Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - OpenAI Could Lose Everything w/ Alex Kantrowitz

Episode Date: July 22, 2026

🚨 Apple is officially suing OpenAI and the allegations are insane. 🚨SUPPORT MY WORK: Buy a paid subscription to my newsletter at https://www.usermag.co  Support my work on Patreon: http://patreon.com/taylorlorenz   In what might be the most shocking Silicon Valley lawsuit of the year, Apple has accused OpenAI of corporate sabotage, trade secret theft, and orchestrating a massive campaign to poach over 400 former Apple employees to build its secret AI hardware division. From ex-employees using security bugs to access secret Apple folders, to candidates allegedly bringing physical Apple prototypes to job interviews for "show and tell", this legal battle gives us a rare, cutthroat look at the AI hardware arms race.In this episode of Power User, I sat down with tech reporter and Big Technology founder Alex Kantrowitz to break down everything you need to know about the Apple vs. OpenAI lawsuit. Will this kill OpenAI's hardware ambitions and ruin its upcoming IPO? Will we ever actually get a ChatGPT phone? And why is Apple taking such aggressive legal action now? We break down why this isn't just another tech lawsuit, it's literally a fight over who will own the future of AI. We discuss:Why OpenAI hired Jony IveWhether an OpenAI phone is actually comingThe future of AI glasses, AI pins, and wearable devicesWhy Apple may be trying to stop OpenAI before it can competeThe race to control the next generation of computingWhether AI hardware is the future or another Silicon Valley flopWhy OpenAI tried to copy Apple's hardware roadmap instead of building from scratch.How this lawsuit could cripple OpenAI's valuation and delay its IPO.The future of AI hardware: AI pins, smart glasses, or will the iPhone remain king?

You've been looking forward to this all week. And with Cutwater's cocktails, this? Took only seconds, because tonight's about catching up. Not catching the server. Whether it's our cutwater lime margarita, lemon drop martini, or rum Mai Tai. They're expertly mixed and ready before the snacks hit the table. Cutwater. Expertly mixed cocktails.

A perfect pairing for an evening with good company. Please enjoy responsibly. Must be 19 plus. How many things do we need? Like, do I need a phone, a laptop, a smart watch, an AI pin, an AI pair of glasses? The AI arms race is no longer just a contest over who can build the smartest models.

It has become a fight over who will control the future of computing itself. That struggle has pitted two of the world's most powerful tech companies against one another in an escalating battle for talent, IP, and strategic advantage. In a shocking lawsuit filed just last week, Apple accused Open AI of orchestrating a campaign to poach key employees from its secretive AI division, along with a ton of other egregious corporate sabotage. The legal battle brewing offers a rare

glimpse into the increasingly cutthroat competition between Silicon Valley's biggest players. Alex Cantorowitz is a tech reporter and the founder of the big technology newsletter and podcast. He's been covering the Apple versus OpenAI lawsuit, and today he's joining me to break down exactly what you need to know about this huge case. We're going to discuss the extraordinary lengths that big tech companies are willing to go to secure an edge in the next phase of AI development and when if ever we're going to get an open AI phone hi Alex welcome to power user thank you Taylor great to be here so to start off i want to kind of back up and explain to people who might not have been following what open AI is doing in the hardware space because i think to a lot of

people open AI is just this chat bot chaty pt that you can go and talk on maybe they've heard that they hired Apple's Johnny Ive at some point. But when did Open AI's hardware ambitions really begin? Yeah, these have materialized in the last couple of years, but they're not really a surprise because any company with any semblance of an AI experience has decided that they want to build their own hardware. And it really goes back to Amazon with the Echo where they said, okay, we have this idea for a device. Jeff Bezos wanted it to be modeled after the computer in Star Wars. Sorry, Star Trek, got to get my stars right. And so basically sent the team to go work on it.

And the promise would be that it would be this ambient assistant that's with you whenever you need it. And you can call on it and you can say, do this for me, help me figure this out, et cetera, et cetera. Now, the promise never lived out for the Echo, for the Apple Home Pod, for the Google Home, because the AI inside was never good enough to actually make those devices much more than a paperweight. and at best, something that plays a little bit of music, and you can set kitchen timers for. Open AI comes along, and not only do they start building this really good conversational chat bot,

but they also start developing great AI voice models, and those models have only become better over time. And so basically they say to themselves, we have the key ingredient, right? We have the good AI. Who cares about the speaker, right? So we got to now find ways to deliver this voice experience and do it through a device.

So that's sort of how it germinates within Apple, as you mentioned. They partnered up with legendary Apple designer, Johnny I have to try to figure out what the form factor is going to be. And it looks like it's not going to just be one device. It will be a family of devices. And the trajectory now is something that's with you

that understands you as best AI can and is sort of there to help you meet your needs, whether that's schedule appointments, send messages, figure out your fitness schedule, ask it, hey, I've been listening to my conversations today. Do I sound calm? Do I need to meditate? Any type of use case you can imagine,

I think they're going to try to go after. Yeah, I mean, a lot of this stuff in the use cases that you just mentioned, it's interesting, as you're saying, every tech company wants to kind of be in the hardware space. I think of the meta smart glasses and the Rayband partnership that they just did, right? Where they're saying, hey, the real value of these smart glasses is actually the AI inside them.

All of those use cases you just mentioned, I can talk to you, it can help you plan, et cetera, et cetera. So Johnny Ive, you know, leaves Apple. He goes to found this company I.O., as you mentioned, with several other former Apple executives. And in May 2025, just a year ago, Open AI acquires IO in this $6.5 billion deal. Do you have any sense of how Open AI's hardware division has evolved since that acquisition a year ago? And, you know, do they have working prototypes? What are they working on?

Well, it seems like there's been a lot of thinking that's actually happened there. seeing Sam and Johnny get on stage and talk about this mysterious device with not too many details over time. And of course, you would imagine, okay, you have the AI, just go release the device. But that hasn't happened so far. So they have been moving quite slowly. And it's not a massive surprise when you think about what happened in Johnny Ives' final years with an Apple where the conventional wisdom was that he was just mostly checked out and

not very engaged in product design. Now, obviously, he's reinvigorated in a way and he's partnering with Open AI, but to just speed up and build cutting edge devices right away, you know, is probably pretty tough. So a lot of conversation from Open AI. We've seen other AI devices come out and fail since then, right? The U-Main pin, the Rabbit R1, which seems to be making a comeback every other day. And of course, as you mentioned, the meta AI glasses are out there.

But so far, you know, there's been no leaked, you know, design of this device and everything leaks from open AI. There's been no leak prototype. There's been basically nothing leaked at all in terms of what the concrete version of this device would look like. I asked them about it last year. And the answer that I got was it's just not going to be one device. It'll be a family of devices. Stay tuned. And we're still staying tuned. Yeah. I feel like I, I mean, I saw a lot of discussion on Twitter. Maybe this was shortly after Johnny I was hired too, where people were using AI to mock up like a chat, GBT, smartphone. And I mean, family of devices aside, I feel like just the concept of a phone and the concept of, I think there was like a verge headline about like, Open AI might make a phone like got a lot of people really excited.

I think because even if some of us might not want to wear an AI pin or the smart glasses or whatever, people are talking to their phones more. And, you know, Apple has also been trying to integrate Siri. We have Google voice, et cetera, et cetera. So I guess like while Open AI is ideating, thinking about what they're going to build, maybe prototyping some things, hiring up. What is Apple doing? Because it feels like Apple was a little late to the AI race. Okay, this is going to sound crazy, but Apple might have just gone ahead and shipped the AI device before Open AI. And of course, most people know that there's this feature with an iPhone called Apple Intelligence that is terrible and hasn't really worked for a long time. And Apple, you know, three WWDCs ago debuted, told us all these stories about how it was going to work.

I was going to know your context. It was going to help you out day-to-day things. Do you see how these stories start to parallel each other? It could not ship it. And it tanked so bad that the following year, they hardly mentioned AI. They told us all about liquid glass, their new operating system on the phone. Finally, this year, last month in June at WWDC, Apple started to say, hey, we've made some progress on what Apple intelligence could look like because we've worked with Google and use Google's

technology to build better models that actually work on the phone. And the user reviews that you've seen so far, the people that have downloaded the developer beta on their phone and they've started to use it, seems like it's actually working in a way that it hadn't previously. So the nice thing about trying to integrate AI if you're Apple is you're the operating system on the phone. So the AI can sit on top of all of your apps. So you can say, hey, when was the last time, you know, I spoke with Taylor. And, you know, you and I, we may have messaged or emailed or DMed on Twitter.

And so this thing could sit on top of a lot of. the different apps that you have on your phone and you trust it because this stuff is not leaving the phone and it can say here are the conversations that you've had as opposed to sort of letting open AI plug into every service. It's much easier to trust Apple. So very interestingly, Apple has come into conflict with open AI on this AI device. It's one versus one right now. And that's where things get interesting. Yeah. It seems like this lawsuit is kind of an effort to maybe like cut Open AI's efforts off at their knees. So tell me about like how things ended up in court. What was the genesis of this lawsuit? And what is Apple alleging?

Right. So first of all, if you're Apple, you don't want competitors trying to cut off your growth. And Apple clearly sees Open AI as a competitor that is trying to cut off its growth. You know, AI is a technology that while it's made progress with, Apple has not yet fully learned how to wrangle. In fact, like some of the most notable headlines around Apple and artificial intelligence recently have been Apple's failures with the first iteration of Apple intelligence and all of its researchers getting poached by Zuckerberg and going to meta to work on those glasses. So if you believe that AI is going to play a pretty central role in the future of what a device

is going to look like, you're not going to be happy when, again, if AI is what matters, one of the two best AI developers, I put Open AI Anthropic in the same bucket, is going ahead and trying to build a device with your former head of design, who was like the soul of your company post Steve Jobs for a long time. So Apple's not happy already. They don't like this, even though they did, you know, have a short-lived partnership with Open AI, although it's still running. But Open AI was like the primary partner for Apple intelligence when it, you know, went to chat GPT. Now there's a bunch of models. Let's not focus too much on that story. And so as you're trying to gear up and face this competition, you start to see a lot of things happen.

that you don't like. And that includes 400 Apple employees moving to Open AI to go build this device along with Ive. 400. It's a lot of people. And many of them coming from hardware engineering, which is the division that incoming CEO John Turnus ran or runs before he's going to become CEO, including some people that reported directly to John Turner's. It's getting ugly. It's getting complicated. And so if your Apple, I don't know if you say, let's just try. try to go figure out what we can. Maybe let's leave a trapdoor open. I don't know how Apple comes across what it comes across,

but it does. And it looks really bad for Open AI. And by that I mean Apple finds some of the employees that have left Apple and gone to Open AI have not returned their company issued laptops, have gone into their company issued laptops, and via must be some bug, because those laptops should be shut off,

they find that these people at Open AI, these X-Apple employees, have started to access the future roadmap of Apple. Not only that, they circulate documents among people who are interviewing to join Open AI and still at Apple about how to evade Apple security features. And they start to get a chance to read some of the messages. These people are sending to each other, some of like the craziest messages. I mean, so one of the people who left Apple and went to Open AI said, I still have another computer.

There's a message that says they got the message. They have improper access to Apple's folders, shared network folders, and they go, LOLL so funny. Over several weeks while developing the hardware for OpenAI, they surreptitiously accessed and downloaded dozens of Apple's confidential hardware-related files, including voluminous detailed information about unreleased product,

engineering presentations, technical specifications, and proprietary project data. On an Apple device, by the way, I mean, Apple-owned device. This is the most boneheaded corporate espionage attempt in history. And it was all out there for Apple to see. So of course, once Apple gathered, it's all this information. It looked at what it saw.

It said, hey, a key competitor of mine, which has posed 400 of my people, my former head of design is in my network, taking my plans. And it's time to sue them. In one sense, it's like, I get it, right? And Apple sues everyone. I mean, I just think of like the history of Apple. lawsuits, they very famously sued Microsoft in the 90s over copyright law. They sued Samsung, which ended in a billion. I think Samsung had to pay a billion dollars over a patent lawsuit

around. I think it was the swipe to unlock. So Apple, it seems like, is aggressive with competitors, and it's not afraid to go up against kind of these big companies. And it seems like open AI, as you said, it's like in their crosshairs. I mean, 400 employees is a lot. And I heard in the lawsuit, too, they were like asking them to bring physical hardware to the interviews as like a show How normal is that in an engineering interview? It happens, but it doesn't typically happen when you're working for Apple. I mean, there was somebody who even wrote back to one of the people at Open AI, one of their former colleagues. I didn't know you were allowed to do that.

Well, you're not allowed to do that. And let me tell you a story about Apple. So Apple is so secretive, right? So groups within Apple cannot talk to other groups within Apple unless they're all mutually disclosed on a product or a project, right? So like there's a code name, like rabbit ears. And so, but it's so funny because like, are you even allowed to share the code name? Like, how are you going to know that you're mutually disclosed? Sometimes people don't talk to each other because they're like even afraid to talk about the project name.

But I was speaking with someone who was working on the old SPART speaker, the HomePod. And this person said that it was so secretive. They didn't even know what the device that they were building for looks like. They were doing software and they were not allowed to see the device. So you could imagine within Apple how it would play that a company that does not allow its employees to see, these devices, how it would feel if it knows that some of its employees are interviewing at Open AI and bringing in prototypes. I mean, that is something that would have Steve Jobs rolling in his grave. I'll put it that way. At the same time, I mean, what have they done with it? It doesn't seem

like they have a competitive phone. At least, you know, when Apple sued Samsung, it's like they had phones. Like when Apple sued, you know, Microsoft over the window stuff, it was like they had a working product. Like in this case, I guess I'm wondering about the lawsuit. It's like, it seems like they're pushing the bounds of trade secrets law a little bit where open AI is just sort of thinking about these things at this point and and they're just coming in so hot. Do you think that could backfire? Yeah, Taylor, you're totally right to point this out. It's very interesting. So first of all, it's in concept phase still. Does that mean that if Open AI has taken some of Apple's IP, that the entire thing, like Apple said that Open AI's hardware effort is rotten to the core. If it's

rotten to the core and it's not like possible to keep working on it because it has Apple trade secrets like is Apple actually trying to sort of nip this in the bud maybe. But you're right. It's unusual because when this happens, it's typically like there's another operating system out. So there's something that you can clearly point to here. There's not. And of course, we'll find out more in the discovery process when they go to court.

But I think there's there's something that you're getting at that is really worth talking about, which is if you're open AI, why would you do this? You have the advantage of building a product from scratch. with a native technology that you've developed. Why do you need to look at what's on Apple's roadmap? You know, and I think my theory here is, is open AI made a mistake by hiring this many Apple people because people at Apple just do things the Apple way.

They become institutionalized to a degree, right? They think Apple, and when they're thrown out of that system, they don't know how to think creatively because, again, because due to Apple's culture, there's so little creative thought that is actually allowed within the the company. And that's why you end up with this accessing. And maybe that's why you end up with very little progress from Open AI's end. So I think this is a mistake on various levels that open AI is going to pay for one way or another. But to me, the biggest problem is why did you look

to Apple? You have the native technology. You're the developer of the AI. Go start by yourself and say, this is what we think the device should be. Don't borrow from a competitor that has shown it struggled with AI. Yeah, exactly. One that actually, that actually doesn't do a great job with AI, one that has failed with AI. I mean, it's also, it seems like such a missed opportunity to think about like a new form factor and you know, just be really creative and start from the ground up and think about like, okay, what does a true next generation AI device look like, you know, instead of just trying, yeah, trying to rip off kind of, I guess, the biggest player in this space.

That is the whole problem at the heart of this matter to me is if you're open AI, the fact that you've done this is legally problematic, but I would say even more so strategically damning. Well, I'm curious also because like, you know, Apple is an incredibly powerful company. I mean, another thing I'm sure why Open AI wants to sort of take Amy at Apple is the fact that when you just download the Open AI app on iPhone, right, they take 30% or they take, you know, Apple takes a significant portion of app store download fees, et cetera, et cetera. So I understand why they'd maybe want to develop their own phone, develop their own operating system, not have to do that. But anyway, regardless of that, you know, Open AI, it seems like, isn't in the stable financial situation that Apple's in. You know, this is a VC back company, a company that's hoping to go public soon, one that's raised a lot of money, that there's a lot of growth expectations and a lot of pressure on the company now, too.

How is this lawsuit going to affect, you know, their actual business? Okay. So if I can, I first want to comment briefly on what opening I gets while building its own device. I wish I would have said this earlier, but I'm going to say it now because I think it's important. These AI chatbots or AI voice interfaces, they get better with more data. And because you pointed this out about like, you know, trying to go around the app store. If you are on Apple's hardware, you can't really be listening all the time, right? There's some rules and regulations about that. If you have your own device, you can listen all the time.

Remember going back to that example I gave about like you can ask if chat chip BT or whatever, the opening eye device has been listening to you the whole day. Do I sound stressed today? Yes, you should do a meditation or like, how did I handle that call? You did well. Like getting this. It's almost like coaching feedback all the way through the day. Or like, we just have that meeting.

What do you think about it? It's able to chime in. Or the meeting ends and it says, hey, by the way, 15 days ago, you brought up a similar idea to somebody else and they said they could do this. Do you want to bring that up? So going through the iPhone does not enable you to bring these use cases to life, whereas like listening all day long does. That's why you do it.

In terms of the IPO, I've always had this like weird conspiracy theory in my head that's been, you know, why did open AI? I paid these billions of dollars to work with Johnny Ive because when you go public, you want to show public market investors that you're on a growth trajectory. And even better if you have a number of different areas to grow and you like take the total addressable market of, you know, portable hardware like the iPhone and Android phones. And you say, well, you dream up this story to investors. Well, if we're able to let's say get to half or 75% of that or 100% of that, then our company

won't just be worth $2 trillion, it'll be worth $7 trillion. Let's just add the market cap of Apple and then, you know, it's sort of try to get people to sign on. So like part of me has been like the conspiracy side of me is like, maybe they just get, you know, brought Johnny Ievacide to like help that IPO story and knowing that the hardware division would be helpful. But regardless of whether that's true and I think it probably isn't, having a contracted hardware story because of this Apple lawsuit, if it doesn't get either thrown out or sorted out soon will definitely depress the process. prospects of an IPO. Yeah. And also I feel like just put a strain on their financials when they're under a lot of economic pressure all over. I mean, they're also Anthropic is kind of eating their lunch. I feel like it's gone massive. They've gotten derailed by, I would say, like these

projects like SORA where they're just like, I don't know, they seem to be flailing out in a lot of different directions while their core product that LLM chat bought is like increasingly losing out to Anthropic maybe. It seems like Anthropics doing a better job of building out the B2B business. So is there a chance that they just like pay a lot of money to make this go away? Is that something that Apple will even accept or is Apple really sort of like going for the jugular? I don't know. I mean, if I was Apple, I might not take the money. If I'm Apple, like there's one thing that I have in excess of and that's cash. And I don't know if it would be worth it for me to take a couple billion dollars and let

this rival, which I could put through a very embarrassing court case and might even get an injunction against his hardware efforts. I don't know if that makes sense for me to like sort of take my foot off of the gas there, as opposed to saying, well, it doesn't matter if we win or lose. Let's put them through discovery. Let's put them through trial. We have nothing but money and time. And they have nothing but an IPO coming up that they'd probably not want this to to Marr. But if they're going to be a formidable competitor, you know, let's let's see if we can, you know,

knock them before, before they get, you know, stood up. I also just wonder what this is going to do to Open AI's image. I feel like already OpenAI has an image problem. And there's just so much sort of growing animosity towards AI and these companies are stealing, you know, content. And I saw Nilai Patel, a fellow tech journalist talking about how he thinks that this is just like a, from a PR standpoint, just such a losing battle for open AI because Apple has all of this like cultural capital. And, you know, they help people make things. It's like everything shot on iPhone, you know, gives you all these creative tools versus this company that basically is just this proxy for the AI industry. and is known for taking things without permission.

Like, that is kind of like the whole thing with AI is taking things without permission. That's also kind of what they're arguing in this lawsuit is like, hey, you took all this stuff without permission. So it's just like, even in the court of public opinion, this might damage Open AI's brand in a pretty significant way. I mean, despite the fact that Apple has Apple intelligence and has been pitching us on its AI efforts for a while,

don't you think Apple would be just thrilled if AI would just completely go away? Yes, they probably would love to. They probably would love that. Yes. I think that's definitely like, you know, that's something in the back of their mind. And as for AI, Nilai makes a good point. Your technology is going to be as popular as it will be valuable to people. And AI is a really weird technology in that it is extremely helpful and valuable,

but it still has kind of a rough reputation until people start to use it. And the power users tend to have actually the best feeling towards it. And if you look at the polls like people who have tried it once and gotten creeped out and never come back, or people that have never tried it tend to be most negative about it. So ultimately, I think one of the things that I've learned, and you've probably seen this like also as through the years, is basically as long as your product is useful to people and people like using it, it doesn't matter what corporate you does.

That's what your favorability is going to be based off of. It's going to be based off of how you deliver to people for better or worse, right? I mean, if you think about Amazon, let's take Amazon for instance. Their practices in many areas are abhorrent. I've gotten better over time, I think. But like the fact that they've like sort of made the management of people so mechanized and somewhat ruthless still exists there. And yet people still have a mostly positive view of Amazon because, you know, when you go to Amazon.com and you're a prime member and you hit buy, things shows up at your door, sometimes a few hours later. So I think people are quite forgiving to the corporate side of companies as long as the product works for them.

And OpenA, I just has to figure that part out. And it should be okay. I'm just looking at this at a pure reputation and likeability thing among the general public. Yeah, I think you're totally right. And I, you know, it's always interesting to hear. And I'm very critical of a lot to do with AI as are you, you know, like that I have huge issues with sort of like the mass surveillance, the government aspect, right? But these are also, I always have to remind people, especially on the left that I think are very skeptical of AI for good reason. These are massively popular consumer products, right?

ChatGPT is the fastest growing consumer product of all time. People do get some utility out of these products. And there, as you mentioned, there is a core user base. That said, there seems to be a just growing options, I guess, for those consumers. And I think like Anthropic has done a really good job of positioning itself as sort of like the elevated like, what do they call them? They're like the thinking man's, you know, like AI and they've got the Sarah font and everything. And open AI is sort of like, I feel like they bear the brunt of sort of like the worst of the industry. Also because Sam Altman is maybe a little bit more untrustworthy compared to Dario and sort of

in terms of the reputation that they have. So yeah, I don't know. I wonder if they'll be able to kind of woo consumers back from this or if it will just be like open AI, you know, they're that they're stealing trade secrets. They're doing all their irresponsible thing. That's why I use Claude, you know, the responsible AI company. That's kind of how it feels to me.

Yeah, a lot of my friends are suddenly Claude Curious, I will say. I think Anthropic has, you know, despite being an enterprise first company, and it definitely is that it's made a lot of inroads among people. And there's a chance. that as Open AI's product starts to resemble Anthropics more, as Open AI makes its push toward enterprise, there's an opportunity there. It's going to be an interesting fight.

Where does this leave the hardware space? Like, when are we getting an AI phone? When are we getting the AI fit? Like, who is going to crack that? Because if Apple really, at least neuters Open AI for the time being, in terms of their hardware ambitions, as you mentioned, I really don't think there still has been this breakthrough device. Like, we are still so stuck in this, like, phone world,

not AI forward world. And I mean, that situation you described, like, that would be great. Like a lot of the ways that AI you sort of could be used or it could be integrated, I think would be really useful to consumers. Who do you think is best positioned, you know, to crack in? I think that the iPhone is the AI phone and the iPhone becomes the AI device. And maybe in parallel, you can see Google introducing similar features with Android. But I've always, and I've tried the devices and I want to like them more than I do. But and I might have said this about the smart watches, but like how many things do we?

need like do I need a phone a laptop a smart watch an AI pin an AI pair of glasses you're like the spy kids guy with like 10 different AI devices all over you no I'm I'm good I'm good I have the speakers in my house I'm fine with that but I just think like even like the most controversial ideas that companies are just desperate to get through if they do it I don't see how it'll be much value to me like think about the meta classes where they have this like name tech feature that's apparently in, you know, not, not released or in some sort of. The facial recognition.

Yeah, exactly. Can I tell you it's the feature I want the least out of any technology device? How do you really, I mean, very rarely do I like go out and be like, man, I really wish I had a pair of glasses that could just remind me who that person is. Also, it's so funny. I was at an event last night with a few friends. There was a girl and I was like, I know this girl. I actually, we've known each other, but we hadn't met in person.

So I did, you know, it's always like, you know, you see the person, but they're not wearing exactly what they wear in their avatars here. Like, who is that? Takes you two seconds. Just turn to a friend and said, wait, what's her name again? She said, oh, yeah. You know, like, yes, I would much rather live in that world than have these glasses dropped my base for like the one moment every five months when I might forget someone's name.

Can you, by the way, the way that you just described that, how much nicer is that, right? Just imagine you ask a friend. Okay, I know her. Or you go up to somebody and say, hey, I'm pretty sure we've met before. Just remind me where. Or I think we work together. As opposed to, like, walking on. to somebody, you know, asking your glasses who they are.

Waiting for it to scan. That's Caroline. You met them 15 years ago. Hi, Caroline. Great to see you again. And then they tap their glasses. Hi, Taylor. That's right.

We met 15 years ago at a party. It's bleak. It's bleak. And I'm all for these like pro social. I mean, ironically, one of my favorite apps ever made was this app called Highlight. I don't know if you remember this from like, it was right after college, like 2013, 2014. We would plug into your Facebook graph because we all used Facebook at that time. And you had it always on location.

It was founded by this guy, Paul, who went on to found Clubhouse. But you had it on all the time. And it would tell you when you physically cross paths with somebody that you had Facebook mutuals with. So I actually went a really good friend of mine because we were going to the same coffee shop every day to work. And it was like, hey, you have like 57 mutuals. And it was fun, but it was very opt in.

It was not always on. It was certainly not facial recognition. And you could turn it off too. So I'm all for like pro social technology. I think technology can bring us together. But yeah, I hate the name tag. And I don't know that. the glasses will take off. I do think people are sick of their phones. Like, I do think that the anti-screen

time movement is real. People are sick of looking at screens. So that's where I do see an opportunity for some of these devices. I know I'm going to sound like old man yells at clouds on this one, but like, a great way to get over screen addiction is like probably not to use another device. It's just to, like, leave your phone in a different room. Like, I've had to do that. Like, you know, as a reporter, of course, like the instinct is phone in the hand all the time. And like dinner with my wife, I've had to be like, okay, this is hard for me, but I'm going to take the phone and put another room and close the door and kind of try to be present. I don't know how great it would be if I'm like, have the glasses on and be like, I think

we met before. Hold on one second. I know. I know. I could see a watch. I mean, I don't think anyone's wearing like the AI pendant, but a smart watch that's always or people have talked about like, yeah, the pin, the, you know, little little things, the ring. I don't know if you've seen that ring that you can sort of whisper to.

It's some AI, I think it's in China right now, but it's like a little ring that you can like whisper to and it's a little AI assistant. There are times that I think those types of things can be useful. But overall, yeah, I don't know. We'll see. But I think you're right that if anybody does it, it has to be a privacy forward company. The other thing I worry about, people are paranoid enough that their phone is listening to them all the time. I think people really want privacy. People are coming increasingly aware of privacy. Apple, there's been some slip ups, but overall has a pretty good reputation for privacy. Open AI does not. I mean, look at how badly people reacted to like the chat GPT ads and stuff,

I think they would be more nervous to sort of give up so much of their data. You're making me think of something, which is that so often what we see in this world is there's a spark of potential with a new technology that can be applicable for consumers. Right. So that's what chat chTP was, right? There was this like spark of potential. You can now talk to your computer.

And now instead of like looking at my weather app, I'm going to ask chat GPT what the weather is. As this technology matures, oftentimes, The use case that you thought was a consumer use case is an enterprise use case. Same with the Metaverse, right? Like this idea of virtual reality goggles, probably not great for hanging out with your friends. Maybe great for like having a meeting, doing training is actually probably a better way to do it. Or like even like using it in a professional setting for like exposure therapy.

These AI devices, I could see them really taking off in enterprise settings, right? So imagine and yeah, this is a privacy question too, but imagine you're a company. Imagine you're Jack Dorsey's block. You just laid 50% of your people off and you're trying to figure out how to live in the AI age, right? And hopefully most companies don't do this. But could you place AI devices in every room that sort of listened and you have these listening devices in every meeting room? You have some sort of listening device on all computers. And then you're like the CEO trying to get a sense of like what happened in your company today. And then you just say, hey, you know, what happened in my company today or what should we be working

on or what are we what opportunities are we missing? I mean, isn't that kind of what Zuckerberg was trying to do with meta, where they were recently surveilling all of the, you know, logging everything that people were doing on their computers all day to, I don't know if Zuck at the end of the day was sort of like, hey, summarize it for me. But I think using AI to kind of surveil and monitor workers is, yeah, undeniably going to be more popular. Yeah. What they were doing not to, I'm not defending them here. I could see why their employees would not be happy about this. But basically what they were doing was they've realized that a lot of the AI progress that's happening today is happening because AIs are getting taught how to take action in like sort of real world online settings

as opposed to just like training them on all language. And so what they, what Meta basically did was they said, you know, instead of like setting up these like these gyms that the AIs would go on and sort of like figure out how to do things, we are going to give them a lot of data of showing how our employees do things and they'll be able to learn from that. So basically I'm trying to say it wasn't Mark Zuckerberg saying, let's monitor everything. And then I can like as a God CEO query and see where, see where, you know, we should be moving and where we shouldn't. But yeah, I think, you know, going back to like why do you have a device? Collecting data is sort of the name of the game in AI all across the

board, products, usefulness, training the whole deal. And so we will see my prediction is for better or worse and probably for worse, we will see companies attempt to collect data in a in a variety of different ways over time. Some will become comfortable with and some we will hate. Last question, before I let you go, but obviously we have yet to see Open AI's response to this Apple lawsuit. I'm very eager to see that, but why do you think

this lawsuit is something to pay attention to and kind of continue to watch? I mean, just from a pure business standpoint, it's very interesting to see if like, you know, big incumbents like Apple will be able to dictate the policy direction of companies, like upstart companies like OpenAI, I'm curious what sort of precedent that would set.

On the other hand, you know, if the allegations are to be believed, then it looks like Apple has opening eye dead to rights on a number of things. This is probably not a precedent that you want to set to make it okay for people to do this type of thing, like, you know, take court company secrets and then use them to try to get ahead. However, ill-advised, it might have been on open AI side. So, you know, every now and again in the history of business, you get like a pretty big case that's worth paying attention to to see like what the standard. and the norms and that legal interpretations are in the country and how that might impact,

you know, the future of business moving forward. And to me, that's, that's exciting and it's why we get up in the morning. Yeah. Well, Alex, thank you so much for joining me today. I appreciate your time. Thanks so much for having me, Taylor. All right. That's it for this week's episode of Power User.

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