Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 01/24 – Operator AI

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

OpenAI releases its agentic bot that can do things on your behalf on your computer. Has the Stargate controversy driven a rift between Musk and Trump? Will the US government create a strategic crypto stockpile? And, of course, the Weekend Longreads Suggestions. Sponsors: MackWeldon.com promocode: BRIAN Links: OpenAI’s new Operator AI agent can do things on the web for you (The Verge) We Tried OpenAI’s New Agent—Here’s What We Found (Every) Trump staff ‘furious’ after Musk trashes AI project (Politico) Stargate artificial intelligence project to exclusively serve OpenAI (FT) Trump signs executive order promoting crypto, paving way for digital asset stockpile (CNBC) Mark Zuckerberg's Post (Facebook) Weekend Longreads Suggestions: As Netflix stock surges, an ‘anti-ESPN’ sports strategy emerges (The Athletic) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the TechMe, Marathon. right home for Friday, January 24th, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough today. Open AI releases its agentic bot that can do things on your behalf on your computer. Has the Stargate controversy driven a rift

between Musk and Trump? Will the U.S. government create a strategic crypto stockpile and, of course, the weekend long read suggestions? Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. OpenAI has released Operator AI, an agent that can automate web-based tasks. It's launching in the U.S. to subscribers of the $200 per month pro tier, which is the bad news, though in theory it is coming to lower tiers soon. But the promise is it can help book flights, plan grocery orders, and even complete purchases for users. Now, again, I wonder if anyone really will trust an AI with their credit card to make purchases. And as we said recently, why does everyone use booking a flight as an example? But according to the blog post, quote, using its own browser,

it can look at a web page and interact with it by typing, clicking, and scrolling. Operator can see through screenshots and interact using all the actions a mouse and keyboard allow with a browser enabling it to take action on the web without requiring custom API integrations according to OpenAI, quoting the verge. Operator can use reasoning to self-correct, and if it gets stuck, it will give the user control. It will also ask the user to take over when a website asks for sensitive information like login credentials and should ask for a user to a user to,

approve actions like sending an email. OpenAI also says that operator has been designed to refuse harmful requests and block disallowed content. OpenAI says that it's collaborating with companies such as DoorDash, Instacart, Open Table, Priceline, Stubhub, Thumbtack, and Uber so that operator, quote, addresses real-world needs while respecting established norms. But the company cautions that not everything might work as you expect just yet. The tool currently has problems with complex interfaces like creating slideshows or managing calendars, end quote. quoting Bloomberg. Operator's software works by combining some of OpenAI's computer vision features with multi-step problem-solving capabilities meant to mimic how people reason, the company said.

Initially, OpenAI is releasing what it calls a research preview of operator online to a limited number of U.S. customers who pay $200 per month for the recently introduced ChatGPT Pro subscription. The company said it hopes to learn from operators' early users so it can improve the product and plans to offer it to more paid customers over time. In a demonstration of the tool on Wednesday, Peter Wielander, opening eyes vice president of product and Yash Kumar, who leads product and engineering for operator, showed how the tool could look for a restaurant reservation or recognize the items on a handwritten list to prep an online grocery order. Operator can also carry out multiple tasks simultaneously. For example, a user might prompt the service to find a hotel in Vancouver that has Peloton

bikes in its gym, and then, before it is finished, asked operator to find an American girl doll bed on Craigslist. As long as a user has confirmed that operator can carry out a transaction, such as buying a pair of leggings from an online store, and has input any required credentials and payment information, the tool should be able to complete a purchase, Kumar said, end quote. Opening Eye says, eventually developers will be able to use this to build their own agents. Hey, how about a quick hands-on with this thing? The folks at every got one, and their conclusion is, at least right now, that operator is limited in what it can be. browse, but autonomously, it can perform repetitive workflows and can do lengthy tasks on its own

with minimal prompting. Quote, one of the most important things about operator is that it can do lengthy tasks on its own with minimal prompting. For example, we had it perform a task that took more than 20 minutes. We asked it to help us understand how Spotify RAPT has evolved over the years. What did it start out as? What does it include now that's new? It needed a little encouragement here and there to keep going, but it ended up eventually

accomplishing the task it had been set. This is a significant improvement from the agenic experiences of 12 or even six months ago that would frequently go off the rails after only a few seconds. That said, it still matters how you prompt operator. It has a higher chance of succeeding at the task you give it if you tell it more details about how you want it to be accomplished. For example, in our Spotify RAPT example, we asked it to gather and summarize search results data from different years. It originally failed because it didn't know how to filter search data by year, but when we told it to use Google's advanced search tools, which provide a year-by-year filter to search, it worked.

We've only played around with Operator for a few days, so we imagine there's much more advanced prompting that could get more out of its capabilities. Operator is only a research preview, so it's not a polished product, but the fact that it's a research preview is telling. Do you know what else was originally a research preview? ChatGPT. OpenAI is going back to the original strategy that works so well with ChatGBTGT,

release early and often even when there are rough edges. Not only that, but release consumer products rather than just API. even though operator is limited today, we expect it to rapidly improve. It's a good time to take stock of the repetitive tasks you're doing on your computer every day. You may not need to do most of them a year from now, end quote. So more on that Stargate controversy, quoting the Financial Times, despite the flashy announcement, Stargate has not yet secured the funding it requires, will receive no government financing, and will only serve Open AI once completed the people familiar with the initiative have said. The intent is not to become a data center provider for the world, it's for OpenAI, said one of the people. Another person close to the project said it was far from a fully developed plan. They haven't figured out the structure. They haven't figured out the financing. They don't have the money committed, end quote. SoftBank and Open AI intend to put forward more than $15 billion each for the project. The companies hope to raise a combination of equity from their existing backers and debt, which will be

used to fund Stargate. Tokyo-based SoftBank will also inject existing funds into Stargate, according to one of the people. While Altman's infrastructure plans had been in the works for well over a year, quote, the idea of announcing it at the White House was not in the works for as long, according to one person with knowledge of the project. There's a real intent to do this, but the details haven't been fleshed out, said another person involved in the project. People want to do splashy things in the first week of Trump being in office, end quote. Speaking of that, remember who is in the White House? Elon. And remember, who first raised doubts about Stargate, Elon. So noting this from Politico, quote, some of President Donald Trump's key aides and allies are

furious with Elon Musk for publicly trashing his $500 billion artificial intelligence mega deal. A White House official said Musk, quote, very much got over his skis when the tech tycoon launched a day-long screed against the AI project. One Trump ally said Musk abused his closeness to the president. Another Republican close to the White House went further saying Trump's staff is, quote, furious over Musk using his massive social media platform to pour cold water on the infrastructure deal that Trump called tremendous and monumental just a day prior. It's clear he has abused the proximity to the president, said the Trump ally. The problem is the president doesn't have any leverage over him, and Elon gives zero Fs. Trump, when asked by reporters about Musk blasting the deal,

said they were, quote, putting up the money. Quote, the government's not putting up anything. They're putting up the money. They're very rich people, so I hope they do, Trump said. And I mean, Elon doesn't like one of those people, end quote. Trump said it did not bother him that Musk criticize the deal saying, quote, no, it doesn't. He hates one of the people in the deal, end quote. President Trump has signed an executive order to create a crypto working group led by David Sachs to consider a national digital asset stockpile potentially derived from seized crypto. This has been spoken of for a while, a potential government strategic reserve of crypto. Quoting CNBC, most of the order focuses on establishing technology and rules around crypto and its

development in the U.S. One of the critical pieces is the creation of a working group to consider a national digital asset stockpile, quote, potentially derived from cryptocurrencies lawfully seized by the federal government through its law enforcement effort, end quote. Historically, the U.S. Marshals Service has auctioned off-seased Bitcoin, along with other cryptocurrencies, such as ether and light coin. Trump promised on the campaign trail that if he returned to the White House, he would ensure the federal government never sells off its Bitcoin holdings, though Thursday's order does not mention Bitcoin. If I am elected, it will be the policy of my administration, United States of America, to keep 100% of all the Bitcoin the U.S. government currently holds or acquires into the future, he said in July in a keynote at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville,

Tennessee. The order goes on to outline other key priorities for the digital asset industry, including protecting individuals and private sector companies that use blockchain networks from persecution. The document spells out certain protections for developers and miners, noting that they should be able to freely, quote, develop and deploy software as well as participate in mining and validating, a nod to the technicians securing the Bitcoin network. The president has also pledged to defend the rights of those who choose to self-custody their digital assets. That means they do not rely on a centralized entity such as Coinbase to hold their tokens and instead use personal crypto wallets, which are sometimes outside the reach of the Internal Revenue Service.

quote. What did I say the other day about the money flowing into compute infrastructure, especially for AI? If the money keeps flowing at the level it has been, this mania will continue for a while. Mark Zuckerberg says meta is planning to invest $60 to $65 billion in CAPX in 2025 and will end the year with more than 1.3 million GPUs and plans to grow its AI teams significantly, quoting Zuck himself. This will be a defining year for AI in 20, 2025, I expect meta-a-I will be the leading assistant serving more than one billion people. Lama 4 will become the leading state-of-the-art model, and we'll build an AI engineer that will start contributing increasing amounts of code to our R&D efforts. To power this, meta is building a

greater than 2-gigawatt data center that is so large it would cover a significant part of Manhattan. We'll bring online around 1 gigawatts of compute in 25, and will end the year with more than 1.3 million GPUs. We're planning to invest $60 to $65 billion in CAPEX this year while also growing our AI team significantly, and we have the capital to continue investing in the years ahead. This is a massive effort, and over the coming years, it will drive our core products and business, unlock historic innovation and extend American technology leadership. Let's go build, end quote. I was listening to an episode of the Compound and Friends podcast recently, and they made the assertion that something crazy like 7 to 10% of the entire U.S. economic activity right now,

I could have those numbers wrong by a bit, but it was a huge percentage can be traced to this sort of build-out. More activity in the economy than during the dot-com bubble. It's not just tech. The entire economy is being buoyed by this spending, and that's either incredibly bullish or a worrying sign of a bubble potentially ready to pop someday. Okay, only one long read for you this week. I continue to be fascinated by Netflix blowout earnings this week. They claim that the incredible subscriber gains came direct.

from their live sport offerings. So from the athletic dig these numbers, quote, the company was quick to point to the success of its late-year sports programming, including the Paul Tyson boxing match and its NFL doubleheader on Christmas, which included a Beyonce fronted halftime show that Netflix also packaged on its own, ultimately drawing more viewers than the football games. Market research firm Antenna estimated that Netflix drove more than 650,000 new subscribers in the days surrounding the NFL games.

According to Antenna, the Paul Tyson-Ferson, fight drove more than 1.4 million subscription signups. The company laid out its sports programming strategy in its letter to shareholders released Tuesday. We're not focusing on acquiring rights to large regular season sports packages. Rather, our live strategy is all about delivering can't miss special event programming, the company said. That positions Netflix as a sort of anti-ESPN. By design and necessity, ESPN spends its rights budget on amassing a huge volume of regular season sports packages. The network's currency is live games, so it spends prolifically on that programming. This tonnage of live games will become even more important to ESPN as it launches its own

direct-to-consumer sports platform, currently codenamed flagship later this year. On top of that, ESPN-ABC may have the most marquee events in the history of sports media with upcoming Super Bowls, the NMBA finals, the college football championship, and the Stanley Cup final, among others. The luxurious position Netflix finds itself in is, evident in its acquisition strategy. It doesn't need all of the live sports. It just needs enough big, memorable, in its own words, live sports to keep its audience engaged. With a market cap north of $370 billion and growing, if Wednesday's stock price surge off Tuesday's quarterly report is any indication, along with its massive global audience, Netflix can pick and choose what it

decides is can't miss and presumably outspend anyone in the market. This is a big reason the Christmas Day football experiment was so important, both for Netflix and the NFL. Netflix needed to test whether fans would jump from traditional NFL broadcasting platforms to stream games on Netflix, surely understanding that Amazon Prime Video's Thursday Night Football had proved the concept. Netflix went all out, hiring dozens of on-air personalities from other networks, and of course paying Beyonce to deliver a halftime show that would not have looked out of place at a Super Bowl. The payoff included being the most watched NFL game ever on a streaming platform. Netflix has the rights to do Christmas Day games again in 2025,

given December 25th is a Thursday, they will be airing on the same day as one of Amazon Prime Videos games. The NFL naturally has to be thrilled. They get a deep-pocketed new entrant that can pay top dollar for rights fees, get the product in front of a global audience of a couple hundred million people, and put on a broadcast that looks and feels similar to the ones fans are used to. Netflix is a natural top bidder for a new package of NFL games, whether that is the new 18th game, an international package, or something brand new like the NFL on Christmas Day, which used to be the providence of the NBA. Now, layer in WWE, Netflix poached WWE's Monday Night Live show and launched weekly shows earlier this month. While that would

seem to fit the description of large regular season sports package, it claimed to be sidestepping Monday night WWE's Roadshow feels more like a special event than multiple games a week. What qualifies as a sports-related special event and also happens to be one of the few premium live sports packages that are available right now. UFC fights. Keep in mind that W.W.E and UFC share a parent company, TKO Holdings, so Netflix's $10 billion investment in WWE could be a show of commitment related to future deals involving UFC. ESPN exclusively owns the full rights through next year. UFC will consider splitting the packages between multiple carriers. Sources briefed on discussions told the athletic. Netflix also made a big splash last month

acquiring the rights to broadcast the Women's World Cup in 2027 and 2031. It should not surprise anyone if and when Netflix uses that as a step on the way to acquiring the men's World Cup that are next available in 2030, end quote. No weekend bonus episodes for you this weekend. Talk to you on Monday.