Morning Brew Daily - ChatGPT Finds Its Voice While Amazon Invests Billions in AI Rival

Episode Date: September 26, 2023

Episode 155: Neal and Toby break down the biggest AI news at the top of the show, including; ChatGPT developing the ability to speak and analyze images, Amazon investing $4 billion into Anthropic and Spotify using OpenAI to release podcasts in alternate languages. Plus, how much are auto CEOs making compared to their striking workers? Then Toby shares his favorite trends and the Air Force gets into the taxi biz. Finally, are you a text person or a call person? Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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slash price match for details. Good morning, Brew Daily show. I'm Neil Freyman. And I'm Toby Howell. On today's pod, Ford's CEO made how much last year? We'll talk pay disparities between company execs and the average worker as the auto strike rolls on. Then OpenAI has given chat, GBT, a voice now. So be careful what you say around your phone these days because it might start talking back.

It's Tuesday, September 26. Let's ride. Neil, you were out yesterday for your. Yom Kippur. The largest part of the holiday is an over 24-hour fast that ended yesterday at sundown. How did you break the fast and are you going to start taking up intermittent fasting? I'm not going to take up intermittent fasting, but fasting is an interesting exercise because on the one hand, do you realize how dependent you are on food? Like a half a day goes by and all you can think about is when is my next meal. I need to eat food. My whole day is derailed. And then on the other hand, as it gets into the afternoon, you thinking, I can do this.

I have the power to get through this. So it's an interesting duality where you realize how beholden you are to food. And on the other hand, you're like, I have the discipline and I have the ability to get through this entire day. So that's kind of what I was thinking about. I knew you would have a good take on that. My funny Yomkafer's story is my roommate who's also Jewish got home yesterday. And there was an entire pizza that was accidentally delivered to our apartment. When's the last time you had an entire pizza accident delivered, let alone during a 25-hour fast?

So it was just a classic case of like, how is this happening right now? And it was Joe's pizza. Yeah, it was really good. Okay, Neil, let's get into our top story of the day where we have a whole bunch of AI news to parse through. Three stories caught our eyes, so we'll run through them quicker than you can say, Skynet. Up first, open AI announced a very Joaquin-Fenix slash Scarlett Johansson-esque update to chat CBT yesterday that allows it to respond your questions with spoken words, meaning that when you yell at your computer for being slow or overheating, it might start yelling back. Well, not really, but the update will make ChatGBTGBTBT a lot more formidable than the existing voice assistance out there like Siri and Alexa.

While those two only have a very small range of can responses that they can regurgitate, you can have a flow, full-blown conversation with ChatGBTBT, much like we've already been doing via text. Also, as if flowing conversation wasn't enough, ChatGBTGPT also says its voice assistants sound a lot more. more lifelike than the series in Alexis of the world. Plus, it has five options for different voices to choose from. Honestly, Neil, as I'm saying this, this feels like one of the biggest AI breakthroughs yet because we've been promised this idea of a sort of smart voice assistant for years, but now it feels like they're actually possible.

Yeah, this is a big breakthrough. I mean, I have an Alexa at home. I have a Google assistant at home, and I barely use them as we've talked about many times on the show because the only use cases for them are something like, you know, can you set a timer for my salmon and what's the weather outside and can you play, can you play a certain music? So I think being able to converse the chat GPT

and its capabilities is a game changer. And the big thing here, I think, is that you can continue a conversation, have an open-ended conversation and correct yourself. So if I were to ask Alexis something and it got it wrong, I would have to ask the same thing again. again, just in a slightly different way. Meanwhile, if I'm talking to chat GBT and anybody who's used chat GBT, the text version,

it remembers your conversation. So you can say, no, no, no, that's not what I meant. Like, go back to taps and let's talk about that. And so I think the ability to correct and change as the conversation goes is what makes this so much bigger and better than the existing voices. Yeah. And then also another aspect to the announcement was that they're adding senses to chat GBT as well. So another sense that they added was you can actually see images that you show it. So a use case that

we're definitely not condoning is you can potentially take a picture of your homework, for instance, and then chat GPT could process that image and then solve it. So again, it's becoming a full-fledged sensory being at this point because now you can text to it, you can talk to it, and then also it can process images. So it's really rounding in a form. One fun thing that someone used the visual chat GPT for, and this is something that I need because I'm a terrible. I'm a terrible organizer. They took a picture of a bunch of boxes, and then they took a picture of a bunch of their trunk of their car and said, is it possible for me to arrange these boxes in a way that they would fit in the trunk of the car? That's because I'm the worst at organizing. So if I had the chat GPT's, you know, green light to say, yes, you can do, you can fit these boxes in your car. Then I would do that. Another way people are using this is to take a picture of their fridge. That's what I was going to say. And say, and say, and. say, can I make a possible recipe for this? They say the recipes are a little rudimentary.

Yeah. Maybe like three stars on all recipes. But it's just another way of showing how chat JBT is becoming more than just a bot that you can have text conversations with. And it seems like a serious breakthrough. Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to start snapping picks in my fridge because I'm hopeless at coming up with recipes. All right. So tucked into OpenAI's updates also was that it is partnering with Spotify to translate podcasts into different languages. And here's the kicker in the host's voice. The feature is currently limited to certain major podcasters and a few languages for now, but Spotify expects to make the option more accessible in the future. I have always wondered what Bill Simmons sounds like when complaining

in German, so I'm really excited for this to roll out. Actually, I wonder what we sound like in German. Sure seems like one day you could all listen to this podcast in a different language with our voices. Toby, think about what this could do for our resumes. Conversational German, conversational Spanish, conversational French, and we wouldn't be lying. Yeah, I honestly would immediately thought about our podcast, obviously, but I got a little nervous, too, because who knows how perfect the translation is and what if it says something that can be misconstrued in another language? So I really do wonder if this will actually become a widely used thing, because there are nuances between languages and one thing said in one language might not translate. Also, filler words. I know we have some filler words from time to time.

Never, never. Right. What does it do with those? So I have a lot of questions. And Spotify, where was our call, though? We're not in the small test group. So I guess right now we're stuck listening to Bill Simmons. But that concern about synthetic voices, which is a big part of Open AIs tech right now, is majorly concerning. We, you know, over the first half of the show we've been talking about, like, yeah, this is an amazing breakthrough. But the more options you have to interact with chat, GBT, the more opportunities there are for bad actors. to break it. So you've seen everyone tries to break chat GBT from a text perspective. So they've gotten smart in, you know, protecting against harmful information there. But then all of a sudden you start being able to send a picture. It's able to synthesize voices. It's able to, you know, see and hear and talk back. And all of that just opens up way more opportunities for this kind of mass information and bad acting that we've, that researchers have warned about. Yeah, the can worms as well and truly opened at this point. All right, for our final AI story, it comes from a

name we haven't really mentioned much in the AI race, and that is Amazon. After sitting on the sidelines while its big tech brethren have duped it out, it cannonballed into the water yesterday by announcing it would invest up to $4 billion into the AI startup Anthropic. We've talked a little bit about Anthropic on the show before. Remember, it's the one with a chatbot named Claude. Claude and ChatGBTBT are both AI chatbots that can answer questions and create content. But a few differences between the two is that Claude can process larger bodies of text than ChatGPT. Plus, it's a constitutional AI, which means it's governed by a series of rules to prevent it from going all Terminator on us. So, Neil, do we like the move from Amazon, or does it feel like it made a bit of a reactionary move to make sure it's not getting left behind to the AI race?

The dust is kind of settling now among the big tech companies. We're kind of seeing some of them were kind of playing the field a little bit and seeing how this all would shake out. But I think there is an extreme arms race right now to kind of hitch your wagon to one particular chatbot or product that can get investor enthusiasm. Amazon did not have that. I mean, it has AWS, which is this massive cloud computing platform. But it doesn't really have this product that it could show off and say, this is how we're working with generative AI right now, which is what investors really want to hear. Microsoft obviously has hitched its wagon to Open AI and ChatGBT. They invested $10 billion back in January.

Facebook has taken this open source approach, so they've kind of stick their claim there. Apple is another one where it's sort of unclear where their future lies in generative AI, but you know they're working on it. Google has barred, but Amazon was just kind of hanging out there in this liminal space. So maybe it did feel a little bit pressure to prove to investors that it was really going all in on generative AI by saying anthropic, like you are the people who started at our former Open AI employees. So they were like, all right, this is, we're just going to go in all in on you. I think it's so funny when these announcements are considered investments because a lot

of that $4 billion is just going to be plowed right back into AWS because, remember, these language models take so much computing power. And so I don't even look at it as an investment. they're basically just giving them $4 billion in AWS credits because Anthropic will now use AWS to train its system. So I think it's funny. It's always, it's a logistics match made in heaven. And we saw it with Microsoft and opening. Now we have the similar tip for tat on Anthropic and Amazon. Anthropic is two years, it's two years old.

Yeah, started in 2021. Four billion. And they were last minority stake for $4 billion. Can you imagine? Well, they were last, they've raised $1 billion so far before this and they were valued at $4.2. billion and they just raised, well, it's not totally four billion yet. It could be up to four billion. So I wonder what this valuation is. No one kind of had it, but I am curious. It's probably worth a lot of money. Okay, moving on. The eyes of the country are on Michigan because President Biden

is headed there today to pick it with striking auto workers and his opponent on the Republican side, Donald Trump, will hold a rally with union members tomorrow. We've talked a bunch about the auto strike on this podcast, but there's one dimension we haven't fully explored yet, and that is the issue of CEO pay. United Auto Workers President Sean Fane has made the disparities between the pay of auto companies' CEOs and the rank and file members, the centerpiece of the wage increases he's looking for. Here's what he's talking about. Last year, Ford's current CEO Jim Farley earned $21 million. That's 21% more than his predecessor did in 2019. And at General Motors, CEO Mary Barra made $29 million, about 34% more than she did four years ago. Got those numbers in your

Okay, let's talk about what regular people are bringing home after a day in the factories. Under their current contract, full-time unionized factory workers start at about $18 an hour and can earn up to $32 an hour. UAW base wages have risen 6% on average since 2019, but that amounts to a 5.4% decline when you factor in inflation. So not only is the UAW arguing that the pay gap between the top CEOs and the average worker is astronomically large, about 300 times, but it's also a lot of. been increasing over time, and they're currently on strike to try to remedy that.

Yeah, and if you compare those pay gaps to other employers with big union workforces, the three automakers pay ratios were even higher than the railroad industry, the airline industry, but they were actually in line with UPS and Caterpillar, which makes heavy machinery. So it is interesting to see kind of where the auto industry falls in terms of the spectrum of other unionized workforces, and it's definitely on the higher end as well. So the union has that to bargain with as well. The CEOs say, look, we're massive companies. First of all, they say, we're not taking home salaries. These are all, the majority of any CEO's compensation nowadays is in stock-based awards or grants. So they're saying, we have to hit performance metrics to even see any money. And

what those performance metrics are is obviously up for debate, whether that's, you know, whether they're easily hit it or not. But together, these three companies bring in $150 billion in revenue. So they're like, hey, I take them $20 million. My company brings in tens of billions of dollars each year. So, you know, I'm worth it. It was interesting, too, that CEO pay actually did dip in 2022, according to one report, because the market did decline in 2022. And again, a lot of their CEO pay is tied to the market. But then also, if you want to compare CO pay to another segment of the worker population, which is the 0.1% of wage earners, the gap between those two kind of groups is actually growing back in the 50s through the 80s. The average ratio was 3.6 CEOs were paid 3.6

to 1 more than the top 0.1% of earners. And now it's at 7.68%. So even the gap between the highest earners and CEOs is widening. So imagine what it's doing compared to the median work. which is what we're seeing in these figures. And critics point to that particular statistic and say that there is a market failure here because why are there just 30 people who are able to run massive companies in the world? Like, why are they getting so much more than the other elite employees who are in the 0.1%? And they're saying that there's a market failure because these, the merry bars of the world, the Bob Igers, these massive CEOs are railroading,

corporate boards into these massive compensation packages that don't reflect their value. So the argument is that say we decrease CEO pay across the board, we won't see a dip in economic output. Right. Market failure. It's markets all the way down, Neil. That's what we like to say. All right, Neil, before we jump into the next story, we're going to take a quick break.

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Thank you. One size absolutely does not fit all. Get a quote or find an agent today at thehartford.com slash small business. All right, Neil, we are back with another edition of Toby's trends where I, an unhinged and wacky Gen Zer, educate you a millennial with a fully developed prefrontal cortex, about a new trend I've had my eye on. And that trend is clown core. People with clown fears rest easy.

There's nothing scary about this trend. But people who have a fashion sense, you might want to shield your ears. Clowncore is a fashion movement that's grown in popularity over the last few years and even made it even made it to the runways of Paris Fashion Week yesterday after Italian designer Marnie showcased a tennis shoe called the Bigfoot 2.0 that, for lack of a better word, looks like it was stung by a bumblebee. It's all puffy and inflated and it looks like someone took a bike pump to your standsmiths. Some of you may have first noticed clowncore gaining a foothold in popular culture

after mischief created those big red boots that everyone from Doja Cat to Lil Nas X were rocking. But also, if we want to zoom out, this is a real business trend as well. So-called ugly shoes like Crocs reported record revenue in June, while Birkenstocks is slated to go public later this year at around $8 billion valuation. So, Neil, should we be rocking clown shoes to the show? The thing with fashion is these things pop up for a year and then you go all in on it and then the next year they're not in Vogue. anymore. So I just stick to the basics. I just go with white dad tennis sneakers all the time.

But it does seem like these big, clunky, oversized shoes are becoming a huge thing in high fashion. And to me, it's all about just standing out and being nonconformist and subverting typical fashion trends, which are sleeker shoes and seen as more stylish. But I think in fashion, the whole point is standing out and being yourself and expressing yourself in certain ways And wearing a massive boot or a shoe is a way to do that.

Yeah, you definitely got to the sociological region behind it. But if we also look back through fashion history, there is a precedent for this. Venetian noble women were wearing these chunky platform shoes all the way back in the 15th century. And the goal back then was to distance themselves from the dirty streets. And so some of them, though, were 20 inches high. So imagine wearing platform shoes walking through Venice on 20 inch high platform. So I guess everything that is new was once old and vice versa. All right, Toby.

Thanks for that trend. I don't know how many of us are rocking clunky shoes. You can't see it beneath the table. I got some clunky ones on right now. Okay, moving on. They promised us flying cars and we might just have flying cars. At a base in California, the U.S. Air Force received its first electric flying taxi yesterday, known in the industry as an EV toll, an electric vertical takeoff and landing

aircraft because it can take off and land vertically like a helicopter. The startup that provided the flying taxi to the military is Jobi Aviation, one of a handful of startups that are looking to turn the Jetsons into reality. The progress has been slow going, both on the technical side and gaining approval from regulators, that these won't totally screw up already clogged air traffic. But the delivery to the Air Force is a sign that air taxis might finally be inching toward commercial service. Proponents of air taxis say they could revolutionize urban transportation, by providing an emissions-free, ultra-quiet alternative to the private cars and ride-sharing options stuck in traffic down below.

I mean, how nice would it be to take the elevator up to your apartment roof and snag an air taxi to work during rush hour? But despite all of the hype, there is not yet a commercial air taxi system anywhere around the world, though many are trying to make it happen possibly by next year. Yeah, this seems like almost a perfect storm where regulators, the private sector, are all kind of aligned into making this a thing. I mean, the FAA has said it's preparing to support robust air taxi operations by 2028. And then obviously, the military has been a big proponent of these. And actually, right now, the FAA does not govern aircraft used by the military. So air taxi companies have kind of

used that loophole to secure these big defense contracts so they can start testing out their air taxis on military bases. And there are use cases. I mean, you can obviously transport cargo and people. But you can also use these vehicles to monitor these giant air bases and then also maybe conduct medical evacuation. So there's definitely these use cases on military and I can see why they've kind of gravitated towards each other because it's kind of a win-win for both. They're like airborne forklifts. That's the way I'm thinking about it. Or those like little cars that you jet around airports all the time that you see. Those could be, that could just be them up in the air. So I don't know if it's a massive, you know, game changer here. But

there could be some particular uses, just for some specs on these things. They can carry one pilot and four passengers. They can travel as fast as 200 miles per hour. So think about something that can take off and land vertically and travel 200 miles per hour in a forward direction. And the range is as much as 100 miles. And that is actually one of the big hangups here is that just like we saw, we're seeing in electric vehicles, the batteries are a big deal because you need to have more range to be able to make these things useful. And the problem right now is getting a battery that is lightweight, doesn't produce a ton of noise too, because these things are built as a quiet alternative. Imagine if you're in New York City, which is already loud, and then you add 100 to 200,

all of these taxis flying up in the air, and that could add to a lot of noise pollution. So there is some technical work needed to make these quieter and have a longer range. Yeah, I'm more bullish on it on the military-based use case because of the wide, open spaces. I'm less bullish on it on cities just because the safety hazards and noise pollution. So if you wanted where Toby's bullishness factor stands, bullish for military, not bullish for cities. There is a chance that we could see these by 2024 next year at the Paris Olympics. That's the first target that they're trying to aim for commercial service. Oh, Lord. And then by 20, the Olympics seem to be play a big factor in air taxi service because France is trying

to get it done by 2024. And then our target date here in the U.S. for a major fleet is Los Angeles in 2028. All right. Keep an eye out to the skies. Okay, Neil, for our final story, I want to talk about some of the unspoken norms of talking on the phone. Now, this could have easily been a Toby trend for how wildly different generations view phone etiquette. The Washington Post wrote this really interesting piece where they talked to an etiquette expert on what exactly is proper phone etiquette these days, and the results were interesting. Here are some of the rules mentioned in the piece. First of all, don't leave a voicemail. They are an artifact of the days before text messages. If you call someone they don't pick up, just text

them after. Speaking of texts, text people before calling because doing it in the reverse can feel a little stressful for the recipient. The next one I found actually helpful, just as a rule of thumb, emotions are for voice, facts are for text. So that means anything that requires nuance like an argument or catching up with someone is best done on the phone while day-to-day stuff can be handled via text. There are a couple more on this list, Neil. But I know. You know you must have some opinion on these because I certainly do. Okay, I'm excited to hear them, but I just want to just note how quickly voicemails have evaporated from our culture. Because it was just in 2010 that Bruno Mars said, don't feel like picking up my phone.

So leave a message at the tone. So clearly, voicemails were a big thing back in 2010, but I have not gotten one in one to two years. And I think that's totally fine. I think don't leave a voicemail I'm on board with. Text before you call is abomination. Oh, you don't like that. No, you should be able to call someone without a range. This isn't work.

If it's work, then maybe I would say, like, hey, are you free for a call right now? Or let's schedule a call. But that's work. When you're just calling up a friend, it is not an inconvenience to the friend to just call them. Yeah. That's sad. I think it's, I'm totally on board with that too, because I think calls these days are almost like getting a letter from someone where I love it. If a friend calls me out of the blue, that's an instant pickup.

And there's pretty much no one I wouldn't pick up their phone for because I'm, I'm nervous. It's just like you open a mailbox. You're like, oh, my gosh, a letter from someone. Like, oh, my gosh, so and so is calling me. So I'm on board with that. Another rule from the piece that I thought was a sign of the times is that use video voicemails judiciously.

And remember, the new iOS 17 or 16 or 17. 17. The new iOS update allows you to leave a FaceTime voicemail. And I do think that's going to be the next voicemail for the next generation where you go, like, hey, we'll pick up the phone because you can see their face. So I do think that's the next frontier. I think voicemails are mostly dead, but where I think this is moving to, I don't think voice interaction or communication is gone.

I think it's moving to FaceTime. So, because whenever I look at a young person, they're always on FaceTime, and I'm like, that is weird, because I like multitasking when I'm on the phone, as I'm sure a lot more millennials can attest. And then I think it's also moving to voice messages. Those are asynchronous voice messages. A lot of people use them on WhatsApp, 43% of 18 to 20% of 20% of,000. 29-year-olds responded to a U-Gov survey saying they leave voice messages.

And WhatsApp says this is huge. They have 7 billion voice messages are left on that app every day. So especially in other countries, people love voice messages. And so that kind of interaction where you can just pick up the phone, talk out something for two minutes, and then go about your day. It's kind of like this asynchronous telephone call, which is where I think we're moving to. Voicemails are out. Voice messages in. All right.

That is our show for today. It's great to be back. and maybe we'll see the sun today? I don't know. It's been so long. Remember, you can always write to our email address, Morning Brew Daily at MorningBrew.com, with your thoughts on anything you heard on this episode.

Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our editor and producer. Samantha Vela's and Raymond Lue are associate producers. Eugenua Ogu is our technical director. Billy Minino is on audio. Hair and makeup has big shoes to fill. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew.

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