and maybe i'll even say our society if they end up going this route uh and that is building and it's totally possible to do this and advertisers will want you to do this

building a psychological or sort some sort of persona profile of the individuals based off of the entire history uh of chats that they have with you now of course that's tough to scale but there are shortcuts you can take and algorithmic groupings you can do to put people in cohorts. But if you start to advertise to someone based off of the entirety of the personality and the and the history of the chats that they've shared with you, that to me is the red line, even though you can make a lot of money from doing that Open AI, I just want to say right now to you, please don't do that. That is definitely not the move. Intent, fine. Building these, psychological profiles of your users. It's tempting. We know other companies have done it. If you do

that, it's going to be a disaster. So please don't do it. I like listeners cannot see. Alex is it currently in Paris? He has a big bookshelf behind him. And I feel you're getting very existentialist today in the conversation. Well, what's not true about that though? I agree. Well, on one hand, meta can actually, I mean, extract what is in the image that you post? and understand your emotional well-being based on what the captions you're posting are, what kind of messages you're sending, and all that data is already there and can advertisers certainly target based on that kind of like psychographic data and well-being. So I agree that almost by default people's public posts are always going to be slightly more censored,

hopefully than what they're really entering to chat ch pt but i don't know between what people search on google between what people actually post publicly and that advertisers already have access to i don't know maybe i'm too cynical on this one but i think yeah i think you are i think this is a degree deeper that you can go with chatbots you know if someone's telling chat chitpt i'm depressed I don't have plans this weekend. They know that you live in a certain area. They know what you typically search. And you say, hey, I'm feeling sad because we know, again, that therapy is one of the top uses.

And it says, well, here's an ad for a movie or a restaurant that you can go to and uses that data to sort of exploit your current state. I feel like that's, that is dangerous territory to get into. It's like your therapist, you're talking to them, and suddenly they're like, well, let me hold up this product. I think this can help you right now. You know what real self-care is? Hymns. It's because you're bald. Hymns.

Hymns. Hems. It's not sponsored this show, by the way. Affiliate model therapy. That's what the world needs right now. No, but I totally hear you that the companies already know a lot of. about us to begin with, but anyway, I'm kind of getting creeped out, just thinking through these possibilities because it could get really dark. And now we know that Open AI is going to

move to a more traditional company structure, or maybe not. This is from Bloomberg. Open AI walks back. It's for-profit plan, and the nonprofit is going to keep control. So Open Eye is backtracking on its plans to become a more conventional for-profit company after facing mounting pressure from former employees, academics, and rivals, including the billionaire Elon Musk. The Chatsyipee maker said Monday that it's moving forward with an effort to restructure its for-profit division as a public benefit corporation, but the overall business will instead remain under the control of its nonprofit, a major shift in its plans that will effectively maintain the contours of how OpenAI is currently set up. So the nonprofit continues to control the company. This is from Brett Taylor.

we made the decision for the nonprofit to retain control of open AI after hearing from civic leaders and engaging in constructive dialogue with the offices of the Attorney General of Delaware and the Attorney General of California. The one good thing I think is that the company structure is going to resemble a much more normal structure so that there's no more this cap profit sharing deal. It's just going to be like you have normal shares in the company, but the nonprofit will continue to control it. What's your view on this, Ranjan? Good. I this one makes my head spin not quite as in a dire way as a chat GPT creating an advertising profile based on your deepest darkest secrets but I mean it just gets more and more convoluted again like Matt Levine had a good he's like note the nonprofit will continue to control the public benefit corporation and will become a big shareholder it suggests the nonprofit will be a minority shareholder the non-profit will be a minority shareholder the non-profit will be a minority shareholder the non-profit will be a might own, say, 30% of the economic value of the for-profit company, but will have super voting stock given it control of the board.

Like, basically, it's just non-profit-e enough to be a nonprofit legally, but it's not really a nonprofit, but it's also not quite a for-profit. I think to me, all of these decisions, the only thing I think I try to think about, because otherwise, again, I get a headache is what does it mean for their funding? And what does it mean for potential exits and outcomes? Because to me, they don't really operate by normal rules anyways. And remember, SoftBank, in that $40 billion funding round, they committed 30, but supposedly it can be reduced to 20 if they don't become a truly for-profit corporation. So I don't know. But it still wasn't even clear.

Did this new structure mean that SoftBank can renege on $10 billion? Well, this was definitely the week of great Sam Altman quotes. So first of all, here is the first thing he says about the structure. By the way, remember, he talks as if somebody else tried to make this structure transition. He says, I won't pretend that it wouldn't maybe be easier if we were a fully normal company, but the mission comes first. We believe this is well over the bar of what we need to be able to fundraise. So, you know, the mission comes first, but we were trying to go fully for profit.

But the mission comes first. This is bizarre. I mean, I actually, I love it. I think that quote should be on a poster, and that captures everything about Open AI better than anything either of us could have said. So thank you, Sam, for clarifying everything, at least emotionally, even if not logically. Sure? Sure.

I mean, I'm telling you. The mission comes first, but this helps us in our fundraising. that's it. That's Open AI in a nutshell. I guess so. So speaking of the SoftBank stuff, he also said that SoftBank will not freeze the rest of its funding with the new structure. And then Open AI, like we said before, announced it will remove a cap on the financial returns its investors can earn a move likely to appeal to current and future backers. So yes, the fundraising will continue. Now let me say the however part. However, what is going to happen? and with Microsoft. This is from Newcomer.

Microsoft wants to retain its rights to have access and ownership rights to Open AIs model, whereas Open AI is trying to claw that back. The topic has cropped up numerous times between the companies. So this is still not settled, even though the announcement has been made.

Finally, Newcomer continues to write, Microsoft wants to amend an AGI provision that gives OpenAI an out once it develops artificial intelligence. intelligence. These issues were an obstacle to Altman's planned for-profit conversion, and they remain an obstacle in the new plan to make the business a public benefit corporation that's still controlled by the nonprofit parent.

No restructuring process can move forward until this is figured out. So what newcomer is saying is, this ain't over. it never is it never is he says the fact is that Microsoft has open AI in a type spot and knows it at a high level relations are still strong altman welcomed Microsoft CEO saty and adela to their offices the other week beneath the surface though the competition is rising Microsoft is no longer just a major investor in the company but increasingly a competitor especially in enterprise software a source close to the matter said the changing dynamic is influencing the proceedings. Some at open AI worry that Microsoft is setting up such a high bar barriers to a deal as to make one impossible.

So this is the only place I've heard of this, but assuming that this is correct, is it possible that Elon Musk wasn't the biggest barrier to this open AI restructuring its Satya Nadella and Microsoft who realize that they have a big say into what the future of open AI looks like and they will hold it back from being able to move forward, which means basically holding it back from being able to do anything else because, of course, the soft bank money will be diminished unless its terms are met. What do you think? That's actually, I like this because the idea that Masa is coming in 30 billion strong

and like one would assume in any normal company, that would give a very clear decision-making capacity and very clear ownership. And in reality, because everything is so murky and muddled, that Microsoft is still able to legally pull the strings in weird ways to benefit themselves. And I think that gets even more fascinating and interesting as Microsoft becomes a much more direct competitor to OpenAI.

So I think like Sotia still, the background right now that that becomes clear from that I am like interested of what his visit to their offices must have been like like how does that work what does that look like what do they talk about yeah and I should note that this is coming from the newcomer sub stack and newcomer has Tom doton writing for him and Tom doton was writing about Microsoft for the wall street journal not just writing but reporting on the company deep inside the company's been on the show before Tom knows his stuff and you know

it's not a surprise to me that he came out with this report because he's been close to Microsoft and he figures he has a good read on what this company is up to so something that bears watching and I know we've done a lot of inside baseball so to speak on

the first half of this show but this is going to determine the future of where AI is moving I think that Open AI has the best set of models right now I don't care what the leaderboard says using 03 is pretty amazing and yet every time we say something positive about opening eye it seems in the next breath we talk about its weird structure and that's certainly the case today

great company terrible structure exactly maybe a little bit less complicated now now and this actually just made everything more complicated to me we don't have to talk about profit capping any longer, but still what is happening, who gets what ownership, all these kind of things have not been clarified to me in any way. Great company, weird structure, but the mission comes first. That is the inspirational poster that Ranjan would make with Sam Altman, like with a bunch of rays of light, like standing on a cloud or something like that. That's it. All right. So in other news, we have a major hit to Alphabet. but stock after Apple talks about potentially replacing the Google search engine on the iPhone.

We're going to talk about that when we come back from the break 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 Hustled Daily Show and your favorite podcast app like the one you're using right now.

And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast Friday edition talking about all the week's tech news. Ron John, fascinating story this week from within Apple executive ranks where Eddie Q, he was testifying in a federal court in Washington, and he told the court there is a chance that AI search engines will eventually replace standard search engines such as Google. And he said he expects to add artificial intelligence services from open AI, perplexity, and anthropic as search options in Apple's Safari browser in the future.

As we know, Google pays Apple $20 billion a year to be the default on search. So, with Apple services revenue becoming the most important part of that company's financial makeup, what do you think is happening? What's going on? This one, I think this actually might be my most interesting news story this week because what it means for Apple, what it means for Google, I think it's huge ramifications for both. I mean, you figure it's clear that he is trying to make the case that, like, Google paying Apple for that placement in the search bar is not a monopolistic action on Apple's part.

I mean, in a way, maybe they just assume that at a certain point, Open AI and perplexity and Anthropic will also pay them in the way Google did, and maybe it goes up because there's actually competitive bidding as opposed to just like one bid to rule them all. So from Apple's side, I get why the stock was only down 3% after the news, while Alphabet was down 7% after the news. It's funny to me because, like, on one hand, yes, it's breaking news on the other. This stuff shouldn't be a surprise to anybody.

Like, there is no way traditional Google search will be in the search bar in five years. Like, I just, I don't know. Do you think it will be, or do you think it'll be some other kind of form of search? I actually think the search bar is the most natural place. a Google search to be because that's typically you're talking into the search bar on your phone when you need an answer quick. And you go into chatbots when you need something that thinks a little bit more or gives you a much more detailed answer. So I actually think the search bar on the phone makes a lot of sense for Google, but do I think it's going to look exactly the way that

it looks now? No, like it might end up being a default thing where you can, not a default thing, something that switches where you put like a search keyword in and it gives you a search answer and when you put like a question in and it gives you a chatbot answer like i think that's kind of where we're going with all of this i just don't see how apple could ever replace google's 20 billion a year i mean maybe it can but i mean we're talking about the numbers that open a i is raising and again they just raised 10 billion and that was by far the largest private market raise in the world ever so 20 billion a year double that to apple is crazy And again, like, if everybody bids on it, yeah, it's not going to happen.

I don't think, I mean, maybe this is a way for them to try to get more money from Google. Yeah, I think the equally important part is the reaction showed. I mean, Google's search business, it's going to be in trouble. But to me, it's still amazing. We talked about Google earnings, I think, two weeks ago or a week ago, where they're still cranking. Search revenue was up. Like, they don't disclose the query of search and search volume. Though after this statement, they put out their own public response saying that

overall search query volume is up. But then they kind of hedged it by saying now all types of search extend into maps and AI searches. And like they basically didn't directly say that people typing into a search bar is up. Overall, querying things from Google properties is up. And they even made the point of saying these other things. but I mean, I don't know. I think we got into this maybe like a year ago

when Gartner said 25% of searches are going to be AI in a year or two. I am more convinced of that than ever. Like, it's just such a better way to access information. And Google, to their detriment, maybe killed off traditional search themselves by making it unusable and stuffing ads from top to bottom. Yeah, I am also with you that this is the future of search,

and I'm also less open to this argument that Google killed the web itself, I think maybe than I've ever been. And that's only because I'm not saying the web is good right now. We've talked about a thousand times trying to get a recipe from the internet. I mean, it's a fool's errand. But the detail you can get when you do AI search right is insane. It is so much better than anything traditional search could have ever, hoped to have been. So I think it would be inevitable that people would have moved there

anyway. And I think Q is totally right that eventually you'll have to have some form of AI as the default. And when I dismissed it out of hand, now I'm thinking about it a little bit more. And I'm like, yeah, it's going to be a toggle. Toggle was the word I was looking for. It will be a toggle between traditional search and AI. I just want to give one quick example. I mean, you mentioned it. I'm in Paris. One of your favorite cities, I think. This is my first time here. And what I've done, and I'm going to talk about this next week on a show with two AI critics, Professor Emily Bender and Alex Hanna, who have this book out called The AI Con. I'm a little bit more bullish on AI than they are, I would say. And although I have my own critiques,

and we talk about those at the beginning of the episodes, that's coming up Wednesday. But one of the things I mention is that, like, every day here, I've uploaded two documents from Friends of Things to do in Paris to chat GPT and then I say what's going on in Paris today take these documents into account and I click the search button on chat GPT and it goes out and searches the web and it proposes this great agenda with all these different options and it's scanned so many sites it's telling me about things that I had no idea existed and it's of course translating lots of French into English and then presenting me the answer in English. Websearch just could never do that. And so this is a step forward that no matter what Google did to the internet, this is an

improvement. And the more you use it, the more I've used it, at least I'll say, the more I'm just like, this will just take over everything. The one thing that needs to be figured out and there's going to have to be some kind of economic system around it, is that still, that's like a generative AI layer of web search, right? It's like a still searching the web. It's just presenting the information and using some other context in a really smart way. But there's still that in someone, some like timeout Paris or whatever website posted some events, right? So will people be incentivized to do that? And why would they be? That monetary system was owned by Google and helped Google created that essentially and spurred it. So will people keep doing that? And then after a while,

real-time information, does that just go away? Or who's going to do that? I think that's the more interesting question. I don't even think. So it goes level deeper here. You need timeout because the writers for timeout would go to all these event like ticket masters and all these event ticketing pages and sort of pick it out when they're going to go to your city and then write it up based off of like where the band's been

and sort of their latest albums and stuff like that. What I saw Chat Chip-T doing is skipping the middleman and just going to the ticketing sites and explaining the venue and saying, this is the page. So they've, it's unfortunate because I think it's terrible for the content business, but they have replaced that middleman and you don't need timeout because you have Chat Chit-T writing that up for you. No, no, you're right. Actually, because if you think about it, there was this idea that timeout, we're getting, and this is now a timeout podcast and his legacy media. Yeah. And for those I'm familiar, if you're not like New York, Paris, it's a magazine slash publication focused on tourism in a lot of big cities. they, the idea was that they curated all the noise and experiences and found things for you.

But in reality, how much value was that curation element and the authors and the brand versus it actually was the easiest way to find stuff to do? It's not like they really were doing this incredible legwork of finding this stuff or were in the know. And yeah, I think that's a good point. And especially with context, with, as you, you said. You uploaded recommendations. Imagine you plug in your Spotify, listen history or something like that. And I told it where I was and when I had to get back home and all these things. Yeah. And that context. It's always personalized for me. Exactly. It's your own personal timeout

magazine. So. And that's why Fiji Simo is going to open AI. It's not to do advertising. It's to ingest everything. It's a media company now. Yeah. Yes. And yes. And it's a media company. And it's the thing that lets you eventually take the actions. That's where these services become agentic because they go from taking that content to making that software. They take the text and then within the text they make it software. So instead of being the timeout that sends you to Ticketmaster, you ask it what to do in Paris. It does the legwork that timeout would have done. And then it lets you make the purchase right there in the chat window. And that's what the future is. I agree. Okay, now you've made at least for that whole universe of content, you're right. That doesn't go away. Ticketmaster is still going

to have a ticketing website or some way to buy tickets or that information. So I think that's a reasonable way of thinking about it. Okay. Well, I will take that. That's a win for me today. Thank you, Ron, John. All right. So before we go, I want to talk about this great New York magazine article. The title is, everyone is cheating their way through college. ChachyPT has unraveled the entire academic project. I don't know if you saw this, but it's basically confessions from students who have basically said that they no longer basically try to do any of the work and they're just able,

I mean, we know this is going on to cheat their way through a school and that, this is a quote from one of the students. College is just how well I can use ChachyPT at this point. A student in Utah recently captured, captioned a video for self-copy and pasting a chapter from her genocide and mass atrocity textbook into ChatGPT. So this is another quote. I spend so much time on TikTok hours and hours until my eyes start hurting, which makes it hard to plan and do my schoolwork with Chatchipat. I can write an essay in two hours that normally takes 12. there are professors who are unable.

Professors are basically unable to stop this. Here's a quote from professor. Every time I talk to a colleague about this, the same thing comes up, retirement. When can I retire? When can I get out of this? That's what we're all thinking now. This is not what I signed up for.

Here's another one. The students kind of recognize the system is broken, and there's not really a point in doing this. Maybe the original meaning of these assignments has been lost or is not being communicated to them well. So, Roger, let me just put it this to you. I mean, we've talked about whether AI is something that's assistive or is something that basically takes over for the brain. And if it does, like, what is going to happen to our society?

And so I'm curious if, you know, through that lens, if you read this story as a blaring alarm that we're outsourcing all critical thinking and sort of thinking in general that we would have done in university to these bots and just going to make our. ourselves a population of much dumber people than we would have been previously, or is there a way to say, like Sam Altman might say, this is just a pretty good calculator and we still do most of the processing or the higher level thinking in our own brains. I think for me, the story, the most important part of it is it's a reminder that like how university education's work has not really changed in many years. And my hope is this like dramatically changes it. Because come on like writing essays was that the most valuable way to teach a concept i as a writer do find the most value in writing that writing is thinking for me i think i forget who said that but like

it 100% that's how i structure my thought so i'm not going to stop writing if it's something i'm not actually interested in or is i don't find truly valuable to learn that i'm not going to write and I would happily use chat GPT to write that essay. So I think people like I saw one post somewhere where it was like, you know, what if it is use chat GPT to create your paper and then give a verbal defense of your argument. Like off the top of your head, stand up and debate this, talk through it, explain why this was included, why this piece of AI content was included. I think that's interesting. I think that's like a better way to approach it than how most people, including myself for a lot of papers in college, actually approach writing. I think it they have

to rethink what those like day-to-day tasks and assignments are. And if they're not, then that's on the institution. These are very expensive institutions that are supposed to cater to like if you're a business, your customer, the current moment, the current demand, the current needs and they should adapt but don't you think there's a chance that this is like a once in a generation or once in a world tool that can sort of outsource a lot of the thinking for people and the universities really cannot adapt because again like I'm going to go back to the writing thing writing really is thinking like the pain that comes with writing does help you crystallize your thoughts and if you're trying to come to conclusions about a tremendous amount of coursework

you took in, then actually going ahead and writing that stuff is the thing that, I don't know, helps you think it through better than almost any tool. Now, maybe there's a way around this where you just do all the writing in a class in blue books and lecture halls. You're supposed to typed on the computer. And that you can maybe adapt. Maybe you could go forward by going backward. But I'm curious if you think that there's a chance. Because again, like, this is able to do a lot of knowledge work? Is there a chance that this is just different? And there is no, like, you know, use it as a calculator type of application here. No, I, but to me the issue is if universities or educational institutions don't come up with new ways to force people to think and teach them to

think, then yeah, like, I do worry a lot. If like you keep the exact same test structure and assignment structure, then of course the average college student is going to just wing it and cheat. I don't even call it cheating. We'll just use whatever tools are available to do it. Yeah, they're smart in that way. Yeah, no. And then it's the university failing to teach this. Their job is not to have them write an essay. The job is to teach them critical thinking. So with the given technology today, like there's a time I remember like typing, even still, I know some people who like handwrite because they feel it makes them think. There's that whole remarkable notepad that that's the whole pitch,

that it's like kind of digital handwriting. Like that that's better than typing that I think more when I write by hand. Like there's been some more minor technological shifts over time and we adapt to them. So I think to me it's on the universities. Come on, Harvard. Figure out how to teach your students better. Let me end with this. I mean, last week we talked a little bit, and this got a lot of play in our discord,

in a very good discussion about how new grads were not getting hired and whether that was Chad Chupit's fault or not. And I'll just say that, like, if you are doing what ChachyPT can do in school, like if you're just learning how to use Chachap ET and you realize that Chachapit can do your work for you as a student, then maybe it's not so surprising that when you come out of school, that entry-level job is being done by chat ch pt yeah i mean that's it that's going to happen figure it out harvard yeah figure it out i think go backward go forward by going backwards or maybe you have some ultra-sophisticated way to make this technology a bicycle for the mind as opposed to the mind itself

but until we see it i'm just saying break out the blue books and now waxing philosophical, advocating for handwriting into blue books. X, I want a cigarette in your hand as you podcast, Glass of Wine. I've spent way too much time this week looking at paintings and thinking about the deeper meaning of things, but maybe it's given me a window into the human condition. I got nothing on that. I got nothing. Well, everyone, thank you so much for listening.

Ron John, thanks again for coming as always. Great to see you. All right. See you next week. All right, everybody. Thank you for listening. Next Wednesday, we'll have Emily Bender and Alex Hanna. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.