The Vergecast - The new Xbox is not an Xbox

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

We're very bullish on the handheld future of gaming. But we're not bullish on the new ROG Xbox Ally. The Verge's Sean Hollister joins the show to explain why this Xbox-branded device barely feels like an Xbox, and why it's definitely not a threat to the Steam Deck, before he and David debate whether the future of Xbox is even in good hands. After that, The Verge's Hayden Field walks David through a couple of important recent studies, asking the same basic question: is AI making us dumb? Finally, Sean returns to answer a question from the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email [e-mail]!) about hybrid computers, which are an extremely 2012 idea and also maybe the future of computing. But probably not. Help us improve The Verge: Take our quick survey at theverge.com/survey. Further reading: Xbox Ally and Ally X review: this is not an Xbox Prongs rock MIT: Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task How chatbots — and their makers — are enabling AI psychosis Sam Altman says ChatGPT will stop talking about suicide with teens Some doctors got worse at detecting cancer after relying on AI Microsoft Research: The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed.We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of the Xbox button. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am doing a thing that I have to do like two or three times a year now, which is charge a bunch of iPads. If you're watching this on YouTube, you'll be able to see it. But there's a stack of tablets on a shelf behind me. And it's a bunch of different iPads. There's a remarkable tablet in there. There's a thing called the Daylight computer. And for some reason or another, a few times a year, I have to be.

use a bunch of them to test something. This time it's new iPads. There's a new iPad Pro. I have it. I've been reviewing it. And in order to test it, I have to get out every other iPad that Apple makes and test them all. So I've been doing things like pull a four-year-old iPad Pro out

and install iPadOS 26 on it. It's a delight. My life is just filled with software updates that make everything glassy and make me like them less. Tech journalism is a delight. What are you going to do? Anyway, we are not here to talk about iPads. We did that last week.

We'll do more of that later. We are here to do two things. First, we're going to talk about handheld consoles. And specifically, these new ones, the Xbox Ally and the Xbox Ally X, that are supposed to be the ones that point to the true future of handheld gaming. And maybe don't. Then we're going to talk about, well, frankly, whether AI is making us stupid. And then we have a question from the Vergecast hotline. Lots of fun stuff to get to you today.

But first, I have like 100 gigabytes of things downloading right now, and I have to go check and see what my data cap situation is. Wish me luck. This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together.

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What's up, y'all. I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for me. nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Do you ever wonder what's in your lotion?

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Sean Hollister's here. Hi, Sean. Hi. Sean, I feel really bad because every once in a while, I feel like I just drag you on this show to yell at you about the state of console gaming. And once again, we're here to do this. And I'm sorry to subject this to you once again.

I just love yelling and being yelled at about the state of console gaming, though. Let's do it. So, okay, so I want to, in this case, like, start pretty specific and then sort of, like, blow up to the size of the universe. And, and I think the place to start is with the devices you just reviewed last week, the Xbox Ally X and the Xbox Ally. Two, I would say, like, pretty hyped, pretty interesting handheld consoles. So I guess first, before, I mean, they look huge, but we'll talk about that in a second. Why were people excited about this?

What is sort of riding on these devices in a way that isn't on your average, like Lenovo, Legion Go console? This has been Microsoft's market to lose. It has an Xbox in your home, and that Xbox has been slowly drifting away. It hasn't sold quite the way they wanted to. In the meanwhile, the Steam Deck and the Nintendo Switch are the new hotness. You can take your games with you everywhere. You can play all of these games.

Not just all these PC games, but all of these PlayStation games that have been ported to PC anywhere you want on the go. Microsoft has all these PC makers lined up for something similar, something that could be that pickup and play handheld. But it hasn't unified them in any meaningful way because Windows is just a nightmare for handheld gaming. It requires these PC makers to do all these things, put all these things into their devices that have nothing to do with gaming, that distract from games. gaming, Microsoft's own, like, employees are trying to get you to do various kinds of upsells. They want you to buy Microsoft 365. They want you to put Office on your handheld. They want you to put copilot on your handheld.

It's all getting in the way. They just needed to take ownership of this thing and give us an operating system that ASUS and ASER and MSI can build something cool and useful around. So, hold on. But you raise an interesting point. Because I think there is an interesting gap that you just described there that I hadn't really thought of. Where on the one hand, if I'm Lenovo or Asus or somebody else, I have signed a series of agreements with Microsoft for what I'm going to do with Windows. And that includes things like all the horrifying stuff that Microsoft makes you do with Windows.

You know who doesn't have to abide by the licensing agreement you make with Windows is the Windows team and Microsoft. So it is like, is the difference between this one that this is by just by virtue of people, called Xbox. There was an assumption that, okay, Microsoft and the Xbox team and the Windows team were involved in this in a different way and thus could maybe, like, had a different set of levers to pull

to make this thing work? That's the excitement. Like, I cornered one of the architects of this initiative at CNS last year. And I got him to tell me that we're going to be bringing, Microsoft's going to be bringing the best of Xbox and

and Windows together. And we thought this was going to be years down the road. And maybe it unfortunately stills, but we thought it was going to be years down the road that there was going to be a PlayStation handheld and an Xbox handheld. The executives of both companies, both Sony and Microsoft, had come out and said, you know, we're going to do this whole thing, but it's going to take us a few years. And then here I am talking to this executive. He's like, well, we're going to fix some of this a lot sooner. He told me, we're just going to fix it in Windows. We're going to make Windows better. And here is an Xbox guy telling you, me, he's going to make Windows better. And this is all I've been asking for for several years as I've

watched this Steam deck kind of dominate this nascent space. Please fix it. So make it so that this handheld actually stays asleep when I put it to sleep. Make it so that I can press a button, start playing, press the button again, stop playing. And my game is there ready for me to pick it up when I come back. That's what I need. That's what I want. Maybe it's finally happening. And maybe not. We'll get to it right. Let's get to it now. So I think you've given it away a little bit, but the, the, the, the, the, the, the LDR of these things is they're, they're really not very good. Walk me through kind of the pros and cons of the Xbox Ally and the Xbox Ally X.

Yeah. So it's built on a great, both of them. There's two of them. One of them is $600. One of them is $1,000. They're the most expensive Xboxes ever made. But as PC gaming handhelds, they kind of come. from good components.

They come from a good base. It's based on the Rog Ally X, which is very similar looking, except that one of them has these big honk and prongs, these big grips, and the other one does not. You love prongs. You are on the record loving prongs.

Prongs rock. Prongs rock. That's my headline on a story on the verge is prongs rock. It makes this thing more comfortable to hold. It's still got a giant honk in 80-watt-hour battery in here. It's got a proven screen. the best screen in the world, but it's a VRR screen that makes games seem pretty smooth at 1080P, only 7 inches, but we can get past that. It's got maybe a slightly better chip in the

Z2 Extreme on this one, more memory. It's a good base for a handheld, and we liked the Rogg L.I.X with windows on it, with the exception that it had windows on it. So, you know, we're coming from somewhere good. Meanwhile, the other one, the white one, the $600 model, has a chip, which is effectively the same, the same chip effectively as the one in the Steam deck, which has been lauded for good efficiency. It's a great one that you know, you're not playing all the latest games on at high resolution,

but if you're playing, you know, more lightweight games, you can take that chip and you can get many hours of battery life on it. They stick some more battery life on here. But the first sign we get that maybe something a little weird is going on here is they release a promo video. Microsoft and Asu's released this promo video where they are

kind of promising the world from these two new handhelds. They make them sound like the best thing since sliced bread, that they are going to be your Xbox console experience finally anywhere you want to take it with you.

We're working in close partnership with a Zeus on a brand new handheld called the Xbox Ally and the Xbox Ally X. The best game library on the go basically changed just everything. The whole this is an Xbox

campaign where they're like oh yeah, Xbox is your phone, Xbox is your TV, Xbox. That amped up to 11. And so... Which, to be clear,

is like the dream, right? Like, you and I are still on the same page that that is a thing that I want, right? Yes, please. Just making sure.

Just give us the Xbox games, let them play on the handheld. Yeah. Let me press the power button. Have it go to sleep. The Nintendo Switch, but it's an Xbox, is like very straightforwardly

a thing that I think you and I and lots of people want. 100%. And one of the reasons they want it is because the Steam deck, the Steam OS, is not perfect. It does the Nintendo Switch thing of you press the button

and goes to sleep, you press it, wakes up, you play the games, you just select the games and they work most of the time pretty well. Not quite as well as a switch, but pretty dang well. But that is for games on Steam and games that you side load from other stores like Epic Game Store,

battle.net, and so on. It takes a little bit effort to get the other games on there. They won't always work the same way. There's a lot of games with anti-cheat that do not work on Linux that have refused to figure out how to make it work on Linux because they're worried about not only cheaters. They're worried about people figuring out how their anti-cheat system works by using Linux to reverse engineer it and then ruining the game for everyone. So that is not hurdle that everyone is willing to surmount. It's a side-loading and missing your games that require anti-cheat. So some people say they want Windows because it has all the stores.

They're right there. They don't need to worry about whether a game will run or not because of anti-cheat. So if Microsoft can bridge the gap and give you the pickup and play experience plus all the stories experience plus anti-cheat, they'd really be on to something. It's so like this is this is the thing that drives me so crazy about this space is it is everything you just said just makes me nod along. And I'm like, yes, this seems like it's good. And the thing I found so interesting about your review and your experience with the ally and ally X is, like you said, it's built on pretty good hardware. Like in a certain sense, I would be less annoyed at what you found if there was something like fatally wrong with the chip that they picked. Or it's like, oh, man, the screen sucks or whatever.

But it's like, no, actually, the list of hardware choices is more or less a good one. And yet, I would say my first experience with these things was a series of screenshots from you trying desperately to get this thing to start running properly in order to play games. Which just to me felt like a perfect microcosm of the entire Windows handheld gaming experience all in one go.

It really was, and we should describe what those are, but let me preface it with this. I did not think that that series of screenshots I sent you, David, of me trying for hours to get this thing even to just be ready to go. I did not think that was going to be the experience that anyone else other than a reviewer would have. Sure. I, it says in the reviewers guide for these handouts that it's like it's going to be a different experience of launch, we're going to like let people do this. We're going to let people do that. Which is to be fair,

a sometimes true, and B, more often a story we hear a lot as reviewers that turns out to be actually it's pretty close to what most people are going to get. They've already ship these out to Best Buy. There are pictures of them behind glass at Best Buy's around the country, people waiting to just pull them out. And so what happens is you'll open this handheld up, you'll turn it on, you'll connect it to your Wi-Fi, and then it will spend the next, depending on your internet, depending on which handheld you buy it, maybe the next hour, maybe the next 40 minutes, maybe the next hour and a half, installing Windows updates on top of Windows without you having any control,

over the interface. It'll just be like, here, let it sit here and charge and do this thing for a while. And then once you've done that, you'll go to ASUS's app and you'll download more updates. And maybe you'll go to Windows Update and you'll download more updates if Microsoft doesn't manage to get those ones at least into the initial 40 to an hour install package. And after that, then it's install your game stores and then it's install your games. And it's kind of like a half of a day to get this thing fully up and running. to play your games. Immediately kind of fairly neatly undoes

the thing that you were saying has a chance to be an advantage over something like the Steam Deck, which is there is just enough complication in the Steam deck that it's like, wouldn't it be great if there was just a thing you could log into that would play all your games?

And this is so immediately not that thing. It's not. It's not. But I think even once you get through all of that, and even once the thing is sort of in its final form, I think we were hoping there was going to be some big new idea about how this thing works and what the UI of it should be like and what the actual experience. And like what it always seemed to me is that it should be like do you remember in old Android phones you would see the skin atop Android phones. But if you went down like three or four levels, you could find like a menu in settings that was still stock Android. Yeah.

And that would be you'd be like, oh, now I know this is gingerbread. right? And it's like, that's what I want out of this. Like, I'm fine with it being Windows underneath. I just don't, I don't want to see Windows unless I really deliberately intentionally want to see Windows. And I am truly bummed by the fact that it seems like this is just still fundamentally a Windows PC. That like the Xbox of it all is just not nearly as much as it seems like it ought to be, even on the most Xboxy version of this thing so far. they could get there. Like there is a road from here to there.

If they want to say Xbox is the skin atop windows, and they're certainly moving down that road, Xbox is the skin atop windows. We're going to make everything else disappear. They're like halfway there. Okay. They could, like, they could properly add the Microsoft store

and a browser and a whole bunch of other creature comforts into the Xbox interface. They could, maybe they'll get rid of the on-aligned account requirement so you can just, you know, log in with Steam if you want to do that instead. Maybe they'll integrate the accounts better. They can make things more streamlined and seamless and Xboxy on top of Windows. But the on-top of Windows part is part of the problem. It means that this operating system doesn't know how to make a chip that's like an enhanced version of the Steam Deck chip. as good or better than the steam deck experience.

It's weaker. It's less powerful than it should be, even though it should be more powerful. I can plug in this steam deck version to the wall with a power outlet, and it should have more performance, but instead it has less. It would not solve,

and it would not solve critical things like expecting the system to save your game and sleep when you press the power button. The overall story of these, I think, is that they are not they don't represent the kind of leap forward we were hoping that they would, right? Which is like, we've been waiting for sort of the Microsoft, like the surfacey version of this that is like the both the high end one, but also the one that is like, hey, other manufacturers, here's how you do this. Right.

It is it is the thing that should be the sort of tip of the spear for all of these. These are clearly not that. How do they measure up to the other Windows handhelds out there? There's now a bunch of them. I would say, like you were saying earlier, they're all built on relatively similar foundations. Like, even for those people, even knowing all the problems that they have, even knowing Windows is still not the correct platform to be doing this the way that you would like it to be. Are these compelling in comparison to the other devices out there? In order to compete with all the rest of the handhelds, it really, to surpass every other Windows handheld out there.

All it needed to do was sleep reliably, have slightly better performance than with stock windows. and let me easily access my Steam games. And instead what we've got is something that's not sleep reliably, maybe almost the way there with the black one, but not quite, obfuscates Steam and tries to thrust all this Xbox stuff front and center,

which Tom says it works a little better if you're deep into the Xbox community, just not the way it wants, and does not feel like a console. They're propping it up as this console thing. It is not an Xbox console. It does not play Xbox console games. If you back away from all this and you're like, okay, let's take other handhelds that should cost around $1,000 and compare it to the Xbox Ally X at $1,000, this thing has better grips.

It feels more comfortable to hold than them. but it's now maybe a little bit harder to do the things that I want to do with it if I'm not buying it for an Xbox experience. And it doesn't have a flagship screen, for example. This screen is the same screen they shipped in a $600 handheld a few years ago. It's the same one they shipped in an $800 handheld last year. Now you're paying $1,000 for that screen, whereas we now have 8 inch device. We have eight-inch devices like this, like this MSI claw and this, and this amazing Legion Go-to. Hold that thing up with beautiful screens, very little bezel on these things.

They look way the heck better at around that $1,000 mark. I'm now starting to wonder, and this is the sort of size of the universe thing that I'm thinking about reading this review that you did, is, are we even sure? this is possible. Like I think you and I agree that the thesis for Microsoft here, that actually what we should do is divorce the hardware from the software and that actually what people want is ways to play games lots of places that is not a giant box in their living room. Maybe they have the giant box in the living room, but what I want is to be able to play my games everywhere. And I want games that scale up and down based on where I am. I want games that work different ways on different devices. Like I want games that exist everywhere. That feels like the

right idea. Lots of folks are moving towards that. I'm starting to wonder if it's possible even for Microsoft to get there, or if they have just gone down some completely wrong path, and the idea of the correct Windows-based gaming handheld should just die. I feel like one of the persistent problems with Microsoft's gaming strategy outside of the Xbox console itself is they're not really trying to sell a handheld. They're trying to sell an operating system to a bunch of partners that want to control the experience and make the best experience they can for their customers. So wait, okay, so you just said something I think is interesting. Can I let me just pause you on that? Because what I thought you were going to say is Microsoft's

not trying to sell you a gaming handheld. They're trying to sell you games. And I think the shift that we have been seeing is these companies are increasingly seeing hardware as, if not quite a loss leader, like not the relevant piece of the puzzle, right? Like, I can make more money by putting Fortnite on every device that you own than I can selling you a Fortnite gadget. And that to me is where it's like, that's clearly where this business is going. Like it or not, that is clearly where this business is going. And yet you said Windows. And so I'm like, does Microsoft just not get it? They spent how many tens of billions of dollars to become a game company? Like, sell me games.

Be in the business of selling me games. They have an Xbox team and they have a Windows team. And maybe they can build a hybrid team and create an operating system that makes sense to just sell you the games. But there are the conflicting priorities here of they also want to sell an OS to these handheld makers. What we expect to happen, what Tom and I expect to happen is. Yes, the future of Xbox is not going to be just about the box. Yes, the games are the most important piece of the puzzle, and they probably are going to start to build those games on top of Windows,

on top of these kinds of PC chips designed for the PC ecosystem, which includes Xbox, instead of designing them specifically for an Xbox console. So the problem we have today of, or I should say next May, They probably have next May. When Grand Theft Auto 6 comes out and you can play it on an Xbox, but you can't play it on Xbox Ally because there's no PC port, that kind of thing maybe goes away if Microsoft uses all of its studios, all of its muscle to push the industry in the PC development first direction. And the PC ecosystem now does kind of include all of these consoles, right? like architecturally, the Xbox, the PlayStation, the PC, all of these things are very close to each other now, right?

Going over a decade for over a decade now, since the Xbox One, these systems have all been using AMD X86 chips that are quite similar to one another, that have similar levels of performance between the Xbox and the PlayStation, there's wrinkles everywhere. And so when it allowed a device,

like the Steam deck to come out and be the success it was, 4 million or whatever. It's not a huge success, but it allowed it to be the success it was because it's the same architecture, the same kind of games are being made for these consoles at a console level of performance, that the Steam Deck just targets that.

Some folks at Valve can say, oh, it looks like AMD has a chip coming up two years from now that's going to give me a 720P resolution experience at 30 frames per second of the same thing I can see at consoles at 1080p 60 right now. Would people buy a 720p30 experience of the same kinds of games? Seems like they might.

Let's go ahead and do that. That chip didn't exist before. The architecture wasn't all aligned before. Now it is. Now it's way easier to make those things line up. But when the game development efforts do align in the Microsoft camp and the Sony camp

and everybody's hopefully in all the new developers' camps and everybody's just publishing a game and selling it to all the places, Microsoft does want to have a handheld that encourages people to buy them, take them everywhere, do that thing that the Steam Deck users talk about where it's like, well, there's a sale coming up on games.

Might as well have some more, now that I can play them in the bathroom, now that I can play them in the bus, now that I can play them in the train, and not worry about buying specific cartridges that only fit this handheld. I start to worry again, reading reviews like yours of the Xbox ally that it's like, well, if Microsoft putting the Xbox

name on something can't pull all of these pieces, the games, the hardware, the software, together in a way that works and feels coherent, maybe nobody can. But if we're not there yet, we're at least maybe on a path towards that over time, you seem optimistic. I think it's a wake-up call for one thing. I think it's a big wake-up call. The way this launch was handled. I'm sure they knew weeks or months ago, after they realized that things were not altogether the way they should be, that they were going to get some less than enthusiastic reviews of these handouts. And they have sure been less than enthusiastic. Sure.

Polygons, also an excellent one. If you want to read some more people trotting on this thing. But because there's been this wake-up call, not today, but maybe months ago for Microsoft, they're going to have to shift their strategy again. They're either going to have to really put the right teams on this to make the skin bulletproof on top of windows and really amp up reducing how much windows there is under the hood so that you don't, that doesn't get in your way. or they're going to say, screw it, we need the next Xbox, the next family of Xbox consoles,

which will include a handheld, to have a purpose-built architecture, a purpose-built software architecture, I should say, that actually feels like a game console. We'll put that on our next Xbox. We'll put that our next handheld too. This Xbox ally was a test balloon, but it wasn't the real Xbox handheld.

We'll bring that to you later. that's what I expect will happen. I hope you're right. But you only get so many swings at that. And I think that the size and confidence of this marketing effort from Microsoft that, you know, everything is an Xbox is, again, I look at that and I'm like, this is a great idea. What if you shipped it? Like, that'd be fun.

Maybe do it successfully and then this will all be fine. I hope you're right. I really do. I continue to believe that this is the right idea and that Microsoft's, like, what is written on Microsoft's whiteboard is like, this is the future of gaming, I think is the future of gaming.

And I worry that Microsoft is screwing it up so badly that no one else is going to try and we're all going to go back to like console exclusives that run on a box in my living room. I don't want that. Don't love it. Wouldn't be the worst thing ever

if they also subsidize the consoles again. Okay, before we go. People could afford it. Before we go, I have a question and a complaint. Which would you like to hear first? Can I ask a question first? Sure. Okay.

We talked a long time ago on this Vergecast, I feel like, about you deciding whether you were going to buy a steam deck or not. Did you? Welcome to my question and my complaint, Sean. I'm going to give you my complaint first because my complaint leads to my question. My complaint is about the Nintendo Switch 2, which I own and enjoy very much. for games that were built for the Switch 2. Donkey Kong Bonanza, fabulous. Mario Kart World, fabulous.

Every other game made by a company not Nintendo seems like they just, they shipped it to other devices, and then they found a knob that said, make it 35% worse, turned it, and shipped it for the Switch 2. I hate it. The thing I said, I play FIFA a lot. It's called EASC. For all the people who are going to email me,

I'm aware of this. It's called FIFA. me alone. The solution for the new game on the Switch 2 was just to limit it to 30 frames per second. You just can't run it any faster than that on the Switch 2. And so now I have this like blocky, jittery soccer game all the time. Turns out that sucks. And the last game played better. So everybody is like making these incredible new games and then they just make it, make it shitty and ship it for the Switch 2. And that is awful. And one of the things I was excited about about that's so much too is that there has been more developer interest and there are more third party games

they're bad and it's bumming me out welcome to nintendo welcome to nintendo uh i wish i'd know so this is which brings me to my question uh which is Sean should I buy a steam deck we've been doing this for so long and now there's rumors that there's going to be some new hardware like the there's some smoke that valve is up to some stuff like Sean should I buy a steam deck I don't think we're getting a new steam deck I don't think a steam dick I don't think a Steam Deck 2 is imminent. I think it's safe to wait. I may have bought somebody in my life a Steam Deck recently, having told myself, totally fine to get them one. Okay. It's good stuff. Do you want to play the latest games at like acceptable settings? You're talking about how stuff on, how stuff on Switch 2 is these shovel, this shovelware. That's what people call it. The shovelware that

happens on the Nintendo platforms, it looks like they just shoveled it on there and turned the dial and spun down the graphics. They're shoveling better games now, which is something. No, like, sincerely, that is something. Instead of, instead of crappy old games, it's pretty good newer games, but it's still shovelware. Developers have figured out now how to take advantage of everything the Steam Deck has and the stuff that's, that runs there. You can, you can play a lot of great shit there. If you want it to run every new hot game that comes out,

it's going to look like trash there. I'm sorry, there's just no way around it. So don't expect it to play Indiana Jones or whatever, you know, Grand Theft Auto 6 when it comes out, it will not run that at good settings, if at all. Probably won't run that at all

because there'll be some kind of anti-shate that Rockstar throws in there, some kind of terrible launch or whatever. And that'll be even further down the road because the PC version of that isn't going to come right away. We may need to have like a real, a real conversation in like May,

where I just sit down in front of my microphone with $1,000 in cash and you just tell me what to buy so I can play GTA6. Because most of the stuff you're talking about, I'm like, A, I'm not a good enough gamer to like need the stuff at super high settings anyway. And B, most of the stuff that I play most of the time is not like, you know, day one release stuff.

I'm happy to wait it out and play the old game. games and like that's all fine. I do want to play a lot of GTA 6 next year. And it is increasingly clear to me that I am going to need to spend a lot of money on a device I do not currently have. And at some point you and I are going to have to talk that out. Yeah. And then the end of that segment will just be me throwing money at my microphone.

I'm running away. Can you throw it through the camera? I'll just take it. Can I just have like three or four of the handhelds that you have that'll solve all of my problems? Daisy channing together and I'll have one kick ass Windows PC. Yeah. This would be great.

All right, we got to take a break. But, Sean, will you come back at the end of the show to do a hotline question? I got a hotline question that I think you and I should really talk about. I think it'll be fun. I'm ready to be ambushed. All right, cool. We need to take a break, and then we're going to come back. And we're going to talk about what AI is doing to our brands.

We're right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Every thriving, successful business has to start somewhere. A good place to start is a relatively simple question. What if, given the right tools, I really put my all-end. into this. One tool that can help grow your sprouting business to new heights is Shopify. Millions of businesses around the world rely on Shopify for e-commerce. They offer a host of helpful tools you can take advantage of, from payment processing to analytics to website design.

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actually moves your hiring forward. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. All right, we're back. Hayden Field is here. Hi, Hayden. Hi, happy to be here.

Lots of you on the Vergecast recently. This makes me very happy. It's been a blast. I'll come on anytime. It's just AI shenanigans every way you look. This is what we do here now. Every single day. So the sort of big, heady question I want to spend some time talking about.

And I think this is a thing we're like as a society going to spend a lot of time talking about is essentially what AI is doing to our brains and our ability to use them. And I think we're at this fascinating moment where like these, these tools like chat GPT and the rest have been around long enough that we're starting to get real sort of useful longitude and research on like what it means to use them and how we're using them. and we're past some of the, like, you know, thrilling novelty of it all. And so we're starting to get, like, real actual evidence about how they are changing the way that we work and think and all this stuff. But also, we're still so early in this phase that it's like, we don't know yet if this is just the same moral panic that happens every time something happens, right? Like, rewind to any new anything and everybody thought it was going to destroy our brains, right? Like, calculators were going to destroy our brains and the printing press was going to destroy our brains and newspapers were going to destroy our brains and the radio was going to destroy our brains. Like, pick anything you want and it was always going to ruin society.

And most of them have not. Some of them have. But we don't know yet which one AI is. But I think especially over the last few months, we've gotten a couple of really interesting studies that have tried to dig into this stuff in a pretty meaningful way. And just before we started recording, I told you, one of the main ones I want to talk about is this big study out of MIT that basically

was looking at what our brains are doing on chat, GPT, and how we think about tasks and how we accomplish tasks when we're given LLMs to use or not. And you just told me that literally just before we started recording, this is like not a bit I'm doing. This is like a thing that happened. I'm very excited about it. Just before we started recording, you were talking to the person who led this study. Is that right? That's right.

Yeah, I just shot her an email because I figured, you know, let's get it straight from the horse's mouth and talk about, you know, what really happened here. and how they tested people and what some media outlets might have gotten wrong. When I was looking at the study, I saw that they had only linked to certain outlets because they said some had like sensationalized their findings. So I just wanted to make sure we really got right, like what they found in this study. So just to really quickly, let me just like briefly explain this study for people who have not read. It's like 206 pages. You should read all of them.

They're fascinating. I don't know anything about EEGs. so most of it made no sense. But it's very interesting. And essentially, as I understand it, and you should correct me if I'm wrong, because I think it sounds like a lot of people are getting this wrong,

and I'm sure I'm one of them. Basically, they took this group of people, divided them into three sections, basically. There was a group of people that were given access to a large language model. There was a group of people that were given access to a search engine, and there was a group of people

that were given access to neither. And they gave them an essay writing task four different times over the course of, I think, several months. and basically charted how their brains were working as they were doing those tasks. And then at the end on the fourth task, the people who had to use only their brains were given access to an LLM on the fourth try and vice versa. The people who had had LLM access, the first three, then had to just use their brains for the fourth. And we should get to what they find.

But I'm curious what you learned from talking to the person that led it. Yeah, they did swap up the groups on the last try. which was interesting. And the thing that I thought was the most interesting is that when they swapped the groups at the end, the same exact results, which we'll talk about in a second, happened. So it wasn't like if you had been doing something one way, there was a compounding effect or vice versa. It was whenever you did one thing, the same thing happened. And whenever someone else did that thing, that thing happened. And there was no compounding problems or benefits. It was just when you did it using X, Y, Z type of technology, or no type of technology, they saw a

pretty similar result. Okay. And I would say broad strokes, my understanding of the results of this study, and this has been a pretty controversial study. It's a relatively small number of people. It's a, they release this pre-peer review, which is a, like, peer review is an important part of the academic process. Like, this is an early thing. And I think they put it out basically saying, yes, this is early, but we think it's important to start getting this stuff out there. But basically what I would say, my understanding of the findings is that the people who had the most access to the LLMs came to rely on them almost completely over the course of doing the task. And that the more they had access to these tools over and over they came back. And by the third time they were doing these essays with the LLMs, they were essentially just copying and pasting the output of the LLMs.

And all the people who used them, this is my favorite detail from this, basically ended up with the same essay. No matter how you started, no matter what you prompted, they said there were people who started in a language other than English and then translated it back into English. Like a remarkably similar thing appeared at the end. And the funniest thing about this is by all accounts, they had human raters and AI judges, all of whom agreed that the essays they came up with were actually like pretty good. But that was not the point, right? The point wasn't, can you use AI to write a good essay?

The point was, what is your brain doing in this process? And they found essentially that the people with that. were doing less and relying on the AI models more. And that was increasing as time went on. But then, like you said, once they flipped back to having to use their brain, it wasn't like they were permanently ruined forever, I think, was the thing that I found. And I would guess not to put words in our researchers' mouths, but that was the thing that I think a lot of people picked up on incorrectly.

And I think the narrative of this study has been that, like, if you use it, your brain will go to mush and you will never be able to use it again. And I think from reading this study, my understanding is like, that's not the finding. The finding is that when you have it in front of you, you will use your brain differently, not it will destroy your brain in perpetuity.

Is that fair? Is that your read? Yeah, the researchers said that they recommend like longer term longitudinal impact studies on the usage, but this was just short term, like seeing what parts of your brain lit up or which parts, which brain networks were being more engaged. And that was it, not kind of charting what's going to happen in the future. Right. It's not, it's not that the people came out of this, like, unable to spell their names

because they'd used an LLM three times. It was just like when they had it, it was very clear that they were doing less of the like critical thinking part of writing an essay and more of prompting an AI to basically give them the same thing that everybody else is getting. I will say, this study, a lot of people have not talked about the search engine part of this study, but maybe the single most damning part of this study to me is the people who are given access to a search engine, and basically just wrote the essay that Google decided to give them based on how Google's keywords rank for ad prices. That is like just overwhelmingly you search for something and Google gives you whatever it feels like giving you, whether or not that has any bearing on what is like useful and good.

And so the idea that like using AI is bad for your brain and having access to Google is not disagree. If anything, you could argue that they are like equally bad for your brain. But I do wonder like is, is it a fair read to come out of a study like this for you as a, you know, reader of this and for them as the researchers to say it is bad for your brain to have access to these tools? I don't think they'd say it was bad for your brain because your whole brain was functioning the whole time, no matter which group you were in. It was just the connectivity was really different. So you didn't have the same amount of engagement among all your brain networks. And also something that she told me on the phone, the lead author Natalia, was that directionality was impacted. So basically, this is a really simplified version for us because we are not researchers on the brain. But something that they were tracking was, where data flowed, which direction to which direction data flowed within the brain. And they saw there was a lot less flow when people were using LLM. So, you know, if the information is flowing from the front of your brain to the back of your brain, the back to the front, that's super oversimplified. But that's what she told me, that looking at that specifically, the directionality,

there's a lot less flow when people were using LLMs, and that's not good in the moment, at least. You know, it's not, they put it like this, the cognitive cost of using an LLM. So basically, you know, the brain connectivity did systematically scale down when people were using search engines and even more so when people were using LLM. So I think that the main kind of takeaway is that using your brain on its own is the best for your brain probably, at least in the moment. because, you know, those people, that group exhibited the strongest, widest, ranging brain network activity. So clearly, you know, their brains were just lighten up. It was a party in there. There were a ton of thoughts happening. Other people, less so. But also, I think it's important to note this isn't just happening with AI. Like you said, David, it's like, you know, I remember when we got GPS systems in our cars for the first time and I forgot how to drive to, like, you know, the grocery store or to one of my friend's houses. I didn't remember how to do things that I used to do if I didn't practice.

So it's kind of like that. I mean, I think it does happen with every technology. You know, obviously brain connectivity also scaled down in this study with search engines. So I think it's just about, you know, I used to kind of roll my eyes when my friends would put their phone down and say, oh, like, I'm going to try to remember the name of this person instead of looking it up in my phone. Or I think I'm going to try to remember the name of this movie instead of Googling it. But now I'm like, you know, maybe we should all be doing that. Because, I mean, it does use a different muscle or whatever part of the brain that you and I don't know how to refer to.

It uses that in a different way. And, you know, under engagement is something they saw in and weaker neural connectivity with something they saw in the group using LLMs, which I just don't love the sound of. Yeah. I just want everyone listening to and watching this, by the way, to just imagine that every two minutes, like a little asterisk appears above our heads that just says, disclaimer, not a brain scientist. Yes. That's important. But I think, like, the way you described that makes me think of, actually, I was just reading another study that Microsoft researchers did earlier this year, basically looking at how people doing knowledge work tasks engage in critical thinking. And they define critical thinking in some really interesting ways.

But I think, like, however you imagine that in your head is a useful enough heuristic for what we're talking about here. And essentially what they found is that if you trust yourself. to do something. Like if you think you are an expert in a task, AI is actually like productive and useful and helpful in that task and it will allow you to do it better. That it is like a, it is a way of taking something you do well and magnifying it even further.

But AI as a replacement, like as a way to fill in something you don't know how to do or don't have confidence in is a huge problem because it, A, it makes you more confident in this deeply imperfect technology. and you just kind of plug in a prompt and let it do its thing and trust whatever it comes out with because you don't know any better. And so over and over, they're coming in this study basically being like, what we need to figure out how to do is, A, help people gain competence themselves. And B, plug in AI in a way that is like additive and productive, not a solution so that you don't have to use your own brain. And I think like the way you describe, it's so funny you mentioned the like trying to remember a person's name because this is a thing I go through all the time now.

And there's like, people have been talking about this for forever, right? That Google, like, ruined the bar debate about who was, you know, who was in that movie or like, which one of those made more money or whatever. Like, all of these things that just have answers but are fun to talk about anyway. Doing that on purpose is like stupid, but kind of fun and productive anyway that it's like, well, I'm just going to sit here and try to remember the name of that song. Even though I could Google it and it would simplify everything because like I should probably work on. my brain, like, feels ridiculous, but I think is actually borne out in a lot of this stuff that, like, using your brain on purpose is good. Shocking, but true.

Yeah. And what you said about AI making some things better is true, because even in that MIT Media Lab study, they found that it does help with speed and execution and grunt work and organization of thoughts. And the other thing about that study is that a lot of neuroscientists apparently say EEGs, which they use to test the brain activity are kind of a flawed method because they're outside the brain. So it's kind of like they liken it to standing outside a stadium and listening to the crowd's reaction. So you can hear when the crowd roars and, you know, the vibes that are going on, but you can't really, you know, figure out exactly what's going on and, you know, exactly what people are feeling and when and which areas.

So, you know, it's a flawed approach, but, you know, it does tell us something. So I think that's important. But what you said about, you know, feeling confident, I think is so important because it reminds me of learning languages. Like if you are super, you know, playing it safe and taking it easy with learning a language, I feel like you never really, and I think studies back this up, but don't quote me on this, but you never really get fluent because the way that the brain learns a lot of time is when you do feel uncomfortable. or frustrated or not like safe in terms of, you know, saying what you want to say. And then it causes you to build new neural pathways and remember, you know, connections and things you might not have gotten before. That's why immersion programs are so good for building language fluency. It's because you are forced to just figure out how to say something, even if you have to be creative and kind of talk your way around something or, you know, build new connections. You just have to figure it out. And that's why people that, you know, get fluent in a language do that stuff.

And I think it's kind of important to note here, too. Totally. So what do you think the reaction has been in the AI industry to some of this research? I mean, this MIT study, we talked about on purpose because this, like, it caused some real, like, debate and kerfuffle in the AI industry. There were a lot of people who just reflexively, like, didn't like the study, didn't like the way that it was done, didn't like the problem, like, whatever. But this question of like, is AI making a stupid is very much like in the ether of the AI industry right now? What are you hearing from folks who are starting to reckon with this question of like what is AI doing to people's brands? Are they even reckoning with it at all?

I think a lot of times they're not reckoning with it. Like when I reached out to Anthropic and Open AI before this recording like a few days ago, I just wanted to see what they would say. And they did not respond at all. So zero response. And I think, you know, a lot of people just don't want to acknowledge it. I do think there's a lot of controversy over the study itself and the results and the small sample size and the EEGs. But I also think that, you know, there's a question why we're not seeing more research starting right now about the long-term effects of using these systems. And, you know, there's a lot of questions out there

right now about how it does affect your brain or even if it doesn't affect your brain in a certain way, how it affects how you think or how you act. You know, we saw a bunch of hugely problematic situations with teens and young people recently, you know, committing suicide after months of confiding in a chat bot or, you know, going through a lot of mental health struggles and having to be hospitalized. So it's like interesting and just, you know, we need more research on this stuff and we need to be looking really hard at it. And a lot of companies don't want to reckon deeply with it because companies want people to use their services and rely on them. I mean, that's how you make money as a tech company. So, you know, up engagement, up the amount of time that someone spends on a

platform, figure out how to kind of insert it into every part of their life. You know, we just saw opening I launch Pulse, which is supposed to be like, you know, the way that you start your day every day and a routine with chat, GPT. So I think these. These companies want their products to be embedded in every part of your life. And that is how they're going to make money. Yeah, I mean, I'm so torn on this because I think, like, your Google Maps example from a few minutes ago is such an interesting one because I spent a lot of time over the years wondering whether it's bad that I don't know how to get anywhere anymore.

And like, it's sort of seriously, like, I don't know how to get nearly as many places as I used to. That's certainly true. And the number of places like my wife will make fun of me because I will Google. Maps the three miles to the airport, despite the fact that I've done that drive 650,000 times. Like, I should be able to do that drive in my sleep and I put on Google Maps every single time. And I say, like, oh, I'm checking for traffic, but I'm just like, I'm just not 100% sure how to do any of that anymore. And I don't know if that's bad. And I think in a lot of

ways, like, I don't know, like you and I probably know how to do less long division than people who grew up before graphing calculators existed. Is that bad? Or have we just learned how to use our brains in a different way? I'm just curious for you as a person who thinks about and writes about and uses AI stuff all day. Are you thinking about this stuff in sort of that big, heady, like what is this doing to my brain kind of way yet?

Yeah, to me, I think about it right now in the way that I think about Google Maps, like you just said. I mean, I think, you know, we need more research on the long-term effects. But for now, I just think of it as, oh, I can tell I'm not using my brain as much right now. But I don't think there's a long-term effect happening. And I also do think it's really helpful for, like the MIT Media Lab study said, like grunt work organization. Like I was making a wedding planning spreadsheet the other day. And I was like, I don't need to be, you know, looking at five other people's spread.

sheets and trying to, you know, combine them myself. I'm just going to have AI do it. So I did. It was great. And then I still critically thought as much as I could critically think about like, you know, the certain things I needed to add in there that were missing. But yeah, I mean, for me right now, it's more about making sure I don't over-rely on these systems when I'm using them in my personal life. I turn off memory, for example, because I don't really want a system learning more about me and tailoring its responses to me. I like to treat it as a tool that I ask something and then I leave. You know, it's not, I don't want to be building a relationship with this tool. I know that's controversial. A lot of people do love to do that, but for me personally, I don't want to over-reli on

these systems. So that's what I do. And I think it's a great hack if you are worried about that. But yeah, I mean, for me, I think that's the number one way I think about it. It's just how I think about these systems rather than what they're doing to my brain because I think, you know what, I'm frying my brain with a bunch of different technology. It's not just AI. I think I'm watching too much Netflix. I'm, you know, texting too much. I am on Instagram too much.

I'm on TikTok too much. Yeah, I think like everything in moderation is, as usual, pretty good advice. Because I don't know. I think about this is like there's one way of thinking about this that is like the people who say like, oh, we used to be hunter gatherers and now we've lost that and what are we doing? And like, when men were men? and I just listen to that and I'm like, yeah, but it's better now. Like, I have video games now. Like, that's so much better than being a hunter-gatherer.

Like, what are we talking about? This is, I can fight lions or I can watch television. Like, I pick television. I don't understand what the problem is. And then on the flip side, you go all the way to the other end of the spectrum and you get all of these tech CEOs who are like, in five years, there's going to be two types of people. There's going to be the people who have made use of AI in every single corner of their lives. And there's going to be the people who get left behind.

And it's like, what was it that Mark Zuckerberg said just the other week? Like, you're going to be at a cognitive disadvantage if you don't use AI. Like, boy, do I not think that's fully true. And I don't know. Like, part of me is like, are we going to get to the point where actually there's going to be the like Wally world of people just like sitting in chairs staring at screens? And then there's just going to be like you and me running around being like, ha ha, I still know how to type words with my fingers. And that's going to be our advantage. I just don't know.

And it's a really tricky thing, both as a person and as a reporter right now to reason through because it's like this stuff is everywhere. People are using it. And like, I have a nephew who just started college and I'm sure is just in the middle of chat GPTing his way through all of his classes. And I'm like, is that a disaster or is that just the inevitable future and everybody needs to catch up? Like some of the pushback I've seen to these studies is that actually what happens when we get

these technical advances is that we start to teach different things and we start to test different skills and we start to evaluate people based on new things that they need to be able to do in this new world where being able to quickly do long division is not important because you have a thing in your pocket that can do that for you. We need new tasks and we need new things to do and that maybe we'll get a whole bunch of that with AI or we're all just going to sit here slack jawed talking the cloud for the rest of our lives and that feels bad. And I just, I don't know. I'm so stuck on this because I don't know how to reason through any of it because we are at just the very beginning of actually starting to understand this stuff. Definitely.

I think it's interesting because I remember being in college and using Cliffs Notes, you know, to summarize. You know, that's what you were going to say. Yeah, exactly, to summarize books that I didn't really have to read the whole thing of. And, you know, I do think that teens are going to find workgrounds for not doing a lot of work in any universe. with any tech that they have available to them. And it's not something that's like, you know, suddenly happening now for the very first time. I do think it can be tough when these companies allow, like,

every student to access these tools for free during exam period. Which to your point about, like, all they actually want is engagement and they'll figure out the rest later. Like, what a perfect example. Yeah, I kind of feel like it's, you know, they like to pivot it as, oh, you know, we want people to, you know, use learning mode and, you know, kind of be helped with some of the grunt work and the organization of their essays, things like that. But what inevitably happens is that, you know, people lean on it for exams and all sorts of other stuff and kind of get in early and they become a user leader in life. And, you know, it's just kind of cemented early on.

So I do think it's a little bit tough. But I also think what you said about testing different things is so real. I mean, you know, now I'm seeing that teachers are starting to, instead of assign a full book, sometimes they'll assign certain chapters or passages and then have everyone talk about them live in class. So that's something I like to see. I mean, obviously I wish everyone was reading full books. But, you know, at least we're, you know, having people really talk about what they critically thought live during class and, you know, use their brain that way. So, you know, I think it's hard because it's not black and white.

But, you know, at least teachers who are saints are adapting to this new world and trying to get students to use their brains in new ways, you know, no matter what's thrown at them, which is great. Whose responsibility do you think it is ultimately to start pushing on this stuff? Like, obviously, I think you talk to the researchers who are doing some really interesting and important work. And it's very clear that, like, a lot of people are paying attention to that work, which is great. Like whatever Natalia and that team do next, a lot of people will pay attention to. And I think that's great. Like putting all of the onus on like the high schoolers to make good responsible decisions about how they use their brain, I think is like a complete fool's errand of an idea. Teachers have too much to do already.

Like I don't know. I can't help but wonder like isn't this partly up to the Sam Altman Zendario Amadez of the world to like if they, if these things are going to be as. big and important as they claim, shouldn't, don't they have some responsibility to figure out, like, what is the actual job we are supposed to put these things to? And what does it mean if we're just mushing everybody's brains in service of giving them more access to chat GPT? Yeah, this is kind of why I think it's weird that only a few people are in charge of the implications societally of this. It's interesting that, you know, a lot of the regular. is just starting to kind of percolate right now. And a lot of the past regulation has just

been reporters, you know, shining light on stuff or researchers shining light on stuff. So it is interesting, especially because we don't have, as we said before, a lot of information on how this looks long term and how it affects people. You know, I mean, I think on the one hand, you know, these companies are saying, hey, we introduced learning mode. We introduced these certain modes for students where, you know, the chatbot isn't just giving them the answer. It's helping them reason through, you know, a line of thinking. It's kind of using the Socratic method in a way. But how well can it really do that? I haven't tried it. And, you know, I'm sure there's a workaround for not doing that, which students will probably find. You know, on the one hand, it is a student's

responsibility in some ways to want to learn because we've all found workarounds when we didn't want to learn something. That's just, you know, what we're going to do. But I also think the easier it is to not learn something, the more tempting it is to not sometimes if you're like, you know, a student in college or high school. So, yeah, not doing the work is so sick. Like, it's so fun to not do the work. And I was, we were actually just talking about this as some folks the other day that like, one of my great joys as an adult has been going back and reading all the books that I fake read in high school. Same. And learning that actually like catch her in the rise, like, awesome. And And there's like a bunch of like, you know, Jane Eyre style books that I like pretended to read in high school and college that now I've gone back.

And I'm like, oh, these books actually like kind of ripped, dude. I've been doing the same thing like beloved by Tony Morrison. I've been really, I saved them all to put in my bookshelf in the living room, which is my performative bookshelf. And I have like a non-performative like kind of like dumb bookshelf in my bedroom. And all the ones on display in the living room, I'm now working my way through. I love that for you. That's awesome. So one last thing.

The way you were talking about these tools makes me think about, like, I think the notebook LMs of the world. I wonder if things like that end up being sort of the right middle ground where it's like you, and maybe this goes back to the stuff that Microsoft study was talking about,

that it's like these things should be additive tools for things that you are already gaining competence in, right? That like maybe the AI's job is to help you find information that you're looking for or pull things into study guides and flashcards and whatever, but like it shouldn't be able to put out a finished product for you. And I think like I know the notebook LM team has spent a lot of time thinking about like,

what does it mean to help you do the work versus do the work for you? And I just think that kind of thing, like it's really easy for me to come out of these things being like, just shut it all off, turn off the internet in high schools and like make everybody go back to writing by hand in blue books. And like there's part of me that thinks that, but most of me thinks that's just like an ignorant way of thinking about what the world actually is now. And so it's like maybe what is the middle ground does it exist? Do you think it exists? I hope so. I hope it does.

And I think based on history, you know, in other technologies, I think it does. I mean, and I think what you just said is the middle ground, you know. technology can help us come to our own conclusions. It can ask smart questions sometimes and have us think and really like, you know, figure out what our opinion is and then we answer. So I hope that's the, you know, line we go down because, you know, everyone has a friend that's amazing in asking questions and kind of helps you really figure out how you feel about something when you didn't really know before. And I hope that, you know, in schools and with students, AI can become that. If we do have to use it, let's make it that instead of just, you know, giving you the answer all the time,

which I think, you know, to their credit, companies are trying to figure out how to do. But I don't know if it's working yet. I have not used them myself. That would be a good thing for us to test. But yeah, I mean, it's all a mess right now. And I just hope it works out is all I'm to say. That's a hopeful message to end on. Yeah, I just keep thinking about that part of the MIT study that is basically like when we got to the end of this trial with folks, the people who had LLM access weren't doing any work anymore. They were essentially doing the procedural work of copying and pasting stuff in an order that kind of made sense. And that was the amount of actual cognitive interest that they were doing because they had just decided to offload all of it to the machines. And I think anybody who has used Google's AI overviews knows that we're super not there yet.

I don't know if we ever will be. I don't know if it's a good thing, but we're super not there yet. And the fact that they couldn't quote essays that they wrote minutes before. So it really didn't sink in, which sucks. Like that's the thing that I feel like we need to see is even if people use technology to accomplish whatever in schools, you have to be able to explain it and talk about it after so that it sinks in. Maybe that's the answer, you know, because I find that for me, I learn the best when I'm explaining how something works to someone else, like out loud. That's how I learn. And that's why, like, oftentimes before I'm, you know, going to go on, you know, a TV segment or something, I call a friend and I'm like, let me just explain this to you really quick. And they're like, you know, they work in, like, marketing or, like, they're a, like, hiker and they're, like, a full-time hiker. And they're like, I'm going to use a different example because that sounds like I made that up, but that was real. And they work in marketing or they're like, you know, just retired. And I'm like, let me tell you exactly how this random thing works that you have no interest in just so that I can know that I fully understand it before I go and explain it to a lot of people.

So, yeah, I think that's the game. Like a comedian developing like their type five to go on a late night show. I love this for you. All right. We need to take a break. But I just want to prepare you for this, Hayden. At some point, you are going to come back on this show and you are going to walk us through the technology and AI of your. our wedding planning process.

So just be ready. Because I have a feeling it is spectacular and insane, and I'm very, very excited to talk about it. I can't wait to tell you all about it. It is crazy. All right, we've got to take one more break, and then we're going to come back and answer a question from the forecast hotline.

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Complex and unprecedented, the Spanish authorities are calling it. Before the disembarko, asymptomatic. Passengers who'd been stuck aboard the Hanta or maybe Hanta virus-stricken Dutch cruise ship disembarked in the Canary Islands this weekend, prompting the highest stakes game of where are they now since maybe COVID? Some of the evacuees, American and French, have since tested positive for the virus. And yet public health officials seem remarkably calm. We do have one individual who was taken to the biocontainment unit early, early this morning.

And we assessed that individual. they are doing well. Possibly because this is not the one to freak out over. Today, Explain drops every weekday afternoon. Okay, we're back. Sean's back. We have a question from the Vergecast hotline. As always, the number is 866 Verge 1.1.

The email is Vergecast at theverge.com. You can go knock on Sean's door and ask him questions if you have them. We're all on signal. I don't know, I go outside sometimes. You find me there. This question, Sean, is like sort of a thing I've been thinking. thinking a lot about recently, and I just want to feel you out on this, but I didn't want to prepare you at all because I just want to get your gut reaction. Let's hear this question.

Hello, Birchcast friends. This is not so much a question as a revelation. I was just listening to the episode where you were talking about Chrome OS and Android and seamless experience. I am a long-time Android user and Windows user and have had the tablet that disconnects from the dock, that's supposed to be your computer. I've gone through all of it. And I have a revelation for an Android and Windows user, the perfect experience is a two-screen laptop where the, like the Verge Berge Berge

Berger Duo, which I have, and the AISS Zen book duo, which I have, and I love. And the keyboard comes off and the kickstand for the two screens, take all of that except the top screen can detach, and it is your lightweight Android Chrome tablet. Think of practice. John, detachable PCs. Oh, my God.

We're here. We're talking about hybrid devices. I've been thinking about this where we're talking about touchscreen, MacBooks. Like, how do you do the Chrome? like detachable PCs are the future of everything. Are they the future of everything? I feel like I'm being transported right back to 2012. Yes, we're just doing this again.

I was, I think I was at CES, and there was, there was a giant fountain. Oh, no, it was copy decks because I was in Taipei. And there were just all of these, all of these giant, there was a giant detachable all in one PC sitting on like a stone. like the stone pillar next to this giant fountain and next to that there was a detachable EPC from ASUS and like the screen would come out of the keyboard region

but the dual screen thing, you're right, the dual screen thing. So I have now played with several dual screen devices or devices with a giant stretchy screen that decides to become two screens when you partition it virtually. And there is really something not to having two screens

that I don't care about at all, but having a, very big vertical screen in front of you that you can partition into any number of windows you want. But reaching for those screens to touch them is kind of weird. So if the top one popped off, that would be great. The thing I can't figure out is how you would create any kind of hinge

and detachment mechanism that would make that not fall apart at the slightest touch. Because even some of the dual screen PCs I've tried out to dual screen laptops, like those hinges are kind of weird. The only one I've ever had that felt really good was, I think it was the Surface book. That like the very first one in that, I don't even know if they made more than one of these. But it had a pretty solid hinge that you like, you had a little eject button and you pulled it out. And then it went in and it really like thunked in and felt like a lot. And that was the only one I've ever used that I was like, this.

I could just use and not feel like it was going to break every single time I touched it. The only one. The only one. And I met some people who bought that and they said that over time, some things didn't always connect up properly electronically. And there were some issues to discrete graphics and things like that. But I don't think they said that the hinge failed on them. The hinge is a really great hinge. Really great hinge, really great detachment mechanism.

Do you think chip-wise were ready for this world? Because is it possible that in 2012 we just didn't. have the internals we needed to do this. But now, by with some combination of, you know, internal graphics are getting better. External graphics are getting better and cheaper. Like, the idea of basically, I have a tablet that I dock into a gaming PC seems very powerful and compelling. And like it might kind of be possible now. Like, put a Qualcomm Snapdragon elite into the tablety bit of it. And it'll so sort of run like a Windows computer, sort of, uh,

dock it and give me like full on gaming PC stuff. Yeah, USB 4. I mean, USB 4 with the bandwidth, especially with USB 4 version 2 coming out with the 80 gigabit per second bandwidth, I believe. Single port, you plug in your tablet, as long as it's got that kind of a connection in it, you can do the external graphics, you can do the data, you can do the multiple monitors, you can do the power, all at the same time, all of that. that would work fine and the chips are efficient enough that, you know, if they can fit in a handheld,

if they can fit in a thick tablet, they can fit in that tablet too. Making the top tablet, if you want that to be like the entire computer, if you want that to be the entire computer, that thin and light, you might need to look at Arm like David is saying. You might need to be Qualcomm. And in that case, I don't know how much of the USB for external graphics kind of goodness you get. I don't think they've figured out external graphics yet on the Qualcomm stuff. So if it were AMD or, you or Intel plus external, that would be a little bit easier. I think that this detachable tablet,

if you don't care very much about how long it lasts when it's away from the rest of the system, like you're taking this thing off for an hour, you're using it on the couch, then you put it back in so that it can charge and connect. I think you'll have a better time

than if you're expecting the tablet to be your eight-hour computer. That makes sense. Yeah, it does sort of sound like, as you describe it, I'm thinking, oh, what this actually is is just two computers bolted together. Because you need all the stuff in the one, but then you need all the other more powerful stuff in the other. And now we've just built two computers and this thing is going to cost like $3,000 and not actually solve any of your problems. Which I think is the thing we discovered in 2012.

Please know. What we need is better software for multiple devices, not hardware that shoves them all together. Do not. Please do not give the designer's ideas, David. What if they had all of the processors? What if I just put all the possible chips into a device and we'd just see what happens? It could work. But I think about this from both a like productivity perspective where like I like the idea of, you know, being able to instead of like the iPad magic keyboard to me is the perfect example of this.

I feel like Apple has gone way out of its way to have this funky hinge and that's all well and good. but I would rather have something that looks like a MacBook that I can just pull the two pieces apart. That to me is like that's where something cool and interesting starts to happen. And the same with a lot of these other devices, but I think about this with gaming in particular. That is like, is there a reason that I might want something like external graphics for, you know, that's worth spending the money on so that I can have this truly like high-end PC thing that I can just rip off the top. half of and take to the coffee shop. I think a lot of companies and a lot of users are scared about

mechanical points of failure. Like, you don't want too many mechanical points of failure on anything because inevitably those will fail, their support calls and so on. You have to engineer their crap out of it, like that Microsoft Surface book, but I want everything to be modular. I love

this idea of, I saw this crazy thing at CES this last year, where it was an Intel, Lunar Lake, Mooner Lake, one of those too. A tablet thing, compute module, you stick into the laptop frame, or you take it out and stick it into the tablet frame, and then it's your tablet, and they hinge together, and there's like mechanical motorized things to turn the screen to face you while you're walking around the room. Just a complete concept. And I said, there are like three good ideas in here. If anybody wants to actually produce

this hardware, it would be super cool, and just a small handful of nerds like me will love the heck out of it. Yeah, I both think this is the wrong idea and think I would love it absolutely to pieces, which I think is basically where we landed in 2012. Like, this thing is so fun and delightful and makes sense for almost no one. But I have wanted it ever since. And this is my hill that I will always die on is modular gadgets, which might be impossible and might be useless, but they're so fun. And I love it so much.

Is it time to do the modular phone? I feel like phones have finally plateaued to the degree that manufacturers just don't know what to do with the hardware anymore, the rounded rectangles, beside AI. At the time, what Google did, Project ARA, tried to make modular phones a thing, tried to make those cameras modular. There just wasn't enough reason because there was still innovation happening elsewhere, but now that there isn't much hardware innovation elsewhere, can we bring it back? Please bring it back. Just let me attach weird lenses to my phone, and you will have my business forever. This is all I ask. All right. Sometime you're going to come back and we're going to talk about Project R.

but that's probably a version history episode that we'll do at some point and I'm very excited about that. For now, if someone is making this Chrome Windows thing that actually might seem possible to exist, I would like to hear about it. And until then, Sean, thank you. This was delightful.

Thank you. All right, that is it for the Vergecast. Thank you to Sean and Hayden for being here and thank you, as always, for listening. If you have thoughts or questions or feelings or other mean things you'd like to say about the Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally As always, you can call the hotline 866, V-6-6-1-1.

You can send us an email at vergecast at the verge.com. Two quick things before we go. One, hopefully you've heard on the show or on the feed by now that we have ad-free podcasts, but if you're a subscriber to the Verge, you can now go to your account settings and get ad-free versions of all of our shows, the Vergecast, version history, and Decoder. It's awesome. Thank you to everybody who has been excited about this. This was the number one thing people were asking us for.

Super excited to be able to do it. I signed up for the ad-free podcasts. I'm a big fan. Let us know if you're having trouble with it, but it is awesome. Cannot recommend it enough. Thing number two, thanks to everybody who's been reaching out

about version history. We're now three episodes deep. We've got five more in this run. We're already working on the next ones. We've gotten tons of really good feedback. So please keep it coming. Things you want to see, things you want us to make episodes about,

different ways you want us to do the show. We've gotten really interesting feedback on the structure and tone and pace of the show. Keep it all coming. We're about to make a bunch more of these, and I want to know everything you think about all of these already before we get into it. But for now, we're just going to get out of here.

The Vergecast is Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. This show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Larcuck. Neli and I will be back on Friday to talk about just all of the news. There's more news. We have Apple reviews. We've got all kinds of stuff going on. AI continues to just AI. I don't even know what to say anymore.

We're going to have a lot to talk about. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.