Big Technology Podcast - TikTok On The Brink, ChatGPT Does Your Tasks, Unemployed MBAs

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban 2) Will Apple and Google comply even if the White House doesn't enforce? 3) What does TikTok's behavior tell us about its ties to China's government? 4) How TikTok might stick around 5) Will Elon Musk buy TikTok 6) TikTok CEO Shou Chew is going to sit at the dias during Trump's inauguration 7) Chinese app Little Red Book, or RedNote takes off 8) Does China want Americans on RedNote? 9) DJI removes some restrictions for drones 10) ChatGPT can handle to-dos and set reminders now 11) Are we going to fall in love with AI assistants 12) Why MBAs can't get jobs 13) Is AI going to replace MBAs. --- 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]

The Supreme Court has upheld the TikTok ban, but is that the end of the story? American users flood to another Chinese social media app, chat GPT does your tasks, and our MBA is the first victims of AI unemployment. 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're coming to you hot off the presses, just as the Supreme Court has upheld the TikTok ban, So we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about the latest AI news.

And we're also going to address this fascinating story in the Wall Street Journal about MBAs not being able to find jobs. And I wonder, is that because of artificial intelligence? We'll cover it all. And joining us, as always, to do it on Fridays is Ranjan Roy of Marges. Ron John, welcome back to the show. To any new listeners we have from Red Note, Huangying Ni. That means welcome.

Okay. We'll get to that. I mean, we're going to make sure that you pronounce the app's name. the right way because it does have a Chinese name that I've been working on that so okay so let's let's talk about the news the Supreme Court that's according to NPR the Supreme Court has upheld the TikTok ban threatening the app's existence in the United States the Supreme Court ruled on Friday at the federal government can legally shut down TikTok in the US delivering a stunning blow to the viral video app used by about half of Americans that's a stunningly large number I didn't realize it was

half I knew it was a lot but half is huge the high court's decision means that starting on January 19th, Tech Giants Apple and Google can no longer offer TikTok on their app stores. Web hosting providers must cut ties with the platform or be subject to fines of $5,000 for each user

that can still access the service, a penalty that can easily add up to billions of dollars. The TikTok ban will start on January 19th. The following day, Trump will be sworn into office. Well, I'll admit, this is the closest that I think I've ever been in thinking that this might

actually happen. Here's the question I'm going to start off with. President Biden seems like he's not enforcing this. He's telegraphed that he's not going to enforce this. It doesn't seem like Trump is going to either. We'll get into a statement in a minute. But,

Roger, I'm curious if you're Apple or Google, do you just say it doesn't matter what the executive branch says. I'm going to take this off my app store. I don't want somebody else down the line to see that I'm liable for, you know, potentially. billions of dollars and have that discretion, I'd much rather be in compliance with the law. So what do you think the big tech companies are going to do despite what the politicians tell them to?

That's a great point because also if you're Apple or Google, having another just large tech company as a competitor is not a great thing. And you'd be happy to remove the app and remove that competition. I think to me, one of the most fascinating parts about this, last week, when we were recording, the Supreme Court hearing was underway and we were tracking it a bit, that this was a unanimous decision. And you could hear it in the questioning of the Supreme Court justices to the TikTok's solicitor. But how often do we get anything unanimous in the Supreme Court? And they all said this does not violate the First Amendment rights of bite dance the

company. And I think we're even closer to this happening. The Trump and Biden angle is very interesting to me because it's odd to me that the Biden administration is essentially leaking that they will not enforce it and leave it up to Trump when it was their legislation. It was their timing that they set to be January 19th to keep it under their administration. So at least come out and just say, we're going to stick with it. And if Trump tries to reverse it, that's fine. But yeah, I think from the big tech side, there's no reason not to go along with the prescribed legislation and just remove it from your store. What do you think is behind U.S. legislatures or legislators so emphatically passing this law,

talking shit on TikTok for years? And then at the ninth hour saying, actually, we don't want it. Like, we don't want the ban. There's been movement in the Senate to maybe extend the deadline. Biden doesn't want to enforce it. Trump doesn't want to enforce it. Why the about face? Does it just the political cost is going to be that large?

Yeah, I think this is. is a perfect example of, and I long-time listeners know, am a supporter of the ban. I think it's important. I think that both from the national security perspective, the data privacy perspective, the black box algorithm perspective, the relationship between bite dance and the Chinese Communist Party, I think at every level, this is the most logical, sensible thing imaginable, but there's a political cost to it. So, I mean, in this day and age, politicians actually taking something that will cost them short-term gain for the longer-term health for the nation is not exactly the most regular thing you see. So I think it's a simple political calculation.

I'm sure at scale, this is unpopular. This is only popular among people who are following it closely, not the average TikTok user. So yeah, I think that's pretty, that one's a pretty simple explanation. It's almost like this is why it's been so difficult to regulate big tech. It's because even when you have an app where there's all the reason in the world to potentially regulate it or rein it in you uh you can't do it and now imagine how hard it is to do something like you know set back amazon prime or you know spin off instagram and make it worse i don't know uh it seems like that's tough and i think what they're really seeing also is that young people are such a politically uh independent force and we saw in the 2024 election i think for the first time in a very long time

that young people actually swung by like something like 30 or 40 points from Democrats to Republicans. And young people use TikTok. So I think everybody's paying attention to the fact that young people's votes are up for grabs for the first time in decades and they don't want to lose them. Yeah, I think, but I want to make clear for listeners like what exactly is happening right now. TikTok is not being de facto banned. The legislation stipulated that by Bight Dance needed to divest TikTok, which the weirdest part of this is, Bight Dance is a very heavily inflated, has a very heavily inflated valuation, is still one of the most valuable private companies in the world.

So they have the opportunity at this moment to potentially actually realize a lot of money. Any, from a financial perspective, it's a no-brainer that why not at the highs of your property sell it. So there has to be more. So what the legislation stipulate is that you need to divest and then bite dance said, well, the algorithm will never work as well unless you're using the bite dance algorithm, but we will not be able to divest that because that is considered sensitive property under like Chinese law. So, but we are not connected to China. Like the whole thing just made no sense and every step along the way and we'll definitely get into what happened And with Red Note, it just makes it so much more clear.

This is a very heavily connected app to China. And they didn't really argue against that. They basically admitted to it in the way they've approached this entire process. So ban it. Right. Yeah, I would say that when TikTok CEO Show Chu went before Congress and was like answering questions about the app's connection to China, it was effectively over then. he did such a poor job then and it became clear that he wasn't in charge he did he could he was

answering questions like a mid-level product manager and not like the CEO of a company that has any autonomy over what's going to happen and in fact I wrote a story a big technology right after that happened that just like it's clear that he's not the one he's not making the decision the app yeah and it is interesting that you know if you think about it this really did give away the game the fact that they didn't move to sell at all uh the fact that they didn't move to sell at all uh the fact that they're trying they're going to shut down it seems like as opposed to trying to find a different option at least that's what they say right and we're going to go through some scenarios where they don't end up being shut down but no opinion the blogger talked a little bit about it

in a very good post this week on his substack he said the refusal to sell the app tells us the Chinese government would rather see TikTok destroyed than fall into American hands notably the same government put up little fuss back in 2020 when the U.S. forced a Chinese company to sell the gay dating app Grindr to an American company. Why shut down TikTok and leave untold billions of dollars on the table instead of just selling the thing like Grindr was sold? He said the simplest explanation is that Chinese leaders simply think that TikTok, unlike other apps, is so important they would rather destroy it than see escape their control. Oh, I mean, okay, completely agree. Because if you have in a way to control the entire American

psyche and cultural output. Obviously, that's kind of nice. And again, there's been a lot of debate around, you know, how heavy is the thumb on the scale. But at a simple level, if you control, you know, what's happening in Xinjiang with the Uyghur population and just don't allow those messages to kind of proliferate on the algorithm, like really straightforward stories that the government, the Chinese government wants to have some influence over. Imagine having that tool in your belt to be able to just control those like really critical narratives around Taiwan, around these very, around Tiananmen Square, like around these very, very specific things. Why you wouldn't let that go if that's the key goal of the app.

Yes. And Noah actually has some really good data in the story that he writes. He said that content critical of China was made far less available on TikTok, then on Instagram and YouTube in a study that was done, I think, by Rutgers University. Done in a university study, a research

university study. He said the results are revealed a disproportionately high ratio of pro-Chinese Communist Party to anti-communist Chinese Communist Party content on TikTok, despite users engaging significantly more with the anti-Semitism, CCP content suggesting propagandic propagandistic manipulation. Lord Almighty, why do we even have

it as a word? But let's talk through like the scenario of what could actually happen. So I think you and I are both on the same page that there's a good chance that no matter what the politicians say that Google and Apple will just remove TikTok from the app store on the 19th. But Let's talk through what happens if they don't. So the TikTok ban will, this is back to the NPR story by Bobby Allen, who was actually going to join us today, but we had the ruling that happened, like basically as we're recording, but he's doing a great job on the story. He says the TikTok ban will start on January 19th. The following day, Trump will be sworn into office. Once in the White House, Trump can instruct his justice department to not enforce the ban.

And again, that would put Apple and Google and other companies that do business with TikTok in an awkward position, since they'd be violating federal law. another scenario he says is that Trump could extend the date of the ban even though it would already have started on January 19th and we've also talked about the fact that he can just sort of like wink wink they've divested and let them continue and somebody advising Trump must be telling him that these are his options because this is what he said in a statement to CNN immediately following the Supreme Court ruling he said it ultimately goes up to me so you're going to see what I'm going to do Congress has given me the decision So I'll be making the decision. So obviously he sees enough wiggle room in the law. You know,

in typical scenarios, that's wrong and ridiculous. But there is wiggle room in the law. And clearly Trump sees enough wiggle room in the law to be able to say they can stay. Yeah, I think the political calculations underlying this are so fascinating. And I think as a political observer, not from the participant side, but purely on the observer side, I'm kind of loving how difficult or how kind of like not congruous, all these kind of ways of thinking are, think about already you have something where Trump has said, I don't want this ban, and the Supreme Court unanimously comes out in favor of it and saying it does not violate the First Amendment. So already you're having a situation where we were all assuming the

court will roll over at every step of the way for Trump, and maybe they won't. The other of this is at this exact moment, and over the last few months, I guess, as well, Trump seems to be pro TikTok, and that could be both the connection to Jeff, yes, the investor, also just gaining more support in trying to have more influence over the younger population and seeing an opportunity. But on his anti-China messaging, it goes completely counter to it. So if he's going to spend the next four years coming out, I am the anti-China president. And then the first thing he does is a major move to support the Chinese government, that doesn't quite make sense either. So I think even in the next 48 hours or what are we like 96 hours from inauguration,

I feel there's a lot of back and forth that can happen right now. Yeah, I was watching CNBC as the announcement came out and the reporting there was basically that Trump and Xi Jinping have talked about this. And she wants TikTok to persist, like has actually stated that to Trump in the United States, which is really interesting. And, you know, the craziest thing is Trump was Mr. Ban TikTok in the first term. And now, guess who's coming to inauguration day? Not just the inauguration, but on the dais. Show Chu, CEO of TikTok. This is according to the times, TikTok's CEO plans to attend Trump inauguration. Day after the ban goes into effect. the chief executive of TikTok plans to attend president like Donald J. Trump's inauguration

and has been invited to sit in a position of honor on the dais where former presidents, family members, and other important guests traditionally are seated. Maybe he's sitting in the seat that Michelle Obama gave up. I don't know. What's going on here? Why is he going? I mean, the next four years are going to be wild, I think. This is just the first reminder of that.

But yeah, I agree that of all people, because he's not even a personality. He's not even, I mean, he had his congressional hearing, but it's not like show Chu is like dropping tweet bombs at like Bezos and Musk or anything like this. He's not, he's not a big personality in tech anyway. So to actually still have him up there, it is quite a signal. I mean, it certainly is. All right. So does Elon Musk? end up buying TikTok because that's everybody's favorite favorite rumor i like that rumor i think it's

from a from a purely juicy salacious standpoint it's the best outcome and it's the most interesting one i think the financial slash capital structure side of it i don't even know how we begin to approach that again this is still a i think i've seen between anywhere between 50 to 80 billion this is bigger than Twitter and Twitter really involved a lot of leverage and that investment from a financial standpoint still has not shown itself. I think in any any marking to be profitable. So how it would work, I have no idea. But I mean, oh man, the underlying messaging if that happens is just so wild about what's his connection to the CCP, what's Trump's involvement. I mean, it's too much. It's too much. Yeah, because Musk has business with the Chinese

government with the Tesla's manufacturing and sales within China. Well, as Elon Musk said, as his latest rocket imploded over the atmosphere or within the atmosphere earlier today, success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed. Wait, did he say that? That's a t-shirt right there. That's a t-shirt. So, all right, one last thing about this. Remember we spoke about Polly Market a lot in the run-up to the election and it did nail it? So I went to Polly Market today before the show, and Polly Market says the chance of Tick-Tock being banned in the United States is 80% ahead of May 2025. What do you think about those odds? I like them.

I mean, but I will humbly recognize ever since August 6th, 2020, when Trump, announced his ban, I have been predicting the shutdown of TikTok in the United States were well over four years since that date. And I'm still going to keep predicting it. I would have definitely my polymarket contract would have expired long ago at zero. But I like the 80% odds. Okay. I'll tell you the one thing I do know for certain is that this TikTok ban has sent my TikTok usage through the roof this week. I basically gotten nothing done because I'm like, oh yeah, TikTok, let's see what's going on. I open it up an hour later.

I'm like, I should get back to work. Well, one thing I kept thinking about is I'm old enough to have used Napster in my younger days. And Napster was just shut down and it was a very popular app among younger people. And it's still wild to me because I remember the hearings, Metallica, was in them against Napster, like, you know, they shut down, the government shut down for copyright reasons, a very, very viral popular app. And it's interesting to me that there wasn't this major outcry in the same way, or at least at any kind of like with any genuine influence. Whereas now, again, you have a very potential national security concern. You have plenty of

alternatives. And still, there's this outcry for this. Is, is, you know, I guess China is more popular, powerful than Hollywood. Or sorry, Hollywood is more powerful than China, actually, in this case. Well, yeah. I mean, I would say that when those of, I mean, those of us who use Napster, I was a Napster user, we all knew what we were doing was wrong. Ah, that's fair. That's fair. Before we close this segment, let me just say that I still think hard of hearts that

TikTok stays in the United States. I actually don't like the 80% odds. that you'd get from polymarket and i don't know exactly what's going to be the case but that's my bottom line here is i i think we're talking next week and tick tock is still still operational and the good news is we can find out in a week by the other side then 20 20 percent five to one not that you're encouraging any gambling this is polymarket is simply a tool for hedging other financial interests so exactly but yeah five to one i know i think think that um yeah there was a time where if you made a prediction on twitter people would be like

you need skin into the game um i don't maybe i'll do it but if i'm wrong i will um i'll come on here next week and and admit it and take my shame i just don't think i'm going to be wrong so we'll find out we'll see but like okay so speaking of popular apps among the youth as the supreme court was thinking what to do with ticot and as the talk of the ban heated up Americans decided that they did not want to fully leave Chinese social media no matter what the Supreme Court, Congress, or the president said. And so they left TikTok or they hedged TikTok in mass and they picked up a new Chinese social media app called Little Red Book. And they call it red note in the U.S.

This app, I got it. it is similar ish to tic-tac at least that's what it looks like when you use it it's got videos and uh i don't know different content and it's been fascinating seeing what the embrace of americans has been on the app a lot of people are calling themselves uh tic-tac refugees is from cnn as of tuesday the hashtag tic-tac refugee as garnered nearly 60 million views and over 1.7 million comments on the app. Here's somebody who's talking about it. One of the users, our government is out of their minds if they think we're going to stand for a TikTok ban. We're just going to go to a new Chinese app and here we are. Someone said, this is so much better

than TikTok. And somebody said, Chinese, give us your American jokes. Please make fun of us so we can laugh. And someone from China responded, why do you eat like your health care is free? I thought that was good. I thought that was good. What do you think about the popularity of this app? It's so interesting that so many people, I mean, it's the number one app in the app store. It's interesting that so many people, either they love TikTok so much or I don't know. Like they want to send a message to Congress, but to make another Chinese app so popular is fascinating to me. Okay.

This is where I hope this isn't too controversial, but I have to work through this one. I have to shout out this one. these things don't just happen organically. The idea that Xiaohong Shu, or Little Red, which means Little Red Book, which, yes, there is that at least connection to Mao Zedong's original Little Red Book, though we can get more into that. I was corrected a bit on this. But again, it's insane to me.

Little Red Book is number one on the App Store. So I went on TikTok when I started seeing this, so I'm like reporting around this. and search TikTok alternative. The first things that show up on your feed are people talking about, hey, you should go over to Xiaohong Shu, little red book, here's how to do it, here's how to get uploaded, here's some instructions. Then my entire TikTok feed started becoming, go to this. So the algorithm, very, very heavily favored content around going to Shao Hong Shue,

and that's how this works. You can literally influence a mass of people. when you have control over the algorithm to take an action, to actually control their behavior to make an app that has no English content and have American English language speakers go and download this app and make it number one in the app store. That's actually the terrifying part about TikTok to me that they can make this happen with a simple algorithmic tweak. I do not believe this thing is organic, that this was a very purposeful decision. And I think it's, it's, it's, both terrifying and fascinating.

And yeah, it's the idea that all of these people, the TikTok refugees, are pushing us an app that had no English in its app description and the app title is wild. It's absolutely wild. Did you download the app? I did not. I did not download the app. I don't know. Did you, what kind of content were you getting?

I did. It was mostly discussion of TikTok. Okay, yeah, yeah. But think about, okay, what does this mean from like right now, you're seeing a lot, and again, I'm seeing this secondhand posted on Blue Sky and X is people like realizing China, regular people are kind of normal. And in a normal environment, I would think this is a good thing because, yes, there's a lot about China that's good. There's a lot. And like, go see the trains over there. Go see just like a lot. of the cities. I mean, it's good that Americans in a normal circumstance are coming to this realization. But what does this mean from like a national security perspective? What does this mean? Overall, you're suddenly getting people the younger population in America much more excited, interested, connected to China. Again, that should be good. But what's the underlying purpose of that from the TikTok perspective? Because they are, the app isn't clearly encouraging this.

There is an astroturfing element to this. And what, why is that? That's the question I think we need to be asking. Well, now I'm going to push back on you a little bit. Because if this was an intentional move from TikTok or from China, maybe it wasn't thought out so well. Because what you did, what you had was a bunch of Americans and Chinese folks interacting on the app, and they're starting to have discussions with each other that the Chinese government doesn't seem to want to have. This is from Eugene Wei, a former meta-employee, a social media strategist, American Tick-Tac refugees fleeing to the Little Red Book en masse, and interacting directly with the Chinese user base there is the most significant breach of the great firewall in years.

Now the little red book is scrambling to hire more English language sensors. We get into that in a second from Matt Stoller. The Chinese government likes our use of TikTok because that explicitly lets them control Americans, but dislikes our use of Red Note because it lets Chinese people and Americans talk to one another. And that's sort of all built up to maybe a predictable outcome here. This is from the information. TikTok users move to Chinese app Red Note alarms Beijing's sensors. The pending ban of TikTok and the U.S. is prompting a flood of TikTok users to try out

Red Note and Chinese regulators aren't happy. The cyberspace administration of China, the country's internet watchdog, is concerned that English language content showing up on Red Note may contain politically sensitive posts that aren't otherwise allowed on Chinese social media. And they raised the issue with Red Note's government relations team earlier this week, weren't that the company needs to ensure China-based users can't see the posts from U.S.-based users. Some users on U.S. social media sites, such as X, have shared screenshots of sensitive content American users uploaded on Red Note. By the way, it's called Red Note or Little Red Book, kind of interchangeably, this week, such as the famous Tankman photo of the Tiananmen Square

cracked down in 1989, claiming that such posts on Red Note were immediately removed. I think even if the Chinese government wanted this to happen. I mean, this is an app with a lot of Chinese users, and we know that TikTok and the Chinese version are separate apps, and now everybody's combining together on one, and it's like the exposure is concerning the Chinese government. So I don't know. If it was intentional, it wasn't very well thought out

if they wanted to maintain their censorship regime, don't you think? I don't. So, again, there's like two bits of reporting. There's Wired had found additional job listings for Chinese language sensors for Red Note. Apparently that had spiked. And then there was reporting from the information around this. But if any government is able to censor that scale of content, I think China's pretty much got it. Because they're doing it at a billion people.

So a couple million going in over there, I think they're going to be able to censor that pretty quickly. And then you get into the situation where then suddenly what do Americans start to see? Nothing sensitive, anything only pro-Chinese, nothing sensitive around Taiwan or Tiananmen Square or anything like that. Suddenly their feeds will be very heavily censored and targeted to promote the overall picture of China that it once promoted. So did Americans just sort of unwittingly or wittingly opt into an even more censor? more mind control version of TikTok? Yes, 100%. And that shows the power of the algorithm.

Like, if you remember March 2024, when the initial divestment, I'm not even going to call it ban, bite dance divestment requirement was passed, TikTok in its app, and again, you could argue maybe this seems nice and okay to do, it's your app, encourage people like on the first feed, it would be who is your local congressman, here's their phone number, email them, call them. Congresspeople started getting death threats and stuff. And like, when you're trying to argue that you don't have inordinate control over the minds of a large part of the population, don't do this stuff.

Like, you're not helping yourself. When you suddenly can control the algorithm to get Americans unwittingly over onto a more mind-controlled censored app, I think then you're not helping your case here. Well, speaking of U.S.-China relations, there's been another really fascinating thing that's happened with the drone company, DJI, and the effective elimination or the pullback of no-fly zones for those drones. The drones made in China can now fly in some, like, really questionable places in the United States. So we're going to talk about that, and we're going to talk about some of the latest AI news and, of course, this MBA story that I think is fascinating. On the other side of this break, back 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 Friday edition. Let's continue our discussion of the U.S. and China because DJI, so the company, the Chinese company that makes drones and other sorts of cameras, this is according to the verge, they'll no longer stop drones from flying over airports, wildfires in the White House. Fascinating story. I think the most underrated story of the week. For over a decade, this is from the story you couldn't easily fly a DJI

drone over restricted areas in the United States. DJI software would automatically stop you from flying over runways, power plants, public emergencies like wildfires, and the White House. But confusingly, among the greatest U.S. outpouring of drone distrust in years, and an incident of a DJI drone operator hindering L.A. Wildfire firefighting efforts, DJI is getting rid of its strong geo-fence. It will no longer enforce no-fly zones, instead only offering a dismissible warning, meaning only competent sense, empathy, and the fear of getting. getting caught will prevent people from flying where they shouldn't. Again, we're talking about this in the context of a DJI drone,

punching a hole in a super-scooper airplane that was fighting the LA wildfires. Fascinating, what a time to make a move like this. What could possibly be the logic here? Is this a, we're getting back at you for the TikTok thing? I mean, I imagine that this would just get, DJI a one-way ticket out of the U.S. as well. So I can walk listeners through. I own a DJI drone. I use it. I love it. And so what it does is when you try, like in New York City, it's illegal to fly a drone. But if I were to try to launch it, you get a warning and saying this is a no-fly

zone. Like, do you consent to whatever risk? But then where I live outside of Boston is near in Air Force Base, if I'm over there, where I grew up, my parents are, if I fly over there, it actually will stop the drone if I get too close. And it says, like, you're not allowed to fly here. It does not allow me to. Now that is going away. It is as wild as you think it is. I think I agree, this is all the TikTok and red note stuff. This isn't even kind of crazier story, because suddenly drones being able to enter very sensitive, restricted air spaces and simply a dismiss, because the dismissable warnings, like in New York City, if I were to do it, maybe I have, maybe I haven't, but you just click a checkbox and then you go.

To be able to do that at the White House and or around Air Force bases is kind of terrifying again. and why they are doing it right now, I think it's kind of a crazy, like, F-U move. In their language, we are placing control back in the hands of the drone operators. This one, there's going to be more coming out around this, and some bad things can potentially happen because you should not be able to,

and I say that as a drone enthusiast, fly over. I should not be able to launch my drone into the White House. So just to put a cap on this sort of China, U.S. technology discussion, it seems like China's throwing some punches and the U.S. has just taken them. Yeah, well, that's exactly it. And of course, Trump is coming in. I think that's actually the perfect framing of this. It's January 17th. We're a few days away from inauguration. Trump's coming in. They're quietly throwing punches, or not quietly, in many cases, left and right here. They could have just divested TikTok, made a lot of money. It's clean. It's over. But no, we're not going to do it. Deal with it. DJ. saying we're placing control back in the hands of the drone operators. But that's what you would do. If you know there's going to be an adversarial relationship, you show some strength up front. And like, you know, especially in all these subtle ways.

And again, as you said, this is an underreported story. I think they're very clearly showing strength as Trump is coming in just to have him kind of on his back foot as things get started. Well, show choose going to get a seat at the dais in the administration. inauguration, so. Well, Chowchua is Singaporean, remember? No, no, I'm not, I'm not saying, I'm not trying to comment on his country origin. He's running TikTok and he's going to be sitting at the dais. So if Trump or anybody in the U.S. is trying to say, well, we're going to punch back.

Well, no, that's why the setup is perfect because, I mean, think about, and the fact that Trump is not getting that, like, if you're going to try to come out strong against a country and they just are rolling over you by still having TikTok in there, having Americans using red note. Like, I mean, it's not a good look for Trump to start. I'll say that. Yeah. Well, we're going to set up the big technology red note or little red book page.

And I don't know. We'll see. Maybe we can expand into a new market. Well, after we get Xi Jinping on the podcast, as we talked about last week. Maybe this will be what pushes it along. Oh, yeah. If we become big-odd-red note, she's got to come on, right? Yeah, exactly.

All right, so we'll set that up. Everybody should tune in the next couple weeks. All right, AI news of the week. It's been actually maybe we haven't really had any model news. We did have some interesting product news. So it's sort of like a Ranjan week through and through. It's from the verge. ChatchipT can now handle reminders and to-dos.

Open AI is launching a new beta feature in chat GPT called tasks that lets users schedule future actions and run. reminders. The feature is an attempt to make the chat bot into something closer to a traditional digital assistant. It works by letting users tell chat GPT what they need and when they need it done, like a daily weather report at 7 a.m., a reminder about your passport exploration, a knock-knock joke to tell your kids before bedtime. It can handle all that through scheduled one time or recurring tasks. Is this the product innovation that you've been waiting for round time? I went back and forth on this one. On one hand, this does not seem like too much

product innovation. I actually saw someone had kind of dug into the code and literally it's like a calendar event creation that's embedded when you say like create a reminder or task. And this stuff obviously is very available with Google Assistant with Alexa. Siri is okay at it. I'm not giving me to credit because Siri forces you to like be logged in on specific accounts and stuff. But overall, not that interesting. However, it was definitely framed as agentic to their credit that somehow they have turned creating a task or a reminder into calling it an agent is a good show of where we are on the term agentic. But I think it is the one thing that made it seem more interesting to me was up until now, chat GPT has been a 100% active interaction.

I open the app, I interact with it, I chat with it, I talk to it. This is the first push into becoming a passive interaction where it comes to me rather than I go to it, which completely changes the way the app can influence and work in your life. So maybe it is the start of something big. yeah perplexity this week also they introduced some form of natural language alarm and uh i think that arvin ternivost the CEO of perplexity this is going to be the quote in the week quarter of the week of big technology newsletter this week he says we wanted aGI and instead got a natural language powered alarm clock and he said that he said that on twitter and i'm like i like it i like it i'm like man

you just perfectly encapsulated the debate we've been having on this show for the last two months. It's like, I'm saying AGI and Ron John's saying natural language alarm clock. But you know what? And right now you're winning. I like the natural language alarm clock. I mean, honestly, I knew you would. I, that is what I want.

That's exactly what I want. I get to define some kind of prompt and get a different message to wake me up. What would your natural language alarm clock be? I think I need someone yelling at me. Oh, I mean, I have one already. I say, uh, Alexa, um, set my alarm clock. alarm for the next day. And then I wake up to an ad for Celsius. Oh, yeah, yeah. Because they have no idea how to engineer the damn thing.

Okay, yours is Celsius. I want someone wake the fuck up, Bronjan. Come on. No, no, you cannot wake up with that energy, man. I won't know all that. I need masculine bro Zuckerberg energy to get me up in the morning. Maybe you need Mark Zuckerberg and Mark Zuckerberg's voice on the alarm being like, yep, time to build. but okay i'm actually about to write about this after my conversation with replica CEO eugenia coida and we talk about it's an agentic thing we talk about agents right and it's so funny because we've been thinking about it as like a travel agent for so long like our agents will handle tasks for us our agents will set our alarm clock and they're just going to be like you know a taking

orders type of thing and a getting stuff done like personal assistant um what do you think about the idea that they might just be like our companions that also get things done for us or even for some people they're lovers because the new york times also had a story this week about a woman who fell in love with chat cheap t and it's so funny that we've been talking about these bots and assistance as sort of like dispassionate helpers and maybe the real form factor shall we say is just going to be like best buds or even something more oh man i think this was a tough one again a 28 year old woman with a busy social I've spent hours talking to her AI boyfriend for advice and consolation and yes they do have sex that's according to the new york

times I think it's it's honestly hilarious to me that the all that aside that I would love if this is considered agentic this is what like all the money raised and mark betty off and whoever else talking about agentic, this is where we end up. I think on the... It's not just going to handle your Salesforce tasks. I don't even going to finish a sentence. Klarna CEO coming on. We have replaced not just customer service agents.

As CEOs, we cannot stop our AI agents from trying to bed our clients. It's an upgrade. It's the enterprise package. Yeah, I think the main thing, I'll say, and trying to reel this one in, this is going to happen more and more. And listening to the Replica CEO interview, it was a bit jarring how casually it was discussed

that romantic partners will be. And even I think, and she had mentioned in your interview, like there was a case of a guy who like had a very abusive relationship and then had an AI girlfriend to help build their confidence back up and now is in a stable relationship but still talks to his AI girlfriend. I don't know and understand how these dynamics will work, but I don't know, like as a therapist is not is totally good to have in a relationship on the separately. If that's the play here, I don't. I don't know. This is the brave new world type of shit that, like, I have not certainly not

pieced together in my head where I stand or how I feel about it because I just don't know. I'm not one so terrified about it, but also so excited about it, not like necessarily as a personal use case, but more just like, oh my God, like the power that these things have if they're able to do this stuff is, is nuts. I don't know. Well, I mean, from a business perspective, only fans valuation. I think it's going to get cut pretty deeply because... Oh, yeah, OnlyFans is going to be done.

It's going to be replaced with AI. Yeah, it's gone. So, sorry, OnlyFans. You had a good run. Just one last thing on this. You asked about, like, what are the nature of these relationships going to be? And to me, the funniest thing about the time story is,

so this woman fell in love with Chat, GPT. It's a bot. They talk all the time. They have sex. She's living long distance from her husband or boyfriend. And they ask her partner, like, so what do you think about her AI lover? And he's like, yeah, whatevs?

It's not human. It's like, I think you're fully underestimating what your partner is doing right here. This is a very intense, like as, as Eugenia said, a real romantic relationship. No big deal. NBD, bro. Yeah. It's a big deal. And now, I'm sure someone's told him, now that she's gone to the Times.

Has she done a feature story about her love with this guy on the Times? No, just a, just a bot. So, all right. So one last story I want to cover. I want to leave a little bit of time for it this week is I saw a very interesting story in the journal. It was alerted. So I imagine some of our listeners have seen it as well talking about how MBAs are struggling to land jobs, especially ones from, well, not especially, but even ones from elite schools. This is from the story. Landing a professional job in the U.S. has become so tough that even Harvard Business School says its MBAs can't solely rely on the university's name to open doors anymore. 23% of job-seeking Harvard MBAs who graduated last spring were still looking for work three months after leaving campus. That is up from 20% the prior year. And during, okay, and the figure was 10% in 2022. So you see the doubling of MBAs from Harvard looking for work. And we're not really, we're not in a recession, right? We're not even in a bad economy. We're in a tough

moment for a lot of folks dealing with inflation. But if you look at like the overall economy, it's strong. So why do you think the MBAs are not getting jobs? All right. And is it AI? Well, no, I didn't. I got thoughts on this one. And I say this as a proud MBA from INCAD in France and Singapore. And I got my MBA in 2010, 2010. I think this makes all the sense in the world. The MBA curriculum, I don't see adapting well at these schools to the current reality of how work is done. And I've seen this, again, from my own school, from others. Schools are trying to rethink their curriculums. There was like a whole push towards being a product manager once they realized that was the trendy job like six or seven years ago. But MBAs, almost by definition, are behind

the curve on how to work with technology, and I don't think they're going to catch up. So I get that first, there's always going to be more of a salary bump for an elite MBA that you would rather just not pay if someone else can do the job the same. And yeah, I think this is, I think it's rare that I'm agreeing with Mark Andreessen, but he had said this is a secular change rather than a blip. And I agree with that. I think unless these elite MBA programs really rethink how they work and what they teach, I think there's going to be a big issue.

The only thing that they do offer is the network, which I've been the beneficiary of from my own alumni network. And that's still there. So I think the network is still a pretty incredible thing. And that's something that AI will never replace. but overall in terms of the actual tangible skills, it makes all the sense in the world to me that they are not producing them right now. And just to broaden it out, it's not just Harvard, right?

This is from the story. Harvard isn't the only elite business school where recent grads seem to be stumbling on their way into the job market. More than a dozen top tier MBA programs, including those at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, Stanford's Graduate School of Business, and NYU Stern School of Business

had worse job placement outcomes last year than any other in recent memory. And now, look, I've poked at it a couple times, you know, in this conversation and kind of ingest, but maybe not. And to me, I wonder, is this like going to be the first mass? I don't want to call it job displacement, but maybe like workplace ripple. I don't know. Maybe job displacement.

Who knows? I shouldn't really be couching the language so much. That's going to happen due to AI. So listen to this. This is from the financial time. So this is from, I think, David Solomon at Goldman Sachs. He spoke about the impact AI would have on his company's business and those of his clients. The bank now has 11,000 engineers among its 46,000 employees, and they're using AI to help draft public filing documents.

The work of drafting an S1, the initial registration prospectus for an IPO, might have taken a six-person team's two weeks to complete, but it can now be done 95% by AI in minutes. The person who shared this on Twitter, John Lefevere, Leferve, he said white-collar jobs are going to go first and fast. So I ask you this is like the MBA job, though, you know, synthesizing information, putting together PowerPoint presentations. Can you just now kind of dump a lot of that work into a Claude, a chat GPT or a Gemini? Yes, and yes, and yes. I think like this example, and I read plenty of S-1s, they are essentially like a madlib style thing with a little bit of actual writing. And they are very, very heavy documents. They're very highly redlined, regulated documents that get written, which is again, this is a perfect use case where AI just almost naturally will do it better than a traditional person. and just to feed in different data sources, update them in real time, create that end content.

There's no doubt in my mind, every public filing document will get written by AI. And I imagine I'm curious who the players are. There's got to be some out there, some startups or big companies working on this. And that would have taken six bankers working two weeks at a minimum from the tweet. So I think this type of work, I agree, is going to be the most. easily replaced by AI, to defend MBAs for a moment. I do think, again, I don't know if it's cause or effect. You get a lot of really, really smart people admitted to these programs. These are also, that's the type of profile and personality, I think, that is going to figure out

how to work with AI ahead of others. So at least when I went many years ago to the MBA program and still am close with a lot of my classmates. They are the ones who are working in AI, figuring out what's next, like working with AI faster than other people. So I still think, but does that personality or profile not go for an MBA in the future and pay $120,000 or more for that because they don't feel they don't need to? Maybe that'll be the case. But if they're going to be the ones that are going to figure out how to use AI faster than others, then wouldn't we see a different trend? Like, wouldn't it just be that they're hired more than they have been in the past?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think we're in the, we're definitely in the interim period here. And maybe I'll backtrack on that. I guess in totality, maybe not. It's just there's a lot of really smart people in these programs. And I'm guessing a lot of them will be the ones that figured out. But yeah, maybe the cookie cut. profile as well isn't as risk-taking necessarily. Man, learn to code and AI's going to do your

work. Get an MBA education. AI's going to do your work. I think there's really only one job left if you're thinking about aspiring to something. Got to go be the CEO of an app that the US is going to ban and to the dais you go. So shout out to you, Showchu. You are our unexpected party guest of the week here on the show. We'll see you on the dais. We'll see you on the dais. All right, Ron John. What a show. Thanks for coming on and we'll have a lot to talk about next week as well. All right. See you next week. It's going to be an interesting one. Sure will. All right, everybody. Thank you for listening. We have a great show coming for you next Wednesday. I'm not going to say the guest, but when you see it in your feed, I think you're going to be inclined to listen.

I can't wait to bring it to you. And then Ron John and I are going to be back on Friday. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.