Tech Won't Save Us - The Year in Tech w/ Molly White, Brian Merchant, & Eric Wickham

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

Paris Marx is joined by Molly White, Brian Merchant, and Eric Wickham to discuss the highs and lows (mostly lows) of this year in tech news.Molly White is the creator of Web3 is Going Just Great and Follow the Crypto. Brian Merchant is my co-host on System Crash, a new podcast we’re hosting. He’s also a longtime tech journalist and author of Blood in the Machine. Eric Wickham is the producer for Tech Won’t Save Us, along with a bunch of other podcast, and an independent journalist.Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.Also mentioned in this episode:Molly joined Brian and Paris on System Crash.Peter Thiel made some dumb remarks about Luigi Mangione on the Piers Morgan show while looking very shiny.Apple sold fewer than half a million Vision Pro headsets this year.Support the show

That was just one of those days this year where I'm glad you brought it up because that was another story that I was just like, wait, what is happening? Like, what if we all like woke up? I have friends who are advocating for that bill in our state legislature. And they were just like, oh, my God, it's so much worse than you could ever imagine. And it was. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us, made in partnership with The Nation magazine. I'm your host, Pyrus Marks, and this week we have a very special and different episode that we always do at the end of every year, but it's not like our usual kind of interview format and interview shows that you're used to pretty much every other week. Last week, we did

a live stream to go through some of the biggest stories in the year and what we're looking forward to in the year to come in the tech industry. And I had some great guests in order to do that. Molly White, the creator of Web3 is going just great and follow the crypto. Join me for that discussion. Brian Merchant as well, who is my co-host on the new System Crash podcast. He's also a longtime tech journalist and author of Blood in the Machine. And also Eric Wickham, who is a name that you're probably familiar with if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, but is usually not kind of on mic actually speaking to us. He is, of course, the producer of Tech Won't Save Us, along with a bunch of other podcasts and an independent journalist. So a lot has happened in the tech industry this year,

you know, everything from the US election and the tech industry's role and everything that happened there, but also bigger stories like what is going on with AI, what is going on with data centers, what tech companies are doing in transportation, and, you know, a bunch of smaller things that you probably forgot about. But I tried to bring some of those in here, so you'll still be reminded, hopefully. Since this is a recording of a live stream, some things we say, you know, might be reflecting of the moment that we said them. In particular, when I talk about revealing the results of the worst person in tech contest that we held this year, I don't think you'll be surprised by the winner if you haven't seen it on social media already. But overall, before we get into this live stream,

I just wanted to thank you for a great year for the podcast. It's always fantastic to see how many people listen to the show, how many people enjoy it, how many people share it with friends and colleagues to, you know, make sure that these critical perspectives on this very consequential industry for all of our lives are being shared around and people are being informed about it. So that is always fantastic. And, you know, it was really great to see how excited and engaged people were over the Data Vampire series that we did a couple months ago. There was a lot of work that went into putting that together, you know, and I've received so many nice messages from people who not only felt that

they learned a lot, but then had a resource that they could share with other people in order to help inform them about this issue that is very important. And it's only getting more important as these tech companies push further on increasing the amount of computation that we use currently through generative AI, but through other means as well. So I hope that you enjoy this recording of our live stream where we went through so many of the big issues that the tech industry was facing and dealing with this year. Over the next couple weeks, you know, the end of December and beginning of January, we will also be publishing episodes. They will just be public versions of some of the

premium episodes that we've been publishing over the past couple of months. You know, some ones that I thought were really thought-provoking, and that would be good for the broader listeners of this show to hear and to engage with and to think about. And then after that, we'll be back with your regularly scheduled Tech Won't Save Us. But you know, there won't be a week where you're missing an episode in between all that if you do want something to listen to over the holidays and through this period. So thanks again for a really great year. And if you do want to support the work that goes into making the show, you can become a supporter at patreon.com slash tech won't save us and help set us up for a great 2025 as well. So thanks so much. Enjoy the holidays and enjoy this end of year live stream that we did last week.

So first guest will be no surprise to any of you. She has been on the show many times in the past. She is, I would say, the most prominent crypto critic in the world. I'm going to go that far and say it. She has done fantastic work with Web3 is Going Just Great, with Follow the Crypto Through the Election, looking at the spending of the crypto industry to help support different political campaigns and try to get their issues on the radar. So, first guest is Molly White. Molly, welcome to the show. So excited to have you. Thank you for having me. Excited to be here. Thanks so much. You know, it's always such a thrill to get to talk to you to learn about all of the fantastic work that you're doing. And I know that the listeners love hearing from you as well. So I'm so excited that you could join me for this. Great. Yeah. Happy to be here. Awesome. Happy to dig into it. Now, my second guest is also someone who you will be very familiar with, at least until recently. I think he still holds it. He had the title of

Most Appearances on Tech Won't Save Us. Brian Merchant is someone who has been a pal of mine for quite a while now. I think I got to know him first when he was an editor of mine at One Zero, an old medium publication back in the day. Maybe it was before that. I can't remember. Brian is the author of Blood in the Machine. He's been on the show to talk about that, a fantastic book about the Luddites and helping to reframe and make sure that the narrative we know about the Luddites is one that is the accurate one about who these people were. But he is also, aside from being a long-time tech journalist who has been at this for quite a while, he is also my co from being a long time tech journalist who has been at this for quite a while, he is also my co-host on a new podcast that we're doing called System

Crash that if you're not listening to it already, I think you would really enjoy it if you like Tech Won't Save Us. So Brian, welcome to the live stream. Very excited to have you. Oh yeah, excited to be here. System Crash also has great guests so far anyways. I wonder who might have been a guest recently. Yeah, you'll have to log on over there to see. I just can't say no to you guys. We recorded our episode on System Crash earlier this week, and I was like, it's the three of us, you know, twice in one week. What is going on here?

But yeah, it's great. Loving the hat as well, Brian. Very festive. Thank you. It may be a child's hat. So it's kind of precariously wedged on my head right now. So it may not make it through the whole broadcast. But right now it's bringing some festive vibes.

Is it over your headphones? I'm trying to figure out how. Let it remain a mystery. Yeah, no. The headphones are like tilted back. This is tilted forward. It's all very precariously. I cannot move too quickly

or it's all just going to come crumbling down the whole class of cards. I love it. I love it. And last but not least, is someone whose name you will have heard a lot if you have been listening to the show for a while. Eric Wickham has been the producer on the show,

has been editing the show for over two years now. He is an essential part of making Tech Won't Save Us what it is. And he makes my job so much easier, because I get to talk to these amazing people and then he takes over kind of getting the show ready for me and handling all the things that I would find more stressful.

But he does such a great job. And so I thought, how have we not had Eric on something like this before so that you can all meet him properly, see who he is, hear a bit more from him? So very excited to have Eric Wickham on as, you know, the third guest. Welcome, Eric. Honestly, thank you so much for having me. This is a thrill. It's weird to be on the other side of this.

I will be editing this later. I will be deleting deleting everything you need to take yourself out in the edit yeah exactly absolutely it will be you molly and brian again it'll be very exclusive for the patreon supporters the regular listeners don't get it yeah if you pay a certain amount a month you get eric's feedback as well that's great i love it i love it i otherwise it's just like blank it's just like 30 seconds of blank yeah yeah yeah he doesn't even elevate and elevate music or something like yeah just like a long static noise it'd be nice yeah he doesn't even take himself out completely it's just like makes himself silent uh and so you need to put up with that so i did forget to ask as i was going through introduction so maybe it's just like makes himself silent uh and so you need to put up with that i did forget to ask as i was going through introduction so maybe it's better to have

you know while you're all here i was wondering if anyone well wore a holiday sweater uh to our little live stream not really that's no okay i have my festive flannel and then i have my luddite shirt on which felt i love it yes oh i want that topical yeah i have my wendy lou the luddites were right shirt but i don't have in fact i am wearing it underneath my sweater i'm not going to subject anybody yeah i think i just wear that yeah there's always a luddite shirt hidden under whatever brian is wearing yeah yeah it's just under that it's also just a full body tattoo strangely not that many options in the luddite shirt market out there i've discovered

there needs to be more i think we need to we need to up the game a little bit i'm wondering if eric eric is running to to put one on right now to surprise us but in the meantime uh i will say i do have one it looks like my image is reversed but if you know if you watch these live streams before it's the same one i've worn the last two years because i'm not buying anyone every year exactly but it's what i would wear it every day so didn't they there was something i read about about microsoft is oh maybe it's an xbox sweater that like employees were going crazy about that they like have new xbox merch or like retro xbox sweater merch so you can you can look into that for next year there's a github one as well i don't know if they've released a like a microsoft or windows one so far this year um yeah but i used

to be interested in at least seeing the designs every year okay eric is back eric did not run to put on no i did not sorry my girlfriend came home and i just didn't want to like be like hey surprise you're on a live stream you're live um i am wearing a t-shirt of a local dive bar and then a festive ish kind of sweater it doesn't seem appropriate to wear any other time of year so yeah as good as i could get sorry it looked like a rather festive little pattern there on the snowflakes or something yeah snowflakes and then and then advertising the place where you drink away your sorrows yeah i work in media yeah yeah Brian has his hat, so it's perfect. But yeah, I'm so excited you could all join me for this,

to get into this wild and crazy year that we have been following and living through, especially you two, Molly and Brian, since you're south of the border. We just get to watch what happens down there on the TV, but sometimes we experience pieces of it. Is that something Canadians say, by the way, like south of the border? Like that's like a Taco Bell slogan, I think. Yeah, it sounds like that. Is that how you say it?

We totally say that, right, Eric? Yeah. No, I've said it before. So when you're talking about Mexico, is it south of the border, south of the border? We don't talk about Mexico. South of the border. Yeah, no,. We don't talk about Mexico. South of the border. Yeah, no, it's not even on your radar. Yeah.

To a wild degree, to the point where like Trump came to power and the first thing a ton of our premiers did was suggest kicking Mexico out of the North American free trade agreement. And it was like, why? Like, why is this the first thing you jump to? And it's like, because we just don't, we don't have the same relationship to Mexico. And it's just like not a part of our political discourse in a weird way, because I'm sure that there's still like a lot of trade and stuff that happens there.

But there's a real blind spot on Mexico, I feel like in Canada. Hmm. I don't know if I realize that. No, no, you learn something new every day. Yeah, we have Chipotle up here. We have Mexican food. Oh, that's the sound of subscribers.

We need to get you South of South of the border ASAP. Let's get you some education. I hope that's my most great comment of the evening, but we'll see. Let's pop out early. Please subscribe to Paris's podcasts and his Patreon so he can afford some good Mexican food. I did visit a friend in LA one time, not you, Brian. And he took me to what he said was his favorite Mexican restaurant.

And it was really good. So I will say that. So maybe I've had good Mexican food. But yeah, you know, up in Canada, things are different. Limited. Yeah. Yeah. We have poutine, so it's different. Yeah. I don't like it either. Yeah. Okay. I need to stop pissing off people who like different foods. So let's get to some of our top stories of the year. So this is where I wanted to start because a lot happened this year. You know, I'm sure we've all been focusing on Trump in the election the past little while and everything going on there, but

there are a ton of other stories. And so to get us started, I kind of wanted to go around and see what you guys thought were your top story of the year. And we can discuss those a little bit. And yeah, then I have some other ones on a list that I can pull from and that I might want to discuss. So Brian, I'm volunteering you to go first. Yeah, sure. I mean, I think that in tech, there's like two or three major story. I think, fortunately, we're all going to represent, I think, one of them in a different way in a different context. But you could either talk about Elon Musk's ascendance to sort of being this power broker and sort of tech interpreter to the incoming Trump regime as one of the sort of the biggest developments, if you're looking at it from like a sort of like a structural and power sort of way. Well, you can't really talk about 2024 and tech without talking about AI. Unfortunately, that's still sort of where the industry is oriented. OpenAI has become sort of

like the highest capitalized startup in history. It raised by some counts, like the single largest funding round, when it raised almost $7 billion in its last round. And now its valuation is like $157 billion, which is historic by some senses. And the only reason it's able to do that is all the money it's now making. Yeah, or it's more that it's burning. I mean, that's what's crazy is that particular funding round I think happened in September or was going on or closed around then. So it was well after all of the sort of difficulties in the business model were quite clear. It's just the amount of compute and energy that it's expending. Investors at that point knew that this company is on track to lose almost $6 billion, what it

raised in that round this year and is going to do it again next year. And the picture for that changing isn't all that different. So, I mean, I think that will be my story is the story of OpenAI sort of leading this charge. Of course, it has other companies in its orbit. Anthropic is a challenger with Amazon money, very similarly constituted with OpenAI and it's Microsoft money.

Google and Meta are both in the AI game in a big way and are sort of reconstituting all of their products to favor AI and to shove AI in everybody's faces. Google Overview, of course, is like Google's big public facing AI venture. And now it's just something that like we have to live with. Google's pretty bad. AI is just now the first thing that we all see when we use Google, if we're still using Google. I remember up here in Canada, we'd be hearing about the overviews and how bad they were,

but they weren't actually available on Canadian Google. And then like the day when they finally rolled it out up here, it was like, no, they've done it. We have to put up with this too. I thought it was just for the Americans. Yeah, I mean, that's funny that there's like a delayed, I mean, Google, everybody was complaining about Google long before overviews started.

I don't know. I mean, I'm curious, like Molly, do you use Google or do you use a search engine that's more tailored? Like, I'm curious about what people like in the tech community are actually using for search these days, because Google's just so sort of just larded up. Yeah, I mostly use Google. I do use Kagi sometimes. But I think that I've just sort of developed this method of like, making Google eventually spit out what i want through like weird google dorks that i have managed to make it work but uh that's a new word for me google dorks google dorks yeah

dorking is like when you do you know like the site colon or whatever so you write the reddit one is the most famous yeah yeah exactly that kind of thing. I have sort of fully embraced that into my search lexicon post Google and shitification. And I still don't usually get what I want. But, you know. But it's habit. It's so hard to like I have DuckDuckGo and like sometimes I'll try to, you know, use something. And I do know people that use Kagi or whatever and think it's good. Do you pay for it, Molly? do yeah yeah yeah and yeah i just i don't know if it if i can justify paying for a

search engine that i'm not going to use but i should i should try it because it is at the point where it like you're saying molly like we have to have all these acts to like sort of get around like you've conditioned your brain to like okay i'll just scroll right past not only the overview now but past the first three and the ad and then like yeah maybe go click three and then on page three maybe it'll be what i'm looking for what i hate now is like when i do the search and the overview like kind of has the right answer and i'm like i don't want it from here i want it from somewhere else and i have duck duck go set as my like default but then i still end up going to google a lot of the time anyway it hasn't even worked for me to do that yeah but what i think is wild is that like yeah we just i mean and this is probably in the top 10 story range somewhere

is the antitrust action against google it's wild to think about that like this is what it was able to accomplish with like with with monopoly power like i think with real competitors nipping at its heels that were you know not a sort of a niche like pay-to-play service for search or something maybe it would have prevented this situation where we've all just become accustomed to how in shitified how shitty like using one of the core functions of the modern web really are and i just want to like shout out for a second, my friend Mike Pearl, who's the tech editor at Mashable did a story looking at Google, like really trying to examine Google overview six months later and like

looking to see if they had improved in the ways that Google said that they would improve. And like basically like concluded that Google has just done kind of the bare minimum to prevent itself from embarrassing itself further. And it's still like just things that are bad and like a less obvious or funny thing, like it gets things wrong all the time. It's just, it's still, I think for most people who are looking for high quality results, it's still a must skip, must scroll through. It's just wild that we live in an environment where 90% of the people

who use search are just like dealing with this. And that's a pretty good snapshot of, I think, the impact that like AI has by and large had at like a societal level, right? Like, I mean, there are all these things that are promised and that are coming down the pike and that are the AI labs say will be good and will be, will change, you know, forever. But by and large, we have all these use cases where, yeah, well, like the internet is like, what, 20% shittier, we have to look at like, mid journey generated images, we have to scroll, scroll through Google overview, meta has weird chatbots, like it just it's like more, more slop of percentage, not like catastrophic yet, but just like shittier things to work through.

Some people have to use it at work and it's annoying. And then like some small subset of people are like, there's some coders that are like, I can like actually generate some basic code with it. And it maybe makes streamline some work if I really get the parameters down and I train it. So it's like, and then there's students who use it to like plagiarize yeah their their work so it's like five percent you know uh useful and the rest of us are just like wading through garbage i don't know yeah that's not about right i think that sounds about right and then of course you have the other whole piece of it where it's like you know like you're talking about 95 of its garbage but it has this huge like energy and like resource requirements to run all

of this garbage. Exactly. Yeah. It's like absolutely. I feel like it's been like a very revealing moment for the state of the internet more generally. Like, you know, during the crypto moment, we saw that NFTs were shitty and all this kind of stuff, but it seemed like in its own little world.

But with AI, like it has kind of broadened it seemed like in its own little world but with ai like it has kind of broadened out to everything else and helped to not only like reveal problems with a lot of these platforms in the way that the internet exists right now but also like made them all worse at the same time and it's like oh this is the internet that we're all living with here and a lot of little gains i feel like it's made where it's like, oh, like people are using chat GPT. It's introducing a host of new issues. Like there's this viral thread on blue sky where a teacher was talking about having to, and there's been a lot of cases like this too, where the teacher is like trying to talk to their student about why the thing chat GPT said was

wrong without sourcing. So like Google may give you some bad like results, but at least you can kind of connect it to the source material. At least it's like it's annotated. But there's this sort of this rising inclination that freaks me out as a tech journalist of people to sort of trust the results of some of these systems or at least deem them good enough. And we're already in this insane environment where, you know, if you've spent any time on a platform like X, where it's just like, even without AI, it's just this cesspool of like semi information kind of cascading around you. I think, yeah, that in shitification that like, you know, more concerted push to like, drive more of this stuff online is only is only going to ramp up. But so yeah, I think 2024 was kind of a banner year for seeing the rise of AI slop, like

the fact that Silicon Valley is really only continuing to sort of double down on this technology because it's really, it's like it's AI and crypto. They're both different sometimes, but occasionally converging ideological strains, I think, in the people that pursue them and that advocate for them. But that's kind of what Silicon Valley has on the table right now, right? Like that's what it's got on the platter is it's got crypto, the financial speculation casino that's going to take you to new heights with $100,000 Bitcoin. And then it has AI that's almost like just nebulous and spraying off in every direction with this like core promise of like replacing labor

that can be deployed however the industry sees fit and not a lot in between. And meanwhile, NVIDIA is just like racking up the sales, like, you know, selling the hardware no matter what happens. Well, speaking of, you know, crypto and GPUs and all that stuff, I'm going to pivot to Molly because she is our crypto expert. And I'm wondering if your

kind of top story that you're watching this year is related to crypto or if it has been about something else. It is about crypto. I know that's a very big surprise. What? Who could have expected this? Yeah, I think my top story this year was really just the explosion of political spending from the cryptocurrency industry, which I think was a useful exemplar of just tech in general as well. There was so much tech activity in the political conversation in the United States this year that was definitely different from previous years.

You know, the tech industry has always been very political and very closely connected with the administration in power, whichever one it may be. But I think this year we saw a lot more, you know, mask off embracing of very right-wing political ideologies and candidates in ways that we sort of hadn't in the past. There's been this definitely like reactionary shift in the tech world that certainly predates this year, but, you know, seeing Silicon Valley come out so strongly behind

Donald Trump and his various policies, I think was pretty unique. And then seeing the crypto industry really following a pretty concentrated playbook to not only spend huge amounts of money on political campaigns in ways that the industry really never had before, but also this sort of narrative PR campaign that went with it was very new. It seemed like the crypto industry sort of saw what Sam Bankman Freed was doing in 2022 before everything went south for him and said, you know what, we should really try that and sort of took on similar strategies around, you know, befriending various Congress people, pushing very specific policies, spending enormous amounts of money publicly and privately to try to sort of buy

the policies that they wanted. And the degree of success, I think, was a little bit alarming as well and certainly will be something I'm going to be watching going forward, certainly next year, but I think also very much in the primaries in 2026, which they've already been talking about, you know, sort of increasing the concentration of pro-crypto Congress people even further to try to pursue their various agendas. Yeah, well, it's like when you have an administration that's so pro-crypto, I guess, like, why not make sure that you have this, this Congress that is going to do what you want it to do, because you're not going to face this pushback that you might have otherwise faced from the executive, from the presidential level. I feel like that, that is an issue too,

that was not on a lot of people's radars. Like, you know, I'm sure people like you were, were following this, were aware of what was going on, but I feel like for a lot of people's radars. Like, you know, I'm sure people like you were following this were aware of what was going on. But I feel like for a lot of kind of general watchers of the tech industry, you know, who just followed the news and things like that, it was like, okay, crypto is this thing that like kind of died in 2022. Sandbank and Freed went to prison. And yes, okay, there's still people trading coins and Bitcoin is still a thing and stuff. But like, it's not this major force in the way that it was in those couple of years after the pandemic started. And then all of a sudden it was like, whoa, these guys are spending big and actually having some success.

Yeah, I think it really came out of nowhere for a lot of people who had sort of decided that crypto was over and everyone's focused on AI now and we don't have to really think about that anymore. And then sort of behind the scenes, there was all of this political work happening, which, you know, certainly became very public partway through last year, or this past year. I think we all forgot, those of us, unlike you, who are documenting and well aware of how much money was moving around. But I think we kind of just forgot, like, how much money these guys made, how much money, right? Like, they were able to throw tens of millions of dollars into these races because the industry just like, even though it had this crash moment, there were still like these

guys, the guys who succeeded nonetheless in the biggest exchanges, like there's still gargantuan amounts of capital in there, right? Right. Yeah. I think people sometimes don't realize that, you know, when crypto crashes, it's the retail investors who get screwed. But the big guys are fine. You know, they're doing just fine. Our country's doing great. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there's no problem there. And, you know, a lot of these guys like the Winklevosses bought Bitcoin so early that like even the crash of 2022 was still, you know, they were still majorly up from what they had originally bought in at. And so they have nothing but money. And the return on investment for their political spending could be very good because they put in, what, $200 million to this

election. But if that wipes out their court cases and lawsuits and it opens up, you know, various new avenues for them to offer products that were previously not allowed by regulators, like they've made that money back. And then some I mean, even just the price of Bitcoin going up as much as it did because of the Trump election basically paid him back. So, you know, there's really no reason for them not to continue this campaign or even ramp it up even further. Yeah, it's such an important story. And as you're saying, right, so many of these people in tech who put money into the Trump campaign and, you know, there are questions as to like, is this going to pay off? Are they going to ruin their reputation? It's like not only did they make their money back many times over because of how much stock prices and crypto prices and stuff soared, but like now they kind of own the American government and look to come out of it.

So yeah. Elon Musk's net worth is huge, even compared to its previously huge amount. And now he has the ability to really influence, you know, again, regulatory actions against his companies, the ability for his company to get government contracts. You know, it's all about enriching these people who have made themselves very close

to the political administration, which is a grim prospect, I think, for the next couple of years. Yeah, absolutely grim. You know, and obviously, I'm watching Elon Musk very closely. Now, Eric, you've been pretty quiet over there. I will say, you know, in about 20 minutes, just over 20 minutes, we'll be announcing the winners or the winner rather of our worst person in tech contest. So if you have not voted yet and you want to vote, the links are over on our social media pages, of course, if you're watching live. But Eric, what is your top tech story of the year? What have you been watching? What's really stood out to you?

Well, first of all, I think I should apologize for being so quiet. I was just transfixed with the meta narrative of my girlfriend getting ready for a holiday party behind me. I was just trying not to turn my mic on at the wrong time and hear like something fall over or anything. But my tech story that I think might have been the biggest of the year, it's might be a little bit of recency bias. And it's, it's also very much related to what Molly was talking about. But it is the further push together of capital and state power that we've seen with Elon Musk and David Sachs getting official positions in the U.S. government, which is terrifying for me as a human being who lives on this planet. I think you and Brian referred to Elon after the election as the first buddy in uh in one of those episodes and i thought it was very charming on our term to be clear yeah yeah i also picked it up from you guys and that's how i think of it i'm wondering where i stand if you said it

initially like i'm fixated on that because it is like it is a silly position. This whole Doge thing is absurd, but it's absurd in this terrible way where he's going to be doing his efficiency song and dance. And he's going to be unplugging printers and selling them at pawn shops and just unscrewing light bulbs and firing people wholesale. It's going to be very Grinch-like. He's going to be slithering around, shoving stuff up chimneys, I love the image of this. Yeah. Yeah, I've been thinking about that. I've been cooking this for a bit. But it is like the Grinch last night or something. I may have watched the Grinch recently. And that might have influenced my decision for the biggest news story of the year. But like, I really do think that this is a bad thing for everyone, not just people living in the U.S.

You mentioned this earlier. Things happen a little bit slower in Canada. Next year, it looks like we might have an election. And the person who is on pace to win the election in a landslide is a very, very conservative person by the name of Pierre Polyev. And I am personally not looking forward to seeing the CEO of Shopify running our national housing strategy or something. I was gearing up to ask you if you thought he was it.

Toby Lutke, the CEO of Shopify, was going to end up like as our own head of government efficiency. Your own first buddy. Yeah, exactly. Also not originally from the country and just came over and is now going to wreck our politics as well. But yeah, it's a mess.

Absolutely. It's not, you know, Toby Luke. It'll be someone like Kevin O'Leary. Oh my. People that we haven't had to think about for a while. Yeah. I remember when I used to have to ask Molly about like what he was up to. Kevin O'Leary it was never good because see we were used to him right because he was originally our like

arch capitalist evil piece of shit when he hosted the Canadian or co-hosted the Canadian equivalent of Shark Tank which is called Dragon's Den but then he made the move to the U.S. and it was like oh my god not only is he an export not only does he represent us and show how like this terrible export for the country, but like, man, now he's doing terrible things everywhere. What have we done to the world? It makes me feel better. I did kind of forget he was Canadian. Okay, good. Yeah.

I know he became awful enough that we can just take him as an American. Yeah. Sort of like Elon. A lot of people sort of forget that he's not american but i i do think your point is well taken though the fact that this is creating like a little template the first buddy dumb with sort of inspired by like the vegas yeah sort of you know like silicon valley tenets of efficiency and leanness or whatever whatever whatever like benefits them to sort of apply to their goals, which is to sort of clean house. And, you know, I mean, it's really is like Doge is

inherently kind of an authoritarian project, right? Like the whole Trump is clear in what he, what he hopes to do. This is, it's just sort of of like there's a Venn diagram with the Project 2025 stuff and it's it's it's aims. And, you know, it's actually not you could do worse than thinking about like the Project 2025 cohort and then the new Silicon Valley tech right as and then like sort of like these two inclinations are kind of meeting in the middle as we see more of Andreessen around the White House, David Sachs, the VC guy who's now going to be and Musk buddy. So like, it's Trump, then Musk, then David Sachs. They're all the little like Russian dolls, little Silicon Valley buddies. But you do have the clear connections,

where, yes, the Heritage Foundation is like really pushing the Project 2025, but the Heritage Foundation is also working with a lot of the tech right. And there was this conference in San Francisco a few months ago that where, you know, the Heritage Foundation like helped run it or something and like was a big part of it. And you had like these tech people on stage with like Heritage Foundation people talking about,

you know, kind of all of these wild things. You know, I can't remember all the exact details, but this is a clear connection that exists here between Silicon Valley and between like, not just like the right wing in American politics, but like the extreme right that is ascendant. Yeah. I was going to say the Venn diagram there

that you mentioned between Project 2025 and like the tech right. Like, I guess technically it's still a Venn diagram if they're not literally perfect. Literally covering each other. Yeah, like it is pretty close. Well, you can do like a video where they've just, over the last 10 years, they've just been like drifting like this until they complete an entire eclipse.

Because like it is on both sides, right? Like the tech ride in Silicon Valley used to be at least less noisy. And it used to be more like the people who would be loud, like David Sachs, were fewer and further between. It has grown in at least its public facing. Now we have guys like Sean McGuire, we have, you know, the whole Pirate Wires kind of crew. And, you know, but David Sachs and Peter Thiel have been where they've been forever. And Musk has sort of floated around in there. And then on the other side, yeah, the Project 2025, as many people have pointed out, like the Heritage Foundation and these conservative think tankers have been trying to like push some version of this

like platform for, you know, like 10 years or so. And they haven't had a document that looks like it. It's not called 2025. It's called whatever, you know, the year that their preferred candidate would take power. But then we can also see an increasing number of the figures who would like institute or populate, you know, the policies on those documents, sort of be folks who are amenable, like Vance, who kind of comes from the VC world. So yeah, that's your points well taken, Molly. It's like, at this point, it's just going to be kind of one in the same, pretty soon. Yeah. Well, I think those are really good stories that give us a good picture of some of the key things that have been happening this year. I would say on my end, you know, I don't think, you know, Trump is kind of related to all the things that you've all been kind of talking

about, right? But I would say for me, I'll take a little bit of a different tact maybe, because a lot of my work, you know, in the past has been about transportation. And so this year I have been following a lot, what has been going on in that world, you know, is, which is like related to what is going on in tech, if not directly, you know, kind of overlapped with it. Where we have seen continued difficulties for Tesla in particular, there was this story the other day that it is offering like these kind of crazy incentives for people to buy Teslas because they're worried that they're going to report a sales decline year over year for this year. And of course, you know, that's linked to these other stories about Tesla, you know, it's kind of brand, how people think of the brand really declining because of what

Elon Musk has been up to lately. And I don't think you're getting a lot of mega republicans buying electric cars um but also you know this broader story of um the the bigger ev market and how much chinese companies are really emerging to create these like really good low-cost electric cars how that's not really reaching north america so far but it's really like eating the lunch of western automakers, including Tesla in the Chinese market and in other markets around the world. And the thing I would add to that with those like difficulties in the EV market in North America and that bigger story of like, you know, Chinese EV companies becoming major competitors in the way that Japanese and Korean ones did in like the eighties and nineties is also the return of like the hype around self-driving, which to me is related

to what Brian was talking about with the kind of AI hype more generally, where yes, I think the self-driving technology has gotten a bit better, but I also don't think that that means robo taxis are going to be everywhere in the next few years, but that is what like Waymo and Tesla want us to believe. And so that is one thing that like, I have been watching a lot just because of my personal interest in transportation and cities. But yeah, I found that to be a really interesting story this year. We talk about it occasionally in the show, and we'll probably talk about it a bit more in the new year. But yeah, it's a it's an interesting one in my end. Haven't the stock prices gone flying? Haven't they got hasn't Tesla? Because it's, you know, it's a mean it's a mean

as i say tesla's stock price and the company performance or its products performance are like completely yeah yeah again like that's the reverse venn diagram it's going in the other way where like yeah it's just it's like a completely it's a fictional story which is wild it just kind of gives the game away it's like they'll they'll make a product announcement and the stock will like go down and then elon musk will like say some bullshit and the stock will soar and right like it's completely disconnected from reality it's yeah and that's and that's where we are now right it doesn't matter elon musk has the ear of the president of the united states right it doesn't matter if he's selling

cars or not. He's going to find a way to make money. And he will. Like what Molly was saying, you can get some contracts for Starlink. Hell, he can get government contracts for Tesla cars in some capacity. There are also some smaller stories of the year that I wanted to bring up to get your quick thoughts on as we get closer to unveiling the results of the Worst Person in Tech contest. First up, early this year,

people might've forgot because of everything else that happened, but Apple released a new product called the Vision Pro headset that was supposed to transform how we use computing. That was a weird couple of weeks. Turned out not to work that way. If you would ask me what year Apple released that,

I would not have said. I was like, that was this year? This is the point of this conversation to remind you. And, you know, so the latest news is basically that Apple has sold fewer than half a million units of the Vision Pro globally. You know, it has a very high return rate for a product because a lot of customers bring it back. And even then, Apple has found the customers that keep it don't use it nearly as much as they expected. So yeah, good job, Apple, with your headset. As someone who doesn't follow Apple products terribly closely,

has the price tag on that changed? Or have they been standing fast with that really? Yeah, there's rumors that a cheaper one is coming like in the next two years or something. But then occasionally there'll be like a story where it's like oh they actually don't know what they're doing with that yeah so they were gonna make like a more expensive one too like an even more but i honestly i think the cool demand and everything has is really gonna gonna sort of tank this thing if i if i had to guess at this point it just it just didn't sell nearly enough i used one when they were selling them at first,

at least I bet you still can. You can schedule a demo and go sit down and try it out. And if it wasn't for, again, like I feel like so many technologies these days, like if it wasn't being built by like a giant monopoly that has all of these cascading sets of, you know, built-in incentives, then like this is like,

it wasn't, there were interesting things about this technology. There were like some eerie things about the technology. I like it was kind of fun to try it out. The thing that like really made my skin crawl the most was that there was a feature where you plug in, if you shoot your videos in a certain setting on like the latest iPhone, then it can do enough motion capture that it can like give you a 3d rendering like of your own memory. And then you can go into it and sort of like walk around. And I obviously didn't have any videos that I could try out on the thing. But even the demos that it had of other people's it was like a birthday party or something. You can like walk around the table.

And it was just like very it was it was it was one of those sort of dystopian science fiction realizing itself sort of moments i just remember the video you know the the kind of demo that they released or the promotional clip or whatever where you had like the dad alone and you know everything is dark in the the apartment and he has has his vision pro headset on looking at like a video of his daughter's birthday party or something like that and it's like oh yeah divorce that energy like just looking at the vision pro recording so bleak i always wonder when there are ads like that i'm like did nobody watch this before they released it and say like oh this doesn't feel good i feel like that speaking of looking back at the year i feel like there was a number

of those ads over the course of the year where people were like what member remember what i think it was crushing yes oh yeah it's like yeah here's our new ipad like we're gonna crush everything that you love about being a person creative industry yeah yeah oh you like music you like rock and roll you like no we're gonna smash it all and grind it into gruel and pump it out into a gray mush that you can feed on. I love it. I love it. Another big story on mine, if we're thinking about smaller stories, is obviously the rebrand of Mark Zuckerberg and how he has gone from like a robot with his Caesaresar cut hairstyle to an mma guy with his gold chains and how much the media has like eaten it up i can't believe it cannot believe it one thing it's so dumb like it's just like it says like zuck like if you walk down the street with your own

name in like gothic font people would say this guy's an asshole. Yeah, but he doesn't have to walk down the street. It's a new zuck in town. This guy's got muscles and a shirt with his name on it. I don't know. I think he looks pretty cool. Yeah. Eric is fired. Yeah. I think it is, though, like another example of like,

they just haven't tested these things on like normal people. There are just so many people who are like so steeped in the Zuckerberg verse that are like, you're going to be cool if you put a chain on and sing a song with T-Pain, I guess. Yeah, I forgot about that one too. I'm glad you're doing this. Like literally someone out there was like, you're going to do a comeback song and it's going to be with, and then they just like pulled a name out of the hat and it was T-Pain. Like a wheel of fortune wheel that was just like, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, like, yeah. Landed on T-Pain.

Yeah. I mean, in Zuck's case, to be fair, like he was like this sallow face, like red eyed, kind of like every time you saw him, he looked like a golem had been let out of it. So I think the media was just like, okay, good. He's at least going to be this dork poser guy. He's a human at least. He's got traces of visible sunlight on his face.

We can speak to him. He's got the goggle eyes where you can see he's been in a tanning bed. He still looks very uncanny to me. I know, it really does. The American flag, so he's so cool now. You know, we can all agree that his look is fantastic and his chemistry with T-Pain was undeniable.

It's like he, then he talks again and you're like, oh right, no, it's that guy. Yeah, it's like somebody downloaded his old, you know into his into this new manufactured body and he's still just like ai is the future yeah so is the metaverse yeah yeah they'll say the metaphor yeah absolutely i think the final story you know before we announce the winner of the worst person in tech you know voting closes in about one minute i would say for me is you know the tikt announced the winner of the worst person in tech, you know, voting closes in about one minute, I would say for me is, you know, the TikTok ban, right? Or the proposed TikTok ban that is likely going to happen that has not happened yet in the United States. And this

kind of Western obsession with TikTok as an app, and how, you know, for me, obviously, it really represents this like shift where, you know, the United States always used to say, you can't restrict technology, you can't restrict access to digital platforms. That's where, you know, the United States always used to say you can't restrict technology. You can't restrict access to digital platforms. That's like, you know, authoritarianism. That's like against the rights of your citizens or whatever. But now that the United States and its tech companies are facing this real competition, all of a sudden that has flipped. And all of a sudden we can ban Huawei devices and we need to ban TikTok and like all this kind of stuff. There's been this real kind of shift in tech policy as the geopolitics change. And I think that, you know, as someone who's

outside the United States in particular, I think is very revealing and kicks off a lot of conversations and it's been something I've been thinking a lot about this year. But yeah, I think that's another kind of big subject that we're going to continue to see play out in the years to come, especially under a Trump administration where a lot of these policies kicked off. Yeah, I mean, I think it is just sort of another useful example about how a lot of that ideology is just sort of like, convenient. And then when they actually want to do something that is contrary to the ideology, it sort of goes out the window, you know, it's like, it reminds me a lot of Elon Musk, you know, nattering on about free speech on Twitter, and then like goes out the window. You know, it's like, it reminds me a lot of Elon Musk,

you know, nattering on about free speech on Twitter and then like banning the word cisgender, you know, or just like all of these cases where, you know, like the crypto industry, for example, talking about how they are so anti-establishment, anti-government, and then they're like, come on in FBI, CIA, come inspect our blockchain and we can crack down

on all this illicit activity that crypto is supposedly supposed to be good for. You know, it just sort of like shows how shallow a lot of that ideology is when something threatens the bottom line or even just the sort of personal goals of the person who is making decisions. Yeah, it's very transactional and like very and i think you're absolutely right you know what he personifies this better than elon musk right just like somebody should just do just like a side by side of like where we started and where we are now with like so many like this yeah twitter the free speech app all of his like musings about politics and like it just it just all came crashing down as soon as he decided he was going to go all in for Donald Trump and just sort of completely remake this place.

Or Mark Andreessen recently talking about how you need to ban job owning because you don't want political like unelected political figures influencing policy. And then he himself is supposedly going to be part of this whole Doge initiative. And it's like, no self-awareness. I have not heard any of this because I just exist in my echo chamber on blue sky. So I don't get to experience anything outside of that space. Yeah, no, I go back onto Twitter just to like, it's, I don't know, Molly, I think you've still spent a little bit of time there too, but I'm on Twitter as well. I'm just this narrative that blue skies is big echo chamber, right? Like, yeah, it is really remarkable, though, like how much the Twitter experience has degraded. Oh, yeah.

Like, I mean, it was a significant change early into the musk acquisition but i feel like around and shortly after the election maybe there were just so many people who are like all right that's it i'm out now because it has been so bad lately it's so bad it's just like waiting through it's like equal parts like 4chan and like taboola where people are just like making these long chains of clickbait content to get over reply so much of that and then like elon musk just like larding himself right at the top of every feed and anybody that he interacts with so you have this like constant weird thirsty right wing presence and then like you have like people like on this like thin strip actually trying to communicate each other like threading the needle through all of this.

And getting like zero engagement. And getting like four like, yeah. I think that's been a great kind of discussion of what happened in tech this year. But we need to talk about the personalities as well. And so every year on Tech Won't Save Us, we run the worst person in tech contest. And so two years ago, it came down to Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. And Peter Thiel beat Elon Musk very narrowly by like 0.1% or whatever, or 0.2%, something like that. Last year, it came down to Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

And of course, Elon Musk wiped the floor with our Amazon oligarch. Now this year, you know, we have had another head to head where we have put 32 of the worst people in the tech industry, you know, to fight against one another to see who is going to take the tech won't save us crown of worst person in tech for 2024. So voting has now closed. I have shut down the voting on the polls. So I'll reveal the winner in just a minute. But first, I want to ask our panel of guests here to see who is their worst person in tech. Who would they pick for 2024? Molly, who would you pick for 2024? I mean, I hate to be uncreative, but Elon Musk keeps just like besting himself. You know, it's like the Elon Musk that everyone voted for two years

ago is like not even close to today's elon musk so i think i have to go with him unfortunately brian yeah i mean i would love to have like a compelling argument that i felt like that had any rigor to it at all that there was an alternative figure but like when you're combining like the nature of his political project now elon musk's political project which is just which is like really malevolent and nasty now like he really has it out for trans people he's like banging on against uh homeless people unhoused people and and migrants and just like really just, you know, stoking outright hatred and sort of just like helping to actively open the possibility for more mass deportation, more punitive measures, you know, just moving that Overton window like himself on his platform with millions and millions

of people, even if that's all he was doing, besides wading into the actual politics, besides raising money for Trump, besides promising to fire millions of government workers who keep our government functioning. And this lives in this liminal space between morbid fantasy and outright possibility. But I don't think we can undercount it. If he even accomplishes a sliver of what he wants to, or if Trump thinks it's a good idea, then it'll be a nightmare. And it will be like the part of an ideological project

where you can install loyalists instead of people who actually help the government function, which then starts this process where I was already mad at the government for being non-responsive. Now it's even more non-responsive. And then it does just kind of sow the seeds for further and further discontent. So yeah, Elon Musk being at the heart of this project, being outright nasty. If there is a compelling case for somebody else, I would love to hear it. I'm open to it. I think someone like Sam Altman, who's kind of like slimy and has his own sort of project, it's just not, it's self-aggrandizing and self-enriching, but it doesn't have the political contours or the sheer social degradation

going on that Musk's projects do. I was hoping it was going to come down to Musk and Altman this time, but the voters chose differently. Eric, do you have a strong argument to make for someone other than Elon Musk to get the crown? I really just want to put someone out there who's completely obscure, but I don't think I should do that. Honestly, I think for everything that Molly and Brian

said, I think I have to go with the big dog, right? Like it's Elon Musk. It's the first buddy. The big doge. My mistake. I apologize. You know, like he's worth like what? Like $400 billion now. He's still pushing self-driving cars, which will put people into walls.

He's still ruining Twitter. He's still talking about sending people to Mars where the soil is toxic and no one can breathe. He's still the person that disowned his daughter. He's still the person like pushing his satellite internet that he shuts off on a whim whenever he feels like it. And now he has an official position in the u.s government and so like it's not only that he has had such an incredible year of being like a shitty guy but he's built on just a huge portfolio of shittiness it's like this mountain of shit um like i don't know is this a swearing stream i apologize i feel like i'm saying shit a

lot um you'll just have to cut it all out later. I'll just invoice another hour. It's brutal. I think Musk has had a year that tops his other shitty years. I worry about what that means for the rest of us, I guess. Absolutely. No, very good point. And for future years, because if he's like compounding at this rate, like what are we going to be talking about next year? Oh my God. Don't even want to think about it, but we will talk about that shortly. But this year, you know, I talked about

the past two years. This year, the voters narrowed down. Who was going to end up at the finals? Of course, I was surprised by some of the decisions that the voters ultimately made at the end of the day. For example, Marc Andreessen was knocked out in the first round in a competition with JD Vance, which I did not expect, to be honest. You know, the big egghead, I thought he was going to go further this time around. Same when Alex Karp of Palantir knocked out Larry Ellison in the second round. You know, I thought our Oracle big dog was going to go a bit further than that. And I was surprised so many people knew

who Alex Karp was to vote for him over Larry Ellison. I'm not surprised about that one because, well, I mean, I feel like, again, I feel like we should have been yelling a little bit more about what Ellison was up to. I feel like it's a little bit less well-known that- I was going to say, people still broadly have no idea what Oracle does.

Yeah, that's right. But specifically this one story that just didn't really make ripples because I think he's just not as compelling as a shithead or a bad guy as some of these other guys as the new Palantir cohort. But yeah, he's building this software,

whether or not it works, that's supposed to use AI to identify loyalists, people who will be loyal to Trump in the forthcoming campaign, and then presumably to use to like purge the other people who are not. So like Oracle is just like, yeah, I'll build that for you. Like, sure. Like, I'll build your dossier compiling sort of fascist coded software.

Like, no problem. Like, they just kind of like volunteered to do it. So yeah. Well, you know, well, I was going to say got to keep them happy, but honestly, like Palantir and like the people who run it

are like totally on board with all this stuff. And as you were talking about that, like identifying these people, you know, who'd be like the traitors or whatever. I was thinking about the whole Balaji Srinivasan and like,

you know, the greys and all that. We have an episode on it with Gil Duran, if you want to go back into the archives from earlier this year. But yeah, just these wild world views and the kind of world that these people want to build. It's something else. Then in the third round, I was surprised that David Sachs got knocked out by JD Vance. JD Vance is really kind of running through it. They're knocking out a lot of the big dogs. Same when Jeff Bezos knocked out Sam Altman. I know Bezos is like chief evil, but I did think that because of AI, Sam Altman might get a little bit further. So then we got to our final four,

right? We got down to Elon Musk versus JD Vance and Peter Thiel versus Jeff Bezos. No surprise, at least to me, that with that kind of a matchup with those final four, that we came down to Elon Musk versus Peter Thiel once again, a redo of the match two years ago, where Peter Thiel very narrowly took the title from Elon Musk and became the worst person in tech, our first worst person in tech of 2022. Then Elon Musk won last year to reclaim that title because Peter Thiel did not make it into that final two. And so now we come back to this rivalry from two years ago, this rivalry that goes back much further than that to the PayPal days and the Confinity days, if people remember the earlier name of that company. And of course, the original X,

which they merged together to become, you know, and so much evil has come out of that experience of PayPal and the people who got rich during that experience that we're dealing with today, the PayPal mafia, of course. And so we come down to Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, these two billionaires, these two kind of symbols of the evil and the rot in the tech industry. So who is going to take the crown? You know, I think that our panelists, my guests here have made it pretty clear. And I think the voters have made it clear as well. Elon Musk won at 71.3% to Peter Thiel's 28.7%. So Elon Musk has finally beaten Peter Thiel after losing to him two years ago. And he keeps the crown for a second year in a row, which is

not surprising, given everything that the guests here said that Molly, Brian and Eric have said about what Elon Musk has been up to this year. So certainly not a surprise. I struggle to say congratulations, Elon Musk, on taking the title again. But this is the world we live in. And he is, you know, chief evil, using his $400 billion to make the world a much worse place. I will say what I was struggling to think of someone who could challenge Elon Musk for the title. Peter Thiel came to mind mostly just because he has supported so many other people who are in the running.

You know, like you can tell. Like a staging ground. Yeah, exactly. Like he's been the launchpad for so many of these terrible people that even if his individual personal actions may sprung forth yeah yeah to that end you could make an argument for sam altman too because he's enabling this technology that is going to be that could displace a lot i know uh i know for like a lot of like artists and writers like sam altman is enemy number one because he's just like done more to promulgate this labor displacing art thieving sort of uh technology so i i'm sure that that kind of

case could be made as well but like but also peter teal was a mentor to sam altman so you could kind of just like funnel it all back down to peter teal again funnel it all back down yeah at all yeah he is a very and god this do you see this? He was on like Piers Morgan. Yes. He's just like sweating. Why was he so wet? He's always so sweaty. Always being wet. Damn.

Yeah, I joked on Twitter that he looked like one of the guys who opened up the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Just like. He had those like veins sticking out of his forehead. He looks like he's like two seconds away from having a stroke i know our tech villains like they just are really doing their best to look the part aren't they yeah and i feel like every time you hear peter teal speak it's like how is this the guy who is like puppeting so much that is going on in the valley so much of this evil that like emerges from him because musk is very there, right? Musk is very much like he wears it on his sleeve. We know what he's

up to. He can't stop tweeting. Like as much as people tell him, please like stop, sir, stop doing this. He can't, he can't stop himself. But Peter Thiel, yes, he does his occasional interviews and stuff, but he operates so much in the background. Right. And you know, as you're all saying, there's so much like evil and so much harm that like emerges from all of these things that he has like been working away at, but it's not always as visible, you know, to the public and to people not paying as much attention

or, you know, sometimes even people who are paying a lot of attention, you know, don't necessarily see all of it. So I'm not surprised Elon Musk has won, but I think the fact that these two have appeared together for a second time in three years is a good indication of some of the most evil and, and harmful people in Silicon Valley. And sadly, I don't think that is going to end into 2025. And so that is where I kind of wanted to end off our live stream, you

know, as we have about 15 minutes left, is to get into what you all will be looking for in the next year to come, right? As we head into 2025, what are kind of the big things in tech that you will be watching that you might expect to happen? You know, just a few things. We don't need to go too deep. Who wants to go first? Eric, I haven't put you on the spot and made you go first yet. Maybe we start with you. Well, it's okay. I have notes. Okay, good. I'm a professional, Paris. So one of the things that I'm personally looking forward to following in 2025 is Google

and the way it's going to be handling the Online News Act. So they have promised Canadian journalists $100 million as part of sort of the fallout of Bill C-18. I don't know if there's a lot of Canadians listening right now. So I'll go through that super quickly. But Bill C-18 was an online news act as sort of a way that the government tried to propose to have tech companies pay back into news as our funding model has been absolutely obliterated by tech companies. Facebook meta, I guess, said no. They took their ball and they went home. They banned all Canadian news products from their platforms, which has been devastating for independent news, seeing a lot of places slow down on their coverage or close entirely.

That's bad. I work in that industry. I need places to put stories. But Google has reached an agreement with the Canadian government to give $100 million to news organizations. I think the group that is supposed to be handling that is called the Canadian Journalism Collective. This is supposed to happen sometime next year. I am not going to count that money until the check clears because things are happening next year. We're up for an election. The person who is in power is probably not going to win that election. I don't know what that's going to mean for that money. I also like I'm cynical enough to really wonder like what happens if Google says no, you know, like what happens if they just

they say it's in the mail. Right. So I think there's a lot of things that are happening with this whole Online News Act and there's a lot of moving parts and I'm terrified because I would like this industry to continue, but yeah, I guess we'll see what happens. Yeah, that's a good one, I think. And obviously something I'll be watching too. And the Online News Act kind of picks up

on what Australia did before. It was interesting to see just the other day that Australia is introducing a news tax now because the companies after making deals with news publishers are kind of reneging on all that. And Australia is saying, well, if you're not going to work with this model we put in before, we're just going to tax all these large platforms and give some money to the news industry anyway, which is maybe what they should have done initially. But I'll be watching to see how that plays out too. And to see if Canada is going to follow that model in a few years as well.

Brian, what will you be watching in 2025? Yeah, well, just to comment really quick on what Eric, we tried that in California where I live to do a similar bill as well as the Canada and Australia bill. And we couldn't even get it passed in the first place. It was passed by the legislature. It was bipartisan.

It had bipartisan support and, but a threat of veto from our Silicon Valley adjacent governor, Gavin Newsom sort of killed the bill. And we wound up with this weird AI incubator that was going to like give like grants to local newsrooms. So it was like the opposite of what it was supposed to be. Yeah. Well, I counted it can't become the 51st state. It would be terrible for us. Yeah. That was just one of those days this year where I'm glad you brought it up because that was another story that I was just like, wait, what is happening? Like, what did we all like woke up? I have friends who were, you know, advocating for that bill in our state legislature and they were just like, oh my my god it's so much worse than you

could ever imagine and it was 2024 so much worse than you could ever imagine yeah it's just like each year just gets so much better you know yeah so what are you watching for brian yeah next year of course i'm gonna keep watching ai i think it's gonna be a really interesting year is that what you mean yeah i'm gonna just be watching my ai i don't know if you said there's a 404 media story that was pretty good jason kebler wrote about how like tcl the biggest tv manufacturer is getting into the ai generated movie business so that you can have something to watch on it's like tcl plus streaming platform that comes free with the tvs and it's like just like motivated by what you've like looked at in terms of ads. So it's like they want to build this thing where it's just like serving you ads and then creating content based on the ads. And like you're watching it for some

reason. It's all very funny. But like, yeah, it's a very perfect AI story. Go read that one on 404 if you have time. But yeah, so like the economics are really iffy for AI this coming year. I mean, it's AI discourse can like, go just like rabidly sort of pole to pole and people and say, well, it's going to be a bubble, it's going to burst, it's all bullshit, or it can be obviously very boosterish. But I think my caution around those cheering for it to burst would just be previous examples like Uber and the gig app boom where, you know, it didn't need to be profitable for a long time. AI needs more money. It's more resource intensive, more labor intensive, more. So it's more expensive, but there's so many sunk costs. Silicon Valley is so invested in this being the vision, I could see a way of like, at least

brute forcing it into various sort of mediums and platforms. And I still really worry about the labor question with AI, because I don't know that it's going to like, you know, wipe out millions of jobs right away, like a lot of like the more apocalyptic scenarios and doomsayers say, but it is already being squeezed into, you know, a lot of creative industries. It's already being used to compete with writers and artists and illustrators. It's already, there are so many AI, you know, content farms out there that are siphoning clicks away in this like already perverse sort of set of incentives that govern our digital media ecosystem. So it's already like doing some

level of damage. It's already cost some artists their jobs. It's already cost some writers their jobs. It's going to be disruptive. But next year is going to be really, really interesting. I argued like a year ago that 2023 was going to be the year that the AI industry had to figure out how it was going to make money. And it really hasn't done that. It still has the same basic set of ideas, selling API access so people can build their AI agents. You see this in headlines right now, like, oh, now AI is agentic or whatever. The agents are coming. They're always coming. They're just always coming. Like, yeah, AI is switching to the agent biz. and it's not clear anybody really wants these

things they do a lot of harms this raft of character ai stories which just some of the most horrifying ai stories where teens are getting sort of emotionally dependent on these things and then they're suggesting they do self-harm and it's like really horrifying stuff and then like yeah enterprise software it's also not clear how useful it is as enterprise software yet. It's like automating some tasks and that's being pushed in mass by big fortune 500 companies. Survey after survey says like, creates more work than, than I want to do. It's like, it's not efficient. It's a pain in the ass. And you get these like feedback from employees.

So I don't know, will they be able to keep jamming this down with this narrative that it's saving costs? Will they find a way to actually make it sort of save costs? You know, or will they, you know, squeeze enough money out of these power users? I don't know. If that doesn't all add up, then you have this incredibly capital intensive industry that could stagger, if not go fully belly up. I think you just turn the whole world into data centers to create the AGI overlords and then upload our brains to the computers. So we have like one pastoral plot of land in the middle where we're all just living in it.

And then it's just lined by data centers all around so that we can auto generate movies. We don't get that. Yeah, no, no, no. It's ruined. Yeah. I was just figuring that at least that it would be only populated by the tech elites who have been gotten rid of everybody else the bunkers yeah it's like like how jeff bezos used to say we'd all go live in those floating colonies and earth would be like a natural park that we just come and visit every now and then yeah but at least i get to type in what if Iron Man fought Batman make movie and it makes me like my custom generated.

I love it. I love it. Molly, what will you be watching through 2025? Well, I mean, unsurprisingly, I'll be watching the crypto industry pretty closely. I don't think that comes as a shock. I am really curious to see what will happen to the cryptocurrency industry without any scapegoats available. I think the crypto world has blamed a lot of its sort of failures to launch, the failure to build that like killer blockchain app that will convince everyone of its usefulness and why Bitcoin is $100,000. You know, the blame has really been placed on the regulators and that, oh, the SEC is, you know, it's launched this war on crypto. We're not allowed to do anything. If we were just allowed to do what we wanted, the utility of crypto would be so clear.

And I'm curious if now, if they get everything that they wanted in the United States, if they will be able to survive that. Because it seems like, you know, now it's sort of like put up or shut up at this point because they don't really have that excuse anymore, or at least I suspect they shortly won't. So that's going to be really interesting to me, I think. And then also, of course, just what happens when the sort of Wild West crypto world becomes enshrined in law and legitimized by the government buy-in by, you know, Elon Musk and Trump and everyone shilling crypto, what that looks like

in the next couple of years you know especially when the most recent retail boom in crypto was so recent that i don't know if people have really forgotten about it and like i feel like average everyday people still feel like crypto is kind of lame and that you know nfts are really kind of over and now the industry has to sort of grapple with trying to find more suckers to pull into the scheme when the reputational damage is pretty recent. So there's a lot of interesting developments, I think, coming in that world in the near term. Well, see, the last crash was like the early internet, you know, so now we're moving into the more mature phase where Web3 really properly arrives and becomes. Right.

Yeah. No, I think that's fascinating, Molly. And, you know, I feel like on my end, like all of us, I think we'll be watching the Trump administration, what happens there. You know, as Molly was talking about crypto, I was thinking, if the United States becomes this, this, this country that really embraces crypto, and that has very loose and very welcoming crypto policies, I wonder what that means for Canada, or for Europe, or for these other countries, and whether they get pushed to go in the same direction, or we have this very kind of, you know, divided kind of picture of what that might be. But

I would say on my end, I think the big thing that I will be watching is kind of related to what Brian was saying, but is the data center picture, right? Because these major tech companies, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google in particular, as the major cloud giants are building out massive hyperscale data centers, increasingly large hyperscale data centers, larger and larger numbers of data centers around the world that require a lot of energy, a lot of water, a lot of computation. And part of what the Data Vampire series was about is how the number of movements that are opposed to these things have been growing significantly. And of course, since I've made the series, I've heard from a lot of other groups that are preparing to launch campaigns against data centers and hyperscale data centers in particular. And so I

think that this is going to be an issue that only continues to increase in relevance into the coming year, especially if there's not a crash in the AI bubble or the AI hype or what have you, and the companies continue to push forward with this. So I think on my end, data centers is something that I'm going to be watching very closely to see what is going to happen there. But of course, I'll be watching a lot more too, because that is what I do. And it's the whole point of this show to keep you informed about all of it. So, you know, that is kind of like 2024 as a wrap for us.

You know, hopefully nothing too big happens in the next two weeks to make us all have to come back to another live stream and talk about it all again. I want to say a special thank you to my guests, to Molly White. Thanks so much for coming. Always great to talk to you. I really appreciate it. Brian Merchant, of course, pal, co-host of System Crash, our new

podcast. First buddy. Yeah, my first buddy. Yeah. I stepped up to fill that role. I think that's how it started. Paris reached out to me and says, Elon and Trump are getting pretty close and I've never had that. And I was like, that's so touching. Let's become buddies. Yeah, this is how it all came together. Yeah. But so we have a great podcast, System Crash, that you should go check out if you haven't already, you know, where we talk about these issues.

And, you know, we're kind of more focused about the issues of the week rather than the kind of the bigger conversations that we tend to have every week on Tech Won't Save Us and drilling down into things, even if they're not the most recent thing that happens. And then of course, big thanks to Eric Wickham, producer of the show, for coming on the live stream, for letting all the people see who he is, sharing some insights.

Thanks, Eric. Thank you for having me. I hope I didn't embarrass myself or you, you know? It's okay, you can embarrass him, but you can embarrass yourself. You have a good radio voice, I was going to say. I don't know if you practiced it. Brian is working on his radio voice, so I think he's been there.

My radio voice is a work in progress. I feel like it varies wildly from one end of the spectrum to another. Sometimes I realize I'm like, what's going on? No, this is how I talk now. I worked in radio for like a year it was a small market radio station i did newscasts three times a day and then every wednesday uh someone from head office would call and then tell me how bad i was and they'd be like why are you breathing in between those words i'm like i don't know if i don't breathe i die and so now i just talk like

this so it comes now and so now I say that to Eric. I send him a message after I hear an episode. I'm like, why am I breathing between those words? And he's like, dude. Brian, the radio voice is coming along great. You sound great on System Crash. The conversations on that show are fantastic. And the editing and production is also fantastic.

Great guests, too. I have great guests. Great guests. Yeah, so far. Yeah, really just it's knocking it out of the park. Totally. Home run. But yeah, it was great to have all you on this end of year wrap up. So thanks to all of you for appearing. But also thanks to the listeners.

You know, thanks so much to the Patreon supporters who make all this possible. I think it's been another really good year for tech won't save us i think we've helped to educate and inform and give people a critical opinion or you know critical perspectives on so many different issues in the tech industry so looking forward to you know even though for tech and in the tech industry it's going to be a terrible 2025 just like it's a terrible every year, it feels like. But at least on Tech Won't Save Us, I think we're going to be having a good year with tons of great conversations, you know, to dig into what is happening in this world of tech increasingly as tech becomes not just, to understand it all. So thanks so much for your support through 2024. And I'm excited to see what 2025 brings, despite so much being so shitty with the tech industry. Thanks so much, everybody.

And we'll see you in 2025. Goodbye. See you next year. See you, everyone. Bye. Thanks again. everyone.