TBPN Live - Netflix vs Youtube, Saudi Arabia’s liquidity crunch, Tether’s gold pivot | Diet TBPN
Episode Date: January 29, 2026Diet TBPN delivers the best of today’s TBPN episode in 30 minutes. TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with ea...ch episode posted to podcast platforms right after.Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” the show has recently featured Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella.TBPN.com is made possible by:Ramp - https://Ramp.comAppLovin - https://axon.aiCognition - https://cognition.aiConsole - https://console.comCrowdStrike - https://crowdstrike.comElevenLabs - https://elevenlabs.ioFigma - https://figma.comFin - https://fin.aiGemini - https://gemini.google.comGraphite - https://graphite.comGusto - https://gusto.com/tbpnLabelbox - https://labelbox.comLambda - https://lambda.aiLinear - https://linear.appMongoDB - https://mongodb.comNYSE - https://nyse.comOkta - https://www.okta.comPhantom - https://phantom.com/cashPlaid - https://plaid.comPublic - https://public.comRailway - https://railway.comRamp - https://ramp.comRestream - https://restream.ioSentry - https://sentry.ioShopify - https://shopify.comTurbopuffer - https://turbopuffer.comVanta - https://vanta.comVibe - https://vibe.coSentry - https://sentry.ioCisco - https://www.ciscoaisummit.com/ai-virtual-summit.htmlFollow TBPN:https://TBPN.comhttps://x.com/tbpnhttps://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-brothers/id1772360235https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive
Transcript
Discussion (0)
I wrote about Netflix.
There was a funny, very brief interaction between Ben Thompson of Stratory and Netflix co-CEO
CEO Greg Peters on last Thursday's Stratory interview.
And they go back, the only mention of AI in like an hour-long interview or something,
it's just two little exchanges.
Ben Thompson says, is AI slop going to save you?
If it overwhelms the UGC platforms, and basically it's like you're a refuge, so this is
actual, this is real. And Greg Peters just says, I think it's credible. I don't know if that's the
reality. So I can't say with certainty that's where we're going to land, but it's a credible
possibility. It's like, maybe that's a bold case. It is interesting. I mean, Netflix has been
trading down over the last couple months, but in general, it's up, I think it's 4X up since the
launch of ChatchipT. But every CEO needs to contend with the AI question, the AI issue, how will
AI change their platform? And AI has already been changing Hollywood. I mean, I was, I was
reflecting on the Avengers. I just remember seeing, I think he was even in one of the first ones,
the whole, the whole CGI process for Thanos. He has this like very distinct large chin.
So Josh Brolin is the actor that plays Thanos.
He is a mager. He is this huge chin. It's actually like he's kind of like the OG.
I don't know. It looks like chin implants. It's kind of crazy, but it has these like cracks in it.
It has this like very distinct look, Thanos. And normally the way the VFX pipeline works,
is that you go and you put these black dots all over your face and then you wear a helmet that has a camera pointing at your face
It tracks all the points so when you smile like it sees that the that the that the director that's driving the performance capture is
Smiling and then that facial movement is transferred so they're recording the lines they're acting it out there
They're giving their facial performance and then that's transferred all the little subtleties of how their other
eyebrows move all of that is transferred to the CGI character it can look a little
little flat though. So what they did with this is they still have all the points on the face,
but then they interpolate from the small points that are on the face into a higher-res
model. Yes, don't read that. Don't read that. But it is a good point. So all of those are tracking
markers. And then the question is like you have a much higher resolution CGI model. If you just
transfer with 50 points or 20 points, you're not getting all the detail.
of what a human face actually looks like in the way it moves.
And so digital domain, which was one of the many VFX studios that worked on the Marvel series,
they built a straight-up machine learning pipeline, like they used AI.
It wasn't a diffusion model.
It wasn't, you know, an L-LM, but they used a machine-learning model to basically translate
from the low-resolution, just a few dots, to a much higher-resolution mesh that then became
the performance of Thanos on the screen.
And I don't know if you remember 2018, the movies, obviously you didn't see any of these movies, but I don't remember like AI backlash.
My prefrontal cortex wasn't fully developed.
But truly, like, I mean, people did make the, oh, it's too CGI, the explosion are too crazy, it's too over the top.
But in general, people weren't up in arms about like a use of AI or use of two.
Everyone was just like, this is a CGI epic, this is a crazy, you know, Marvel movie.
like we're fine with all this and there wasn't backlash to that and I don't think that there would be
backlash to this type of like AI tool now obviously Marvel's Avengers that's Disney property
but the same VFX pipeline is being used all over the industry and it will continue to be
used interestingly I talked to Jason Carmen about the Carminator the Carmen
the Carminator about about using AI tools and filmmaking because he's obviously making
movies and doing VFX and stuff and and I was like certainly if you need to
rotoscope out a background so rotoscoping is where you are basically using like
you're cutting out like a subject from the background and then just doing like a
background replacement that's an example of rotoscoping but it's over
motion so it's moving so you need to track the hand here move it over here
track it again track it again and it can be very very time-consuming typically this
is offshore to like a BPO and then they have a whole team of people that
are all aiming it and they have some software that
to use, but I was like, this feels like
something AI could just one shot.
He said that AI was not there at the level
that he wanted to deliver, he wanted to deliver in 4K.
And so he went to a team, they,
I think he paid a fortune, they did it.
And when they rotoscope ahead,
they actually like draw new hairs on to like kind of create this.
It's very like artisanal still.
But obviously AI can rotoscope.
You see it in the cap cut edits.
Where's the rotoscoping NeoLab?
out. It's actually Runway. We've had Christabal on the show and pre-ChatchyPT, Runway had a fantastic
AI rotoscoping tool where you could basically load up a video, put a couple dots on what you
wanted to keep and then add and then flip over to the red dots and put those in the background
and be like, cancel all this out and it would sort of use that as like an intuition for the model
to drop out the background. And you could do a really, really,
really clear, like cut this person out of this video just in runway.
And now that's available in Capcut and edits.
And that's where you're seeing all those crazy hype reels
where you know, you'll see the F1 driver like standing up.
And then it'll like, it'll drop out the background
and cut in a different background.
And then the F1 driver drops out.
And it's like this very like,
skitso edit.
It's a really cool technique.
Yeah, you can see is this runway is editing tool.
So it basically draws a mask around it.
You just highlight like what do you want to actually roadoscope?
This is an example of like motion, adding motion to video,
but like you're putting in a little bit of your own aesthetic taste.
So I don't think Netflix should take a hardline stance on AI broadly
because they want to use AI tools.
Obviously they've been using AI for recommendations forever.
The original collaborative filtering algorithms
were machine learning models.
And that's how you open up Netflix and says,
we think this would be good for you based on what you watched.
And it is much more nuanced than just
if you like, you know, K-pop demon hunters,
we're gonna recommend Squid Game next.
And so many of these rote tasks will be AI enabled,
and they already are.
And there's not gonna be, I don't think there'll be
a crazy pushback here, although it's possible
that there's some sort of, you know, comms mishap.
Especially if a director comes out and is like,
we didn't use any AI in this film,
because they don't think they used any AI,
but there's a VFX house that,
when the motion capture stage did use,
AI to up res, motion capture data. Like, you could see AI being used in mat painting for the
background and the director doesn't even know because they just said like, yeah, the background,
just make the forest a little bit bushyer. And they think that they're hand painting it.
After that, they were using CGI and 3D modeling it. Now they're using AI. And that sneaks in,
and then all of a sudden they face some backlash. I think that's manageable. I don't think that's
that big of a deal. The bigger question is like, how does Netflix position itself against YouTube and the UGC platform?
So Neil Mohan, the CEO of YouTube, has taken a very open stance on AI.
And I liked his stance.
He was like, we're not going to throw an AI tag on everything.
We're going to let you use AI tools right in the shorts creator.
We have V-O-3.
We're great at this.
Like, we're going to lean into this.
And the algorithm will sort out if you like it.
And if you think it's slop and you don't want to see slop, the algorithm will learn that and not show you that stuff.
But for the people that like that, they will be served it.
It is sort of a balancing act, and there's definitely this, like, stated preference for, like,
I don't want any AI on my platform.
Now, how real is that?
We'll see.
Yeah, and what we were getting into earlier before the show started is Netflix's decision.
The decision that's bigger than just, like, are we going to sort of lean into AI or not,
will just really be, do we have, does Netflix ever lean into UGC, right?
They've been signing some bigger podcasts, and they obviously work with independent media companies,
but there's a very big difference between just allowing people to, like,
will they ever have an upload button?
It feels like no.
And I feel like that could end up being their advantage.
Part of what has made YouTube magical since the very beginning
was that anybody could go and put YouTube,
you know, upload a video.
Anybody could be a creator.
And I think like as the amount of content that gets created,
10, 100 Xs, 1000 Xs because of AI,
Netflix could be this like refuge where you're like,
okay, at least if I go here,
I know that there was some filtering process.
I know that this isn't just a total free-fired.
Yeah, yeah, the upload button is probably a bigger deal than like AI on Netflix.
Exactly.
I think that's a very good thesis.
YouTube has been on an absolute tear.
In terms of watch time on TVs, according to Nielsen, YouTube has been number one in streaming watch time in the US for nearly three years.
And so this has been the backbone of the case for like, let Netflix buy Warner Bros.
Even though they'll get HBO Max, like you're merging two seemingly big streaming platforms, but the combined watch time will still be.
lower than YouTube. But the bigger question is like there's the gap between Netflix and
YouTube and at the start back in Netflix is almost 30 years old YouTube's over 20 at this
point. Back in 2005 like these were seen as like wildly different platforms. One was DVDs in the
mail and the other one was like a video of a guy going to the zoo on his on his own as like VHS
camera. They felt extremely separate and they felt extremely separate for for years and years
and years. Now they are starting to converge especially around
around video podcasts, I feel like.
I feel like YouTube really drove a big boom in video podcasting.
The podcast was, I think, invented by Apple.
Yeah, when I started doing any work with YouTube channels and podcasts back in the day,
there wasn't a lot of overlap.
It was very clearly like these were just different types of creators.
And then there was a big shift.
It was like, wait, I'm leaving a ton of attention on the table.
I'm not uploading to YouTube.
and that forced a lot of creators to actually get into video.
Totally, totally.
Yeah, there was the pivot to video.
And then Spotify went really big into video podcasting.
They went on it.
I didn't realize how big of a push Daniel Eck really did around podcasting.
So seven years ago in 2019, they acquired three companies, Gimlet Media, Anchor and Parcast.
Anchor is more of like a product.
Parcast had a bunch of...
Yeah, Anchor was like, we'll make it easy for you to create a podcast.
They knew that everyone who wanted to distribute a podcast, wanted to distribute a podcast,
wanted to distribute it everywhere, but they could sort of default you to getting into Spotify as well.
So that did very well. And then they signed exclusive deals with Joe Rogan and a bunch of other people.
Interesting the timing. Apparently there was somebody sending me a chart. There was over a million podcasts launched in 2020.
Oh yeah. You saw that chart. Jeremy shared this with us.
And it actually fully retraced and now there's like sub sub 50,000 a year. That feels like you would really have to maybe.
maybe they're being extremely explicit about defining what a podcast is.
Sure.
But either way, there was, if you look at the chart, it looks like there was like an insane bull market.
Yeah.
And then a huge correction.
Yeah, it does feel like there was a 2020 boom during COVID.
I mean, we talked to the folks that acquired about that.
And they said that during COVID, they saw a huge spike in people just going for walks,
throwing on AirPods.
All of that sort of hit around the same time.
AirPods were getting to like mass adoption.
So we were just throwing on podcasts constantly, and it really, really grew.
There is this chance that with YouTube, with the trough of YouTube getting sloppier by the day,
that Netflix carves out more of a unique value prop, and you wind up seeing more space between the two.
So I think of Netflix and YouTube is starting out extremely separate,
then sort of like coalescing with like Joe Rogan experience.
And I mean, Portnoy and Bill Simmons both are YouTube dominant and now have now.
Netflix deals, right?
Yeah, isn't there a deal set up so that the video can only be on Netflix?
Exactly.
And the audio is still elsewhere.
Why do you remember that?
Because Portnoy drilled it into your head.
He said, if you want video, Netflix, Netflix, Netflix, Netflix, Netflix, Netflix, video, Netflix.
Barstool video, Netflix.
And it's true.
Like that, and so I would think of Barstool, like, if I'm trying to watch a barstool YouTube video or a podcast, I would just go to YouTube.
Now Netflix is getting into that.
So the gap between Netflix and YouTube is getting like pretty narrow, like they're becoming
competitors, but there's this question on the AI issue, do they diverge more and is that valuable?
The pure AI feeds like Sora and meta, they haven't really been able to hang on to the top spots
in the charts. The struggle will be to create like unifying conversations around particular pieces
of content that are AI generated. I still feel like the K-pop Demon Hunters moment, the Squid
Game moment, the Alex Honnold Taipei 101 moment, these live events, these like key things that
everyone talks about are really, really valuable.
And that's a lot of what's driving the Warner Brothers acquisition.
People still dress up as Batman around Halloween.
And if you can be the place there, that's way easier than,
well, I did, I've been getting AI generated content
about a superhero, but my superhero is different
than your superhero.
And so if I wear a t-shirt with that superhero on it,
you're like, what is that?
AI Slop Man?
I'm not a fan of that.
I like Batman.
It's almost better to think about Netflix less as being AI-free and more about being UGC-free.
They're paying for curation and a quality bar that's backed up by a brand that's going on 30 years in the business.
The AI tools will come.
Some fully AI-generated content will come, but true slop will be filtered out by the Netflix team.
And I think that that's important for a lot of viewers.
Do we talk about Saudi Arabia?
Yes.
Let's talk about Saudi Arabia.
What's going on in the Middle East?
According to Bloomberg, Saudi Arabia is widening its search for capital, turning to some of the kingdom's wealthiest families as the government looks to ease pressure on public finances and fund the next phase of the Crown Prince's economic overhaul.
I saw this headline and was deeply concerned. I was like, why aren't you guys supposed to be funding the whole buildout?
like we were kind of counting on you guys to be, you know, quite liquid while the rest of us are over here in America are levering up.
So some seemingly somewhat of a liquidity squeeze. They're also raising from, they've been raising, tried to raise money from the Qataris.
Okay.
They apparently asked for something like 10 billion from the Qataris in the UAE.
Katarees threw in 10B. Okay.
Allegedly the UAE did not and the frustration around that you're going to say they threw it the Qataris threw in 10b and Saudi Arabia was like and we deployed it
Time to re-up
So as part of these efforts the PIF gathered about a dozen prominent families on the Red Sea last month to assess their appetite for participating in future
Opportunities at the summit which also included others in the private sector the one trillion dollar wealth fund called for more collaboration on deals
Government entities, including the Ministry of Investment, have also stepped up outreach to family offices, wealth managers, domestic businesses.
Local families are being sought after to play a bigger role in partnering with global investors to draw more money to the kingdom.
Years of excess expenditure and subdued oil revenues alongside a tighter lending environment have challenged the Gulf Nation's ability to bankroll expansive expansive projects planned under the $2 trillion Vision 2030 agenda.
officials this week said they would postpone the
2019 Asian Winter Games and the government had previously
paired back spending on other elements of Saudi Arabia's economic
rejig. It seems hard to host a winter game. That seems extremely
expensive to host a winter games in Saudi Arabia if that's what's going on.
Don't they have some mountains? They have mountains there? I don't know.
Riyadh has been stepping up efforts to look for alternative sources of
financing including a rare loan deal. Now a range of local entities
have begun to sharpen their focus on Saudi Arabia's family offices and business.
which collectively control assets worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
The number of family offices in the Middle East in 2019, 250, 2024, 290.
Now we're up to 310, and the projection for 2030 is 350 family offices.
There are big portfolios, the wealth is sizable.
These entities have long dominated the Saudi economy and close to 95% of private businesses in the kingdom are family owned.
Interesting.
They're not doing a lot of IPOs over there.
Of these, many groups are only just starting to form family offices as they grow in size and look to formalize strategies to help spread the wealth across multiple generations.
That makes both established a new family offices a prime target for more investment.
They're naturally looking to diversify and want to contribute in areas where we've just scratched the surface.
In addition, more complex areas of finance are also beginning to emerge, drawing the attention of family offices.
That includes private credit and industry in its infancy in the kingdom as overstretched banks struggle to meet more explosive needs.
for financing. I like that the financing needs are getting explosive at this moment.
Not expansive. Not expanding, exploding.
Lenders for years have been the primary financiers for individuals, businesses, and government
entities looking to drive investment into Saudi diversification agenda.
But they are starting to pull back as liquidity tightens, leaving many local firms scrambling
to find new sources of financing.
You're bearish on the US dollar, the token used to buy AI products?
Bold.
Good. Yes. The US dollar is all over the place. Tether is shaking up the gold market with massive metal hoard. I did not see this as interesting. There are roughly
370,000 nuclear bunkers in Switzerland. So many. I've seen a video about one of them, but I didn't realize there were so many. The legacy of the Cold War that are now
rarely used. One of them, though, is a hive of activity. Every week, more than a ton of gold is hauled into the high-security vault owned by Crypto.
giant Tether Holdings essay, which is now the world's largest known hoard of bullion outside of banks and nation states.
Over the past year, Tether has quietly become one of the biggest players in the global gold market.
The embodiment of a meeting of the crypto and gold worlds who shared distrust in government debt is a major factor behind the surge in prices to never before seen highs above 5,200 now.
It was 5,000 yesterday on the cover of the journal.
Gold is on an absolute tear.
And yet relatively little is known about its inner workings or its gold strategy.
When two of the most senior gold traders quit leading Boolean Bank HSBC Holdings last year,
the industry was a buzz about gossip, whether, about where they would head next.
Few guessed that the answer was Tether.
Chief Executive Paolo Adorno described the company's role in the gold markets as similar to that of a central bank
and predicted that Washington's geopolitical rivals would launch a gold-backed alternative to the dollar.
He revealed that it plans to keep plowing its enormous profits into gold while also beginning to compete with banks in trading the metal
We are soon becoming basically one of the biggest let's say gold central banks in the world
Interesting this is like the original crypto narrative right e-gold even before Bitcoin
Was e-gold actually gold back? I think that was the whole pitch was yeah it was it was it was trying to be digital gold and I don't think it ever really got adoption
It's very early late 90 years
Yeah, tether
Tether has a scale now.
They also launched their U.S. focused stable coin this week to compete with USDC.
The new token is known by its ticker, USAT.
Cantor Fitzgerald, which already manages the reserves of Tether's mainstay,
186 billion USDT stable coin will do the same for the new coin
as its designated reserve custodian and preferred primary dealer.
So USAT is already available for trading as of yesterday.
It'd be interesting if, like, at what point does USDT depeg upward if gold keeps ripping, right?
I mean, does USDT have a claim on the overall assets of tether?
I think that's not what the product is.
I think, I think, like, the tether stock would own the treasury.
Sure.
But historically, when you saw a stable coin, like, DPEG, it was based on concerns around the reserve.
Yeah, but I think that the contract is that they will never,
give you more than a dollar. No, I know, I know. But I'm just saying, like, stranger things have
happened in crypto where... No, it's always been a very profitable company. So, certainly,
certainly bullish for them. So Tether makes his money from its dollar stable coin that is the giant
of the sector with 186 billion in circulation. The company takes in real dollars in exchange for that
USDT token and invest them in treasuries or other assets such as gold, raking in billions in
interest in trading profits. Processing the physical metal is crucial. So much,
so that the company has taken the unusual step of storing the bullion itself in the former
nuclear bunker in Switzerland, guarded by multiple layers of thick steel doors.
And he says, it's a James Bond kind of place.
It's crazy.
That's a great quote to give Bloomberg.
If you're building a secret bunker to hold all of your gold, I think you can safely use the
James Bond analogy.
The secretive nature of the gold market means that while it's easy to describe broad
drivers of investment, it can be hard to pinpoint who exactly.
is behind the buying. China, for example, officially disclosed just 27 tons of purchases last year,
but many traders believe it bought much more. Still, Tether is only a small part of a much larger
rush from investors into gold, with central banks and ETF investors collectively buying more than
150, 1,500 tons of metal. I wonder if this is moving the gold watch market. Do you think,
you know, the Texas Timex is booming on the back of gold? We'll see. I think a lot of prices are
still down pretty dramatically.
Because the tariffs.
In the 2020-
era.
I mean, you've got to be a little bit
scared right now
if you're in the business
of manufacturing
cold watches and other
precious metals
just given that your input costs
are going.
You know, I'm sure they have like one or,
you could imagine one or two years
worth of supply.
So they're not, they can be
somewhat insulated.
But prices will
go up or at least costs will go up.
Yeah.
I heard a very funny, very funny interview with an actor who was talking about why he always wears
a gold Rolex and he was calling it a helicopter watch. Did I send this to you? Yeah. And he's saying
that like, this is Army, Army. I think it's Army Hammer. And he's saying, it's the most like obscure
situation. It's such a funny situation, but he's like, if you're ever in a crisis, you're on the top of the
building, the zombie apocalypse is upon you, someone shows up with a helicopter and they're going to save
a few people. Everyone knows what a gold Rolex is and they know that that's valuable.
But if you're not going to have time to be like, no, it's an FB. It's a Potech.
Like let me explain high horology. Here's here's the term beyond your market prices.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like gold Rolex is a store of value. It's always going to trade.
And now it's probably going to trade even higher. Paula says SF escape room called the
permanent underclass and it's just a room with a laptop and Claude code
installed.
How do you get?
There's something here.
That's funny.
Have you ever done an escape room?
No.
I have never once in my life thought that that would be fun.
Nor thought that this is how I want to kill time.
Yeah, it's like an hour.
Well, if you're good, you get out faster, right?
Yeah.
Have you?
Are you in it?
I'm not into them, but I've done them and they're fun.
Sometimes it depends on like if it's a well,
structured one but I like puzzles like it's fun it's like fun puzzle like figure out but
you can very quickly get caught in like just like overthinking what's going on
and being like oh it must be some like complex math thing and it's like no you actually just
needed to like press this lever instead of like analyze the situation or something
are some people in there using their phones to try to figure stuff out I imagine there's
only take a picture it's probably only is it like a series of rooms yeah well usually
you start in one room they're all different but oftentimes you'll start
in one room and then you'll there'll be a series of puzzles locks and keys and whatnot and then
oftentimes like you'll unlock something and then you'll progress to another room and then you'll
progress to a third room and then you'll finally get out of like a series room because it's a lot of like
they're pretty easy to set up in sort of like a defunct office space or like you know storefront
that's just kind of like you know going in between it's like the spirit Halloween of commercial real
estate anyone can come in and just say like oh we'll be in there for like a couple months it's
not super permanent. The build out's pretty simple. It's mostly just like some
some walls and decorations and like some creativity on the puzzle side.
Tray says can you guys put Tyler in an escape room and see if he gets out
before the show ends? I mean it'd be very hard to find a three hour long escape
room. I think most of them aim for like 45 minutes. Well maybe we need to make one.
Have you done one Tyler? I've not. Are you interested in it? You're a speed cuber so
you know. Yeah I mean it could be fun. I don't know. I'm kind of in the Jordan
camp. When they came out there was definitely like a boom in like in the
And the chat says escape room would be a good benchmark for AI.
Certainly a humanoid.
Let's click over to rewatching the interview with the Cloudbot creator, Peter Steinberger.
So in November, I, I don't know.
You know, I wake up every day, I'm like, okay, what do I want to work on now?
What would be cool?
And then it was like, okay, I want to check with my computer on WhatsApp.
Because if my agents are not running, if I'm running and then,
I go to the kitchen, I want to check up on them.
Or like I want to like do little prompts.
So I just hack together some WhatsApp integration that literally receives a message, calls
the cloud code and then returns what cloud code returns, one shot.
And it took like one hour and it worked.
I was like, well, okay, that's kind of cool.
But I usually use prompts like a little text and an image because images are like they often
give you so much context and you don't have to type so much. So I feel like this is like one
of the hacks where you can prompt faster, just like make a screenshot. So the agents are really
good at figuring out what you want. So I had to get our images. And then I was on the trip
in Marrakesh with like a weekend birthday trip and I I found myself using this like way more than
I saw it but not for not for programming. It's more like hey, they're like restaurants.
because it had Google in it and it could figure out stuff.
And it's like, especially when you're on the go, it's like super useful.
And then I wasn't thinking.
I was just sending it a voice message, you know, but I didn't build that.
There was no support for voice messages in there.
So the reading indicator came and I'm like, oh, I'm really curious what's happening now.
And then in 10 seconds, my agent replied as if nothing happened.
I'm like, how do you have, did you do that?
And it replied, yeah, you sent me a message, but there was only a link to a file, there's no file ending.
So I looked at the file header.
I found out that it's opus, so I used FFMberg on your Mac to convert it to Wave.
And then I wanted to use this, but didn't have it installed and there was an install error.
But then I looked around and found the open-E-I key in your environment.
So I sent it via curl to open the eye, got the translation back, and then I don't respond it.
That was like the moment where like, wow.
Yeah.
like that's where it clicked these things are like damn smart resourceful beasts if you
actually give them the power the reason that I feel like that is such a powerful
moment and I'm glad that he shared it is if you're talking with a model and you give it a
task and then it just hits a dead end it's just incredibly like that's sort of like
people are very used to that right now yeah it's not that it needs to be that way
but it's just kind of like the steady state.
Yeah, people are used to like, okay, I know what the models can do.
That's effectively the agent having real agency.
That makes it an agent.
Yeah.
It's saying like, well, I didn't know how to do this or I was confused.
And I tried a number of things until I did what you want it.
Right.
And that's like what you want out of, it's what you want out of a team member, right?
If you're working with somebody on a project and they have a task, they don't just try one thing and come back and or just say like, I actually can't handle this because the file type is wrong.
So they convert it.
figure it out.
Yeah.
What was your reaction to her?
Yeah, I mean, it's like pretty insane.
Definitely, it definitely raised my, you know,
chance of permanent underclass.
Oh no.
You know, it's making me a little worried.
So where do we move the goalposts now?
Yeah, I'm so, I'm so, what, what did you want to happen?
Peter didn't say.
I know you're on, I know there's gonna be something
that you're unhappy with about AI.
Like you can't be satisfied.
Me?
Yeah.
Me?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, part of it's a bit.
Oh yeah, I know.
Obviously, but.
But I have to provide like an all
Of course, of course.
Opinion.
But of course, we have the goalpost here.
They have been sitting in one place.
But I guess what I'd be interested in is Peter and his team built a hit product,
an entire, you know, this novel experience that has taken the world by storm.
And how much did we know they only spent, you know, a few months on it?
How much did they actually, how many people actually worked on it?
And what was their total?
How much did they spend in total on tokens, right?
Because they're spending some with Kodak.
Do you sort of see that from the GitHub commits, right?
Probably, I mean, some sort of average.
Yeah, yeah, I'm sure you can do that.
I mean, just based off that it's like, okay, $51,000 on $250 billion tokens.
And a lot of those tokens are probably using CloudBot to do things, right?
Not just, not just building it, right?
Yeah, I mean, that was over how many months, like, all those tokens were not just on CloudBod.
But still, it's interesting that it's not in the millions.
Like, it's pretty accessible.
I don't know.
We need to find a new AGI benchmark.
Okay.
So I think one of the main takeaways I have from this is just that big model companies can't really release an equivalent product just because of the integration thing, right?
Maximum companies are not going to like talk to each other.
You're not going to get OpenAI in WhatsApp stuff like this.
So it really reinforces the idea of.
But do you think they would go so far as to say, we are not going to allow you to navigate our applications using something like.
I mean, that's literally happening with like the New York Times does not allow Open AI to browse it.
it with a box. But it's different having your local device being effectively used by
no it is but at the same time at the same time if open AI has the chat chapti app right now if you
go to the chat dpti website and you say hey uh i'm a subscriber to the new york times and uh
there's an article in the business section that i want you to summarize for me here's a link can you
open the link and uh turn into some bullet points for me it'll just say like no no no i can't go
over there. Like they said don't go. I'm not going. Now if I download the chat GPT app and it's able to run
that and maybe the New York Times can't block it, the New York Times still has the ability to sue
AI and like be a headache. Users are basically going to demand I if my data, I don't care if my
data is stored in the cloud. Yeah. I want to be able to access it on any device that I'm logged
into even if I'm not physically present with the device. Right. So I just I just think it's
be a really, really, really tough argument for some of these larger companies to say you can't,
you can only access your data if you are physically moving the mouse yourself. I don't know.
Like, how do you actually enforce this? Is Google Drive going to say you need to have your camera
on and we need to see that you're sitting in front of your computer actually using it?
If you like really grind it out, you can kind of always get around this stuff. And so like the only
The only real solution is to have actual, I think, deals between these, like, different companies.
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