Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 10/21 – Google Get’s A Stay

Episode Date: October 21, 2024

Google’s strategy of keeping it in the courts is already going to plan. New AI agents from Microsoft. New Open Source models from IBM. Perplexity is looking to raise again. How far behind Apple thinks it is in AI. And what it’s like to use your AirPods as hearing aids. Sponsors: Ramp.com/techmeme Miro.com Links: Epic judge lets Google keep its Android app store closed to competitors — for now (The Verge) Microsoft unveils new autonomous AI agents in advance of competing Salesforce rollout (GeekWire) AI Startup Perplexity in Funding Talks to More Than Double Valuation to $8 Billion (WSJ) IBM debuts open source Granite 3.0 LLMs for enterprise AI (VentureBeat) Apple’s New iPad Mini Highlights the Company’s Secret AI Advantage (Bloomberg) Apple’s AirPods Pro hearing health features are as good as they sound (The Verge) 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 TechMean right home for Monday, October 21st, 2024. I'm Brian McCullough today. Google's strategy of keeping it in the courts is already going to plan. New AI agents from Microsoft, new open source models from IBM, perplexity is looking to raise again, how far behind Apple thinks it is in AI and what it's like to use your AirPods as hearing aids. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. And something, something, this will be in the court for years. A judge has granted Google a temperate. stay on the epic ruling while Google appeals, which means Google might not have to change play store practices for a long, long time. Quoting the verge, technically today's temporary

administrative stay only pushes back the clock a bit, long enough for the appeals court to weigh in on a longer stay, but Judge Donato reportedly told the courtroom he suspects the Ninth Circuit will grant that longer stay too, which could genuinely let Google off the hook till it gets through appeal. The judge declined to give Google a longer stay himself. However, Judge Donato did not press pause on one specific part of his ruling, one that could open a crack for rival app stores, according to court documents. Starting November 1st, 2024, and continuing until November 1, 2027, Google has ordered not to make deals with carriers or device makers that block pre-installation of rival app stores in exchange for money, revenue share, or perks. Had Judge Donato left the

original deadline in place, his order would also have let developers, stopped using Google Play's billing as soon as November 1st. Google also would have been barred from using certain financial incentives to keep developers loyal to the store, plus it would have kicked off an eight-month countdown to Google carrying third-party app marketplaces inside its own play store. Originally, Judge Donato gave Google less than a month to begin cracking open its app store, and Google argued it should get the same 90 days that Apple got to make app store changes. Google also argued that Epic, which filed both the Apple and Google lawsuits, didn't object to a 90- day timeline. With Judge Donato's original deadline lifted, Google is at least briefly off the hook

and has potentially started down the same path Apple took that led it delay removing its anti-steering app store rules for over two years, end quote. Microsoft has unveiled 10 new AI agents for its enterprise-focused Dynamics 365 apps covering sales, finance, and more ahead of. Sales force availability. Quoting Geekwire, think of agents as the new apps for an AI-powered world, wrote Jared Spataro, chief marketing officer for Microsoft's AI at Work initiatives in a post about the news. Every organization will have a constellation of agents, ranging from simple prompt and response to fully autonomous. They will work on behalf of an individual team or function to execute and orchestrate business processes, end quote. The news announced Monday at Microsoft's

AI tour stop in London comes a few days in advance of the planned October 25th general availability of Salesforce's competing Agent Force autonomous AI technology for sales and service. Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff has been pointed in his criticism of Microsoft's co-pilot AI technology in recent weeks, saying Microsoft is disappointing its business customers and exposing their data to security risks. As part of the announcement this morning, Microsoft said 60% of Fortune 500 companies are using its co-pilot technology. It cited examples including Lumen Technologies, saving a projected $50 million annually due to AI helping its sales associates. And Honeywell, seeing productivity gains equivalent to adding 187 full-time employees.

These AI agents come in a few categories. Sales, including a sales qualification agent and sales order agent designed to help prioritize leads and automate order intake. Operations, including a supplier communications agent and financial reconciliation agent, which optimize supply chain and financial processes. these service, including a customer intent agent and customer knowledge management agent designed to improve customer service by automating case management and updating knowledge bases. Others include a financial reconciliation agent that prepares and cleanses data sets for financial

reporting, an account reconciliation agent that automates the matching and clearing of transactions, and a time and expense agent for time entry, expense tracking, and approval workflows, end quote. sources say perplexity is looking to raise around $500 million to double its valuation to $8 billion or more. Perplexity's annualized revenue is around $50 million up from around $10 million back in March of 2024, quoting the journal. Perplexity has raised three rounds of funding in the past year, an unusually fast pace even by the standards of Silicon Valley. In January, it was valued at $520 million. By this summer, its valuation had grown to $3,000. billion dollars. Perplexity has told investors it is looking to raise around $500 million in the new funding round, according to people familiar with the matter. The terms could change and the funding

might not come together. The startup's annualized revenue, an extrapolation of the next 12 months revenue based on recent sales, is currently about $50 million, the knowledgeable people said. In March, its annualized revenue was a little over $10 million. Founded two years ago and backed by Jeff Bezos, Perplexity is a combination search engine and AI chatbot. It scours the web for current information like Google and provides answers to questions like chat GPT. The consumer search engine is getting about 15 million queries a day according to one of the knowledgeable people, end quote. Don't count them out of the AI race. IBM has launched its open source granite 3.0 models, including 2 billion and 8 billion general purpose versions and mixture of experts models aimed at

enterprise customers, quoting Ventra Beat. IBM already has a $2 billion book of business-related to generative AI, and it's now looking to accelerate that growth. IBM is expanding its enterprise AI business today with the launch of the third generation of Granite Large Language Models. A core element of the new generation is the continued focus on real open source enterprise AI. Going a step forward, IBM is ensuring that models can be fine-tuned for enterprise AI with its instruct lab capabilities. The new models announced today include general-purpose options with a 2 billion and 8 billion Granite 3.0. There are also mixed-shed. of experts models, rounding out the update. IBM also has a new group with optimized guardrail

and safety options that include Granite Guardian 3.08b and Granite Guardian 3.02B models. The new models will be available on IBM's Watson X service as well as on Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Sagemaker, and Hugging Face. As we mentioned on our last earnings call, the book of business that we've built on Generative AI is now $2 billion plus across technology and consulting. Rob Thomas, Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer officer at IBM said during a briefing with the press and analysts. As I think about my 25 years in IBM, I'm not sure we've ever had a business that has scaled at this pace, end quote. Granite 3.0 introduces a range of sophisticated AI models tailored for enterprise applications.

IBM expects that the new models will help to support a range of enterprise use cases, including customer service, IT automation, business process outsourcing, application development, and cybersecurity. The new Granite 3.0 models were trained by IBM 7, centralized data model factory team that is responsible for sourcing and curating the data used for training. A key differentiator for Granite 3.0 is IBM's decision to release the models under the Open Source Initiative, approved Apache 2.0 open source license. There are many other open models, such as Meta's Lama in the market that are not, in fact, available under an OSI-approved license. That's a distinction that matters to some enterprises. The permissive Apache 2.0 license allows

IBM's partners to build their own brands and intellectual property on top of the Granite models. This helps foster a robust ecosystem of solutions and applications powered by the Granite technology. Looking forward, IBM is thinking about the next major paradigm shift, something that the company referred to as generative computing. In essence, generative computing refers to the ability to program computers by providing examples or prompts rather than explicitly writing out step-by-step instructions. This aligns with the capabilities of LLMs like Granite, which can generate text code and other outputs based on the input they receive, end quote. Mark German, Apple News Monday, his sources say, summit Apple think it is over two years behind

the leaders in generative AI. Also, when we get Apple intelligence, be prepared to be underwhelmed, which I think we kind of were getting that sense, right? Quote, the first Apple intelligence features are underwhelming with the more impressive capabilities coming later. In the iPad mini marketing on Apple's website, the company spotlight's four features. Three of them aren't launching until between December and March. At the start, the signature feature will be notification summaries. These can be quite helpful if they're accurate, but they lack the wow factor of competitors' offerings. Compared with the latest fare from Google, OpenAI, and meta, Apple's AI is still far behind. Even some internal studies at Apple reflect this,

I'm told. The research found that OpenAI's chat GPT was 25% more accurate than Apple's Siri and able to answer 30% more questions. In fact, some at Apple believe that its generative AI technology, at least so far, is more than two years behind the industry leaders. Apple hasn't yet shown it can achieve real competence in AI. Today, there's a little reason to buy products just to get Apple intelligence. If consumers are sold on that idea by Apple's marketing, they may be surprised to find few meaningful AI tools. when they start using their new devices. But that raises a broader question. How much do customers actually care about AI? For now, the camera advancements on a new iPhone are a bigger draw. Apple is well aware of this, which is why recent upgrades have centered on photo and video capabilities, including the terrific camera control button this year. Apple has done a good job at convincing one group that it's winning at artificial intelligence investors. The stock is trading at a record high, giving Apple a market valuation of $3.6 trillion, due in large part to AI excitement. Some analysts have even made dubious claims that Apple intelligence is already creating an AI consumer revolution that will, quote, spark a massive holiday season.

But Apple's AI glory is still years away. If the new iPhone is a hit this year, it will probably be because of everything but AI, end quote. Speaking of Apple, here's a hands-on with Apple's new hearing health features for AirPods Pro 2, which is set to debut in iOS 18.1. Apparently, the hearing aids work well, hearing protection in all modes works well, and the hearing test that you have to take is interesting, quoting the verge. Did you know there are people who've already been replacing earplugs with the AirPods Pro at concerts? Until this fall, Apple had never endorsed such a use case or advertised its earbuds as hearing protection devices. The company knew people were doing it, but kept quiet on the subject. That's now changed with iOS 18.1 and the soon-to-be-released

AirPod's firmware update, the AirPods Pro 2 will offer hearing protection at all times across noise cancellation, transparency, and adaptive audio modes. There's no concert mode or a specific setting to toggle. You can think of this as an expansion of the loud sound reduction option that was already in place. Hearing protection is on by default, and Apple says, an all-new, multi-band, high-dynamic range algorithm helps to preserve the natural sound of concerts and other live events. Which listening mode you'll use for concerts comes down to personal preference. I've found adaptive audio works well, since it lets you customize whether you prefer more noise cancellation or more pass-through. But even in full transparency mode, some level of hearing

protection is active. The more noise cancellation that's applied, the longer you can remain in relatively loud environments. You'll need a quiet space when taking Apple's hearing test. Before getting started, your iPhone will do a quick analysis of ear-tip-fit and environmental noise to ensure you're good to go. All of these hearing health features are calibrated for Apple's stock silicone tips. So if you're using aftermarket third-party tips, including foam, there's no guarantee you'll get the optimal experience. Once the test begins, you just tap the screen whenever you hear any of the three beep tone sequences. There are a few key things to know about the test, though. For one, it's designed so that you can't predict or game it. The test can play any frequency

at any time, so no two are the same. Apple tests your left ear first, and here's something I wish I'd known going in. It's completely normal to hear nothing at all for several seconds at a time. It was in those moments when five, six, or even ten seconds would pass by without an obvious tone sequence where I'd start feeling pretty anxious. My best advice is to avoid wondering if you should be hearing something at a given moment, and instead just focus on the tones as they come. Some can be incredibly faint. There are visual cues that let you know the test is still moving along, even during silence, the most obvious one being a large circle that animates on screen throughout the process. You'll also notice a progress dial for each ear that fills as you take it.

Apple's hearing test only takes around five minutes, but it felt like a long five minutes for me everyone else I've let try it. Again, that's probably because it's been too long since many of us have done this. The second time wasn't nearly as stressful. I can definitely see the hearing test having a viral moment on TikTok and other social media, which seems like a great thing for awareness all around. Hearing loss is incredibly common. One and a half a billion people around the world are living with some extent of it, according to the World Health Organization. For those 18 years and older with mild to moderate hearing loss, the AirPods Pro 2 can now serve as a clinical-grade hearing aid. Once enabled, you can also toggle on a media assist setting that uses your

hearing test results to optimize the sound of music, phone calls, and video content. Within the settings menu, you can use sliders to fine tune the hearing aids features like amplification, tone, and balance. Those options are also accessible via control center on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Much like you can slide a finger on the AirPods Pro STEM to adjust volume, you can use that same gesture to control amplification when the hearing aid mode is at. You can only use the hearing aid feature when in transparency mode, though. Apple's instructions for the hearing aid feature advise that it takes time, in some cases weeks, for customers to get fully accustomed to the sound.

Being able to use Apple's $250 earbuds as a hearing aid is a huge deal for those who can benefit from this capability. But they won't be right for everyone. People with more severe hearing loss will still need to seek other solutions. And the main trade-off with the AirPods Pro 2 is battery life. they can last for around six hours with the hearing aid engaged, which doesn't match what you'll get from many over-the-counter and prescription hearing aids, end quote. So for years, some folks have asked me if I would ever do a shirt, a t-shirt with the tech meme ride home logo on it, and then something else. I'm finally looking into that in the interest of having something

ready by the holiday season, but what I wanted to know was what should that something else be? Like, what if I had the logo and then some phrase underneath it? What should the phrase be? The first thing that sprung to my mind was end quote. But maybe also nothing more for you today. But what else? Is there some phrase that I say all the time that makes you think of this show? Hit me up on Twitter and threads and either vote for end quote or nothing more for you today

or suggest something else. I am not taking this too seriously. I'm not thinking of this as a money-making scheme or really anything. It's just something fun since folks have asked for it in the past. So let me know what you want the shirt to be. Talk to you tomorrow.