Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 11/29 – Is Elon Going To War With Apple?

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

Elon says he’s willing to go to war with Apple. Why now? Is Apple really threatening Twitter’s status in the App Store, as he claims? Where, exactly, is the money for Binance’s crypto recovery fund coming from? Amazon wants kids to get in on the generative AI game. And with all the explosion of AI tools, why aren’t we seeing more adoption of AI for the very tangible and very important use case of medical imaging? Sponsors: ZenGo.com/ride and code: ride Links: Elon Musk Claims Apple Has 'Mostly Stopped' Offering Ads on Twitter and Is Making Moderation Demands (MacRumors) Why some tech CEOs are rooting for Musk (Platformer) Twitter’s $5bn-a-year business hit as Elon Musk clashes with advertisers (Financial Times) Binance clarifies initial $1 billion recovery fund deposit came from own assets (The Block) Amazon’s Create With Alexa generates unique animated children’s stories on Echo Show (Engadget) Google partners with med tech company to develop AI breast cancer screening tools (The Verge) Special Series Part 3: AI Could Transform Medical Imaging — So Why Don’t We See It More? (Crunchbase News) 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 TechMeme right home for Tuesday, November 29th, 2022. I'm Brian McCullough today. Elon says he's willing to go to war with Apple. Why now? Is Apple really threatening Twitter's status in the app store as he claims? Where exactly is the money for Binance's crypto recovery fund

coming from? Amazon wants kids to get in on the generative AI game. And with all the explosion of AI tools recently, why aren't we seeing more adoption of AI for the very tangible and very important use case of medical imaging. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Welp, I guess with all the imaginings as to how Twitter might go down, lots of folks probably didn't have Apple removing Twitter from the app store on their bingo card. But yesterday, Elon Musk said Apple had threatened to, quote, withhold Twitter from the app store, quote, but won't tell us why, end quote and called out Apple's lower Twitter ad spend and alleged censorship, quoting Mac rumors. In a tweet, Musk said that Apple has, quote, mostly stopped its Twitter ads, asking if Apple

hates free speech. Musk went on to publish a poll asking if Apple should, quote, publish all censorship actions taken that impact customers, and he began retweeting content from companies that Apple has had moderation discussions with. He also retweeted the 1984 parody video from Epic Games that suggested Apple has an App Store monopoly. Apple App Store chief, Phil Schiller, deactivated his Twitter account following Musk's takeover, a signal that Apple executives are not pleased with the direction that Twitter is heading in, which could lead to additional clashes over moderation in the future. Last Friday, Musk commented on Apple's App Store policies, giving some insight into what might happen if content on Twitter grows problematic.

Musk has confirmed that Apple is, quote, making moderation demand. and has threatened to, quote, withhold Twitter from its app store, end quote. Should Twitter get to the point where its lack of moderation causes Apple and Google to remove it from their stores? Musk said that he will, quote, make an alternative phone. He said that he hopes it, quote, does not come to that, but will do so if there is, quote, no other choice, end quote. Now, speculation about all this is all over the place. Is Apple about to take some action against Twitter? Elon does have priors for tweeting to get out ahead of news he doesn't like. He did that a lot during the will he or won't he Twitter takeover. On the content moderation front, Apple also has priors for being very strict with

platforms that don't have good moderation practices in place. And a source has told Wired that Twitter has but one staffer left on a team that was dedicated to removing CSAM from the platform after the recent layoffs, despite Elon saying, quote, removing child exploitation is priority number one, end quote, at Twitter now that he is in charge. So you could see Apple getting nervous about what content is coming back onto Twitter. Casey Newton was reporting overnight that Twitter had begun reinstating around 62,000 accounts that had been banned previously, some with more than 10,000 followers, after Elon Musk's poll on general amnesty for suspended accounts. One account that has been brought back has over 5 million followers. Quoting Casey. As with his decision to restore the account of Donald Trump,

Musk put the question of a general amnesty to a Twitter poll, quote, should Twitter offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam? And quote, he asked the day before Thanksgiving. Some 72.4% of respondents, some of which were likely bots, said yes. The people have spoken. Musk proclaimed the next day, amnesty begins next week, end quote. internally, the poll set off a now familiar chain of events. Employees learned of the amnesty as they read Musk's tweets, tried to interpret what they meant, which laws, what constitutes egregious spam, and quickly started carrying out his commands. Just one week earlier, employees had scrambled to reinstate Trump

after Musk conducted a similarly unscientific poll. Now they would need to revive thousands more. Internally, employees have referred to this event as the Big Bang, end quote. Again, these are accounts that were completely suspended under the previous regime for various reasons, though you could maybe generally lump all of them into a category of behaving badly, I guess. Might that make Apple nervous? For example, CNN was reporting that Twitter has stopped enforcing its longstanding COVID-19 harmful misinformation policy. It stopped doing so apparently on November 23rd. More than 11,000 accounts had been suspended under the rules relating to just that category

of controversy, and we're talking about lots of other categories coming back as well. Now, on the other hand, maybe this is all just about that punch to Elon's wallet. The Washington Post is reporting that in Q1 of 2022, Apple was the top advertiser on Twitter, spending around $48 million and accounting for over 4% of Twitter's revenue that quarter. So maybe Elon is just trying to fight back against major advertiser flight. He has priors for that as well, quoting the Financial Times. top advertising agencies and media buyers told the financial times that nearly all of the big brands they represent have paused spending on the social media platform, citing alarm at Musk's ad hoc approach to policing content and decision to ax many of its ad sales team. Musk, meanwhile,

has sought to personally call chief executives of some brands that have curbed advertising in order to berate them, according to one senior industry figure, leading others to instead reduce their spend to the bare minimum required so as to avoid further confrontation with the billionaire entrepreneur. After several waves of job cuts and departures, Twitter's ads business team has shrunk so much that many agencies no longer have any point of contact at the company and have received little to no communication in recent weeks, according to four industry insiders. Some brands have been unable to get feedback on how previous campaigns have performed because of the staffing shortages, one media buyer said. Others are complaining Twitter's ad

systems have also become buggy, making it difficult or even impossible, to run campaigns. It is quite unique. The turmoil, the damage, nothing of this magnitude has happened before. Never, said a senior executive at a Big Four advertising agency. He seems to put off even those advertisers who wanted him to succeed. Another top advertising agency executive said, end quote. So maybe it's just all about the money, but there's one more take here, the Galaxy Brain take. If Elon is indeed struggling to rebuild Twitter, he could use some friends, right? So if he took the lead and trying to break down the walls of the app store, that might gain him some powerful allies in, well, the entire non-Apple tech industry who would definitely root him on if he went to war with Apple, as some of his other tweets yesterday suggested. That could be useful. Follow up on a story from yesterday, Binance has announced a $1 billion recovery fund as a sort of lifeline for the crypto industry, sort of like how Sam Bankman-Fried tried to do earlier this year, or said he was trying to do. Apparently now CZ wants to bail people out. But big questions remain among them,

why funds for this recovery fund came allegedly from a cold wallet that allegedly also holds customer funds. Sounds a bit like what happened at FTX, doesn't it? Isn't that also counter to the whole proof of solvency thing that we talked about yesterday? Quoting the block. Crypto exchange, finance clarified that an initial $1 billion deposit to its crypto industry recovery fund came from its own assets after details of the transferring wallet raised questions among some commentators on Twitter. On-chain transactions show the funds came from one of Binance's cold wallets for BUSD, the exchange's dollar-pegged stablecoin. This wallet was recently listed in Binance's proof of funds documentation, which shows all the cold and hot wallets the exchange

owns as part of a transparency push following this month's collapse of rival crypto exchange F-TX. Some in the crypto community had raised concerns that Binance could be using customer funds as the wallet is listed as part of its proof of funds. Binance's original blog post didn't specify the purposes of each wallet and whether they all store customer funds. These are not customer funds. These are Binance assets that have been set aside, a spokesperson for the exchange said in an emailed comment. When asked whether Binance was storing its own funds in wallets along with customers' deposits, the spokesperson declined to comment. Binance launched the Recovery Fund on Thursday with $1 billion BUSD in initial capital,

which can be verified at the following addresses. A number of big names in the crypto industry have signed on to contribute, including GSR, Jump Crypto, and Polygon Ventures. The addresses of other participants will be available in the next week. The fund was announced last week to help mitigate the fallout stemming from FTX's collapse. It's expected to last for around six months and has already received over 150 applications. Binance has stressed that it's not an investment fund, end quote. Hmm, though, these are not customer funds yet you can't confirm that it did or did not come

from a wallet also holding customer funds. Sounds fishy, quoting Lee Drogan on Twitter. Look, this whole thing just reeks. Binance just happens to have $1 billion sitting around for a bailout fund, but it came directly from a cold wallet used for client funds. No one is really heavily incented to hold CZ's feet to the fire to get a full audit or answer the big questions. If he's clean, then you lose influence with the king of crypto. And if you're long and he's dirty, you've shot yourself in the foot, end quote. Amazon has announced Create with Alexa, a generative AI that lets children create animated stories via voice prompts on three different topics, all available on Echo Show devices,

quoting in gadget. Since Create with Alexa is visual storytelling, it's only available. on Echo Show devices, not the company's audio-only speakers. Amazon says it works whether the device is in Amazon Kids mode or not. To create a new story, your child would begin by speaking, Alexa, make a story, and then following several prompts. The AI then generates an illustrated five-to-10-line narrative, including animation, sound effects, and music built around their answers. Amazon's generative AI has a narrow scope at launch with only three themes available, space exploration, underwater, and enchanted forest. After picking one, children choose the story's hero from options like an astronaut named Speedy or an alien named Fuzzy. Your child can then

pick a color scheme and a tonal description like silly, happy, or mysterious. Afterwards, they can save their stories to watch again later or share them with friends and family. This isn't a case of Alexa splicing together ready-made scenes. Amazon says no two AI-created stories will be the same, even if your child repeats the process with identical prompts. According to Amazon, Create with Alexa includes safeguards to ensure the feature only produces kid-friendly content. Quote, from the get-go, we use carefully curated data sources to train AI models. Eshan Batnagar, head of product for Alexa AI, said in a blog post today. We have multiple guardrails such as content filtering and curated prompts to ensure this experience is both delightful and safe, end quote.

Additionally, Create With Alexa requires parents to enable the feature before their kids can use it. Create with Alexa arrives in an atmosphere of uncertainty surrounding Amazon's voice assistant. Earlier this month, the retail giant confirmed it had begun laying off employees reportedly slashing around 10,000 jobs. Its Devices and Services Division, which handles Echo Show and Alexa, reportedly bore the brunt of it. In October, Amazon also killed off Glow, its kid-focused video calling device. Create with Alexa is available on Echo Show devices starting today in the U.S., however, it's only available in English and the United States at launch, end quote. And finally today, on this very tip, the whole AI tools having a moment tip,

interesting that in a first, Google says it is licensed its AI research model for breast cancer screening to a medical company, ICAD, looking to deploy the tech as soon as 2024, quoting the verge. The two companies aim to eventually deploy the technology in real-world clinical settings, Google Communications Manager Nicole Linton told The Verge in an email. Commercial development, however, still depends on how successful continues. research and testing are. We will move deliberately and test things as we go, Linton said in the email. The partnership builds on Google's prior work to improve breast cancer detection back in 2020. Google researchers published a paper in the journal Nature that found that its AI system outperforms

several radiologists in identifying signs of breast cancer. The model reduced false negatives by up to 9.4 percent and reduced false positives by up to 5.7 percent among thousands of mammograms studied. ICAD plans to incorporate Google's mammography AI research model into ICAD's existing tools. The first is its profound AI tool that analyzes images from digital breast tomosynthesis or DBT, an advanced imaging technique sometimes called 3D mammography. The tool scans DBT images to look for malignant soft tissue densities and calcifications. ICAD also plans to use Google's model with its risk evaluation tool, which the company says provides personalized breast cancer risk.

estimations tailored to each person. The hope is that AI might become a tool to help radiologists and their patients, end quote. Now, I said this is interesting because just yesterday, CrunchBase News asked this very question, quote, AI could transform medical imaging, so why don't we see it more? There are simply too few doctors in the U.S. and too many patients who need them. Amid doctor burnout and long waitless to see specialists, a niche in technology should be in high demand. Medical imaging AI used to aid in diagnostics. Such technology could help prescreen patients or work alongside physicians to scan images and help find problems that may have gone unnoticed by the tired, overworked human eye. Funding for startups with this technology jumped from $348 million to over a billion between 2020 and 2021 per crunch-based

data. Though that number has dipped to $883 million so far in 2022, it's still the second largest year of funding for AI in diagnostics to date. Adoption was pretty slow up until COVID, said, said Sarah Choi, a biotech investor at WingVC. Now I think there's been a renewed focus on anything that fixes physician or clinician burnout, end quote. And yet, despite its inherent advantages, doctors are still apprehensive about this new technology. It really requires a quite nuanced understanding of how is this going to fit into a doctor's workflow, said Jacob Efron, a health care focused investor at Red Point Ventures. How does it fit into the incentives of different people in the system? End quote. It's actually not a problem of

the technology not being sophisticated enough, said Choi. It's an adoption problem and really proving out the use cases to convince providers that there's business value as well as clinical value to these solutions, end quote. Provider buy-in is paramount for almost any kind of health care offering, but running through a packed schedule of patients makes it difficult to learn and embrace a new technology that may impede workflow, especially if they don't think it will add much value. There's good reason for that skepticism. The American College of Radiology found that most AI aren't independently validated, calling into question the accuracy of these platforms. The Food and Drug Administration doesn't have consistent qualifications for how big or diverse the training

dataset ought to be. We need these models to work transparently and be explainable, and that's the difference that clinicians are looking for, because a doctor deserves to know how these machine learning models are reading their patients, said William Padula, an assistant professor of pharmaceutical and health economics at the University of Southern California. The fear here is that while the programmer knows what they've done to create the model, it's unclear how exactly it's looking at the patient, end quote. So somebody made a TikTok video out of my rant from a few weeks ago about how Elon seems to be doing the exact opposite

every step of the way of what you might do if you really wanted Twitter to succeed. It's a cool video, and it's made me want to run a little TikTok experiment of my own for the podcast. So help an old dude out here with you. What do people use these days to construct TikTok videos? Especially where do you get the stock video footage and whatnot? If anyone is in this creator space and can point me to the best tools slash best practices, much appreciated. But also, if someone wants a side gig where I provide you with some audio clips and you produce some videos I can post, get in touch as well. Happy to pay.

Email me at Brian at Techmeme.com or get in touch with me on Twitter at Brian MCC. If you can either point me in the right direction to doing it myself or are interested in a temporary gig. Talk to you tomorrow.