Tomorrow - AI's Latest Trick or Treats

Episode Date: October 31, 2024

A very spooky Halloween episode this week, companies suspiciously renaming themselves, missing notifications, and haunting questions about the new Chat GPT search features... Listen if you dare... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey and welcome to tomorrow. I'm your host Joshua Topolsky. And I'm your other host Ronnie Mola. And we are back. We're better than ever. I'm not going to lie. Sometimes people come back and they're not doing so well, like the dog and the famous Stephen King book and movie story and movie Pet Cemetery, which of course centers around a story of a grave site, a Native American burial ground, which brings dead things back to life. I'm not sure, the backstory is a little probably canceled

and also not that clear to me, but anyhow, sometimes things come back and they're not good. They're murderous. And then sometimes they come back and they're great. And that's us, we're the latter. We're the latter group. We're not the pet cemetery dog. We are.

The pound of dogs. No, we're just a dog, we're just dogs. Okay. Just regular dogs that went on a little adventure and then came back. And now we're here to talk about technology and business, the business of technology, and frankly, the technology of business, which is a new idea that I've just come up with. Anyway, it's been an interesting few weeks,

been an interesting week in our world. There's a lot of- It's earnings week? Earnings, politics. There's a lot of big, like, it feels like many things of import are occurring right now, at least in America, I can't speak for the entirety of humanity on the whole globe.

But yeah, earnings, who had earnings this week? Do you wanna talk about any of them? Yeah, we had a- It seems like maybe you want to. I do, I do. We had Google, we had Alphabet, we had Meta, Microsoft. I'm so tired of having to call things new things. I mean, I know.

I really, I was a holdout with Maculill. Coca-Cola, they made a cocaine drink in like 1890 or whatever. And we're still calling them Coca-Cola. McDonald's, they had a hamburger, they invented a hamburger in 1942 or whatever. We're still calling them McDonald's. But all these new companies, and maybe there's something to take away here, it does feel like a lot forward is still forward, does feel like something's happening where all of these companies that are new, feel some need to

shake off the recent past and try to become something else. And is that, is there a takeaway there? I don't know, but I do know some of the greatest businesses that the world has ever known did not change their name. Okay. So it's like a giant sub tweet for Metta and for Alphabet. Alphabet and for X. Oh, X, that's true. Twitter, remember them?

And there's many other companies. I still call it Twitter. Whatever, I'm just saying. We call it Twitter, and everybody calls it Twitter, but Elon Musk, there's many other cometer, whatever. I'm just saying we call it Twitter, but, but, and everybody calls it Twitter, but to Elon Musk, it's called acts. The point is like, is there something, is there, is there a philosophical point there to consider?

Is there some weird need for these businesses, relatively new young businesses in the grand scheme of things to reorient themselves in some way to re situate themselves in the mind share of the market. I don't know if any of this makes sense, but I think it's a question we should be asking. And then answering, asked and answered

is what I'm looking for that kind of situation. Anyhow, so alphabet head earnings. Alphabet head earnings and sorry, It's been a long week. Alphabet Head Earnings, it did well. We have a cool chart about how, even though a lot more money's coming from AI now, it's still like the vast majority. It's still an ad business. It's still a giant search ad business.

That's where all the money comes from. Of course. And then also some other companies that rely on advertising seem to be doing really well. And that's interesting to me, like Snap and Reddit, just because for a while there was this conversation going on that, you know, advertisers were worried and they're pulling back and maybe they still are to be to be found out. But like at least for these big tech companies, they seem to be still pulling it in like hand over fist advertising.

I mean, it's great business. Have you, I mean, can you imagine the transformative potential of AI advertising? I mean, I don't think we've considered, I mean, people are like, you know, well another revenue stream. It's like maybe just a variation of the same revenue stream. I feel like there's, I'm sure there are 100 million AI advertising businesses that have been spun off. But I just feel like what we're actually gonna see,

like it's not like Meta's business is going to become like artificial intelligence services for people. It's gonna be like, we can serve more accurate ads because the AI will like know. Okay, so you're not talking about AI ads. You're not talking about like the people in ads or the images being created. I'm talking about all of them, all of it.

I think we'll soon exist in a world where the AI of Meta is like getting to know you really well I think we'll soon exist in a world where the AI of meta is like getting to know you really well so it can then speak to the AI of some ad tech business. And write up some ad copy directed exactly at Josh Chafalsky. Directed at you in real time or near real time because they have to like send it to the, wherever the mice are on the wheel where they're running to create the AI processes

and then get it back. But the wherever's been cranking some huge AI, like, you know, I assume in some kind of like Frankenstein-ish laboratory. So a mouse mechanical Turk. Yeah, like I'm thinking, I don't know, something like that. Anyhow, but they send it over to the AI people and then they send it back.

Yeah, no personalized, I would assume, I would assume hyper personalized at some point. I would assume like, we're probably gonna arrive at a point in the not too distant future where AI like maybe creates a product specifically for you. We already have like AI doing weird things like creating shirts, right?

You know, like I'm a- Book shirts, yeah. I'm a flower arranging grandpa who loves motorcycles from Milwaukee or whatever. And it's like, okay, I'm a flower arranging grandpa who loves motorcycles from Milwaukee or whatever. And it's like, okay, I guess so. But like, you know, it's like audience of one stuff. I assume we'll reach a point where they're like, hey, you need this lighter knife,

do you know, I don't know, hat. And it's like, you know, it's like, this is not a product. And then they build it afterwards once you've purchased it. Yeah, we found that there's like a niche market and we can, you know, if you look at like, if you look at, it's like plugged into Alibaba and it's like to produce the knife lighter hat is like,

we could ship it to you, like drop ship it to you. And that's the world I think we'll be living in in the near future. Right, and the companies that stand to benefit the most from this are like, obviously the ones that already benefit the most from AI because they're the, sorry, the most from advertising. They take the lion's already benefit the most from AI because they're the sorry from the most from advertising there. They, you know, they take the lion's share of the advertising revenue out there.

And then they also have been spending a ton of money toward AI. So we're going to be able to like, get out even more money from that in the future. Yeah. They're sitting at the proverbial mouth of the river. So, uh, all they need to do is open wide and let the water flow in. In this case, the water is money. The water is money and they're not swallowing it. I don't even know how this works. I don't know what this metaphor is going and I think I should just kind of eject out of it. Anyhow. So wait, me think. Yeah. So wait, so what about OK, right.

So let's talk about I mean, let's actually talk about the earnings. Alphabet still making money on ads. Any other notables? Huge demand for AI. Huge demand for AI. They're Google's cloud quarterly revenue jumped up to 11.4 billion. That's a 35% increase over last year. And is that derived from people using more of their Gemini,

their AI services for things? That's all under Google Cloud. It's Google Cloud. I mean, I should know this. You should know it, frankly. Google's Gemini AI model has been squeezed into pretty much all of its products, resulting in more than 2 billion monthly users of Gemini models.

There has to be a correlation between some of the cloud services and Gemini. Right. It's a little bit self-serving, though, right? If you're using Gemini, it relies on the cloud. And so the more people who are using AI in general, the more people, the more they're going to spend money on cloud services, right? I guess so.

I mean, I guess it depends on, I guess on the needs, right? If people are like, wow, I need this AI to generate, then I need it to generate the lighter knife hat like content, you know, for my business that I use like Google cloud computing for or whatever. I don't know. Then yes, they're like, wow, you got to pay for this AI stuff down. And you're like, but it made the hat for me.

So it's all working out in the end. Not really sure how. Yeah, I mean, I suppose that's true. Yes, it is like a, I mean, it's perfect for companies, I would assume, who are like, we have a brand new important thing that you need to use so you can become enriched by AI. Right. And now we have to charge you more money

because it costs a lot of money to run AI. I don't know if that's like a one-to-one thing, but I'm so exhausted by talking about artificial intelligence. Well, let's talk about it some more. It is like, it's just so, I do. It is a fatiguing topic. I just it ultimately I believe when we when it's at its kind of most final form, it will not be something we even think

about. Right. It's going to be super boring is my thought. You know, shrimp Jesus all the way down. Either that or it's going to be like the sales force of, you know, it's just gonna be like, it's like, it's like totally unsexy. It's in the background.

It's not as flashy and like, you know, I think the thing with generative AI in the first place is it caught the public's imagination. All of a sudden, like any, any person could just go onto chat GPT and talk to it. And everyone was like, oh my God, this is amazing. But like the, like it's real power is not there. It's not like it being able to talk to youT and talk to it. And everyone was like, oh my God, this is amazing. But like, it's real power is not there. It's not like it being able to talk to you like a human,

it's probably in like, you know, in doing accounting. Like in doing something. Process your data better so we can sell you a more appropriate ad. I serve you a more appropriate ad. Or just like background stuff, very Salesforce-y stuff that you're like, I don't know what they do, but they do something and they make a lot of money.

I don't know. The thing that's interesting, I mean, I remember using Mid Journey the first time and just being absolutely blown away. Like, and I definitely have, there's a podcast, my last podcast I did, I'm sure I talked about it, where I was like, this is the closest thing I've ever seen to like magic from a computer, you know?

And it is funny to me thinking back on my initial excitement of playing with Mid Journey and like showing Zelda Mid Journey. You were so young. You know, her coming up with like show, like, you know, we were, we were like, she was like listening to Hamilton and watching Frozen a lot. So it was like, let me see an image of like

George Washington dancing with like Elsa or whatever, you know, it's like very, the most innocent things you can imagine. And being like, wow, this is crazy. Like this is so transformative. And now I'm like, whatever. Like who cares if you could make an image like of anything, this is crazy. Like, this is so transformative. And now I'm like, whatever. Like, who cares if you could make an image like of anything you can think of?

I feel like I've become so immediate. And maybe this is me. You know, maybe the average person is still like mesmerized by the ability for a computer to generate like an custom image. But I do feel like that particular slice of like consumer use, which has very few actual use cases for a typical consumer, right?

Most people don't need to create fantastic images on the fly. That's not a necessity for them. And it will have some very very narrow, some very narrow important use cases. You can imagine like people who make advertising, who like make videos, who make movies, like this is all like important and very like existentially like.

Like Photoshop was for graphics editors or photo editors, right? That was a significant leap in technology that changed the job forever. Right, but the particular thing you're talking about is just this consumer level, like, oh my God, this is magic, and it's just like, how cool is this?

I'm gonna, I don't know, a little bit, it makes me think of like, this is the wrong comparison because Wordle is not exactly magic. But remember, everyone was like, let's do Wordle. I'm gonna do Wordle every day forever. And then like, you know, some people still do Wordle. Some people do, but Wordle has almost more like. Staying power. Well, it's like, but Wordle has almost more like-

Staying power. Well, it's like, it's a game. It's like fun to play. Like I can imagine myself revisiting Wordle at some point, but I can only imagine myself revisiting Mid Journey if I really need to create an image, like not to play with and have fun, but like if I need to create an image of something specific.

Or like a pitch deck, you're like, here's something funny and you're gonna put it in there. And like, so, which is like a real use. And like that was someone's job funny and you're gonna put it in there. So which is like a real use. And like that was someone's job at some point or like hours of your time messing around Photoshop and then kind of just tell it to do that. And that becomes like the base level from now on. And that's what we do.

But like, I don't know that that's so like fundamentally different. No, but I was agreeing with you that like the thing talking to you like a person is probably not the ultimate moneymaker use case for AI. But we have to keep talking about it until that settles down. Until it settles down.

I just think there is a lot of innovation and there are a lot of new things going on in the world of generative and other forms of AI. But yeah, I'm just, you know, I don't know. I don't know if you've got this yet. Apple intelligence like came out of beta for a broad. So I just downloaded it like right before this call. So I don't have, I'm not, I'm not at the, the like the bleeding edge of technology. Let me tell you, I had been, I know I don't want to stretch off earnings too quickly,

but I had been using the beta of it. And then I now have the consumer, the anointed, whatever version of it. My understanding from you was that the beta was not that impressive. It kind of like collected conversations, put them together, like all of the notifications you got for a garage, but then like put some kind of useless collected conversations together, like all of the notifications you got for a garage, but then like put some kind of useless nonsense out there. Yeah, it's actually kind of striking. While the beta was like, yeah, it was not,

I wouldn't say compelling. There were some like, I mean, a lot of people made fun of like the, it was making like funny sort of summaries of messages, you know, like, which it does. I, upon downloading the, the commercial version, you know, the gold, go with a gold master or whatever they call the kind of

version they put out. It immediately, I immediately discovered something that was not only not helpful, but was actively causing me problems. They have a function, if you use any of the focus modes on your phone, I don't know if you do, but I do. I do, definitely. I have like a focus mode for day

and a focus mode for sleep basically, and that's it. And there's a feature in focus mode where it will like intelligently decide which notifications are important. And I spent an entire day missing the most important notifications that I could get from the most important people in my life because Apple intelligence decided that they were not,

they didn't need to be surfaced on the screen. There were no notifications, they were hidden notifications. So it changed the settings on it because like they're supposed to be some okay It changed me it changed without me doing any single thing at all Wow, like I downloaded it. I installed it I'm like, okay, you didn't change your your settings on your do not disturb or whatever at all No at all. And I was like, what is causing this?

I was like did they change the way something worked? Did they change like a setting here? Do I need to like use focus modes differently? And then finally I was like, I just digging in and like in focus mode, there's like a little, I'll tell you what it says. I'm gonna read you right now. I'm gonna tell you. I'm looking at it right now

because I actually have the focus mode open. Yeah, get ready. There's a, here it is. Do not disturb us on, yeah, okay. Intelligent breakthrough in silencing. This is a new feature at the top of your individual focus modes, not across focus modes, but for each one.

When clean is active, this is my, that's my daily one. Intelligently allow important notifications to interrupt you in silenced notifications, determined not to be important. Any notification specifically, a louder silence will always be a louder silence. So last night I ran a test. My parents are in town, um, staying at my house.

Uh, and, and Zelda, I was with them and Zelda and I was like, send me a notification, like, or send me a text message. And like I was, I was like changing all of these settings and I like wasn't getting them at all. They were just not appearing. From your parents? From my parents and from my daughter. Whoa. And you obviously you want your daughter

to be like coming through. Literally the absolute most important people. Zelda is part of my family plan within Apple. So it's not, it is like literally like, this is my daughter according to Apple's knowledge of my life, right? So I was like, what the hell is going on? And so finally the solution was to turn off the Apple intelligence feature.

And I think like, if I'm a, and I'm far from an average user, I'm like a total psycho, bleeding edge, weirdo. Like not even close to an average user. And if for me, I experienced such a perplexing and negative effect of having done nothing except turn on Apple intelligence features, I do question like if this was a ready for prime time feature at all and why they have rolled it out.

I mean, it feels like a real bandwagon jumper if I've ever seen one from Apple. And they actually are historically not bandwagon jumpers. They are historically- Right, the whole case with why this took so long with why they were like, okay, we're gonna roll out the Apple intelligence like a month late and we're gonna take our time

because we do things when we do it, it's gonna be perfect and it's gonna be great. We're not first, but we're the best. That's their line. I would argue that for the first time in a very long time, Apple has done something that is like completely and sort of brazenly undercooked, like a bad experience undercooked,

does not improve or provide anything meaningful to its very, very broad audience, but has been added for the purpose of keeping up with the Joneses, has been added for the purpose of saying, we do AI too. And it is like, it is both a, I think, pretty serious indictment of the capabilities of AI

implemented in, because I had high hopes for Apple's AI endeavors actually. Yeah, me too, I was really excited about it. I bought a new phone. I think it's an indictment of how useful AI actually is on a surface level and a really serious indictment of Apple's current state of operation, which is like, if they're playing like, yeah, me too,

or keeping up with the Joneses on features that are super duper undercooked and in some ways actually a negative experience for users, it says a lot about where they're at as a business and as a innovator. And it's not, it's not saying good things. I would say it was letting in just just so I know I was letting it wasn't letting in texts from your daughter, but did it let in something else that like you're like, why do I care?

I'm trying to think it's possible. I mean, right now I'm like trying to think back of what text messages did I see? I definitely saw, I have like a few medication notifications that are like not obviously text related, but they're like, hey, you're supposed to take this pill at this time, like my vitamins. They're like, take your vitamins at like 10 a.m.

or something, you know? That did this Apple intelligence thing, which I quite like, which is like it made it glow. And it's like, this might be important, which is like a funny. It's like this may be important. It's like, OK, is it important or not? You're the fucking computer. I love that. It's it's it's

hearing artificial intelligence, like, tell me if you think it's important. Well, it doesn't know because it doesn't know anything. But yes, possible. That some of the notifications that did break through were like, Kamala, like, we need your money right now. Like, this is like, I don't know if I get any more texts. I'm voting forever. Doesn't text me. I'm joking. That's a stream, but I understand. I've got a lot. I got crazy text from the campaign. They're like, they're wild. They're like breakup text.

They're like, why haven't you called me? I'm like, dude, what is going on? Like, stop. So it's possible I got some stuff like that, but did not get messages from my dad, my mom or my daughter. And that is like I tested like in person testing. Like, did you send me a message? Yes. Didn't see it.

Didn't vibrate. Didn't make a noise. Didn't pop up. Even when I had the phone on or off, it was, like, did you send me a message? Yes, didn't see it. Didn't vibrate, didn't make a noise, didn't pop up. Even when I had the phone on or off, it was just like, this is hidden now, it's not important. And by the way, here's the really interesting thing. I would understand if Apple intelligence was like, well, it's working hours, you know, it's like nine to five. Like you don't wanna get interrupted with like family stuff.

Right, full estate. You don't want your child to interrupt you. Your needy child. Who's 10 years old and Apple knows she's 10 because that information is like stored in like the family plan stuff when you like set it up for a kid. This was at like seven or eight o'clock at night.

It was still doing this. That was when I was like actually like something really weird is going on. I had people texting me all day who are both in business and personal life important to me. I'm gonna text you right now. Yeah, text me right now. Let's do the podcast text.

I turned it off. Actually, wait, hold on. While we're doing this, let me turn it on. I'm gonna turn it on, okay? Let's just see. You text me. It's turned on. I've turned on Intelligent Text Detection

or whatever they call it. If it's intelligent, this is coming through. This is so important, this text. Okay, yeah. I'm gonna show you. Here's what my phone looks like. There's my phone right there. There's no, you see there's no notifications there.

I mean, granted this wasn't important, but you know. But I saw the text on my computer come through. Okay. It hit it, it hit it here. So it hit it behind my like, you have to scroll up to your notifications to see it or whatever. You have to pull up your notifications

specifically to see it. Our producer is texting you as well. Okay, great. Here, yeah, just send a message. This is important. You would think Apple intelligence would go, oh, maybe flag that one. Again, no notifications on my phone.

And so this is I look, I don't want to I don't want to go on too long of a rant, though I think this is I think I turned it off, by the way, because I don't want to miss anything. I got that I got that one vibrated as soon as I turned it off. Yeah, help. But this is this is I mean, this is crazy. This is like the most powerful, the richest tech company in the world, as far as I know. Does anybody have a larger market cap in tech than Apple? No. Right.

And they're like, this is their flagship device, their most important device is the iPhone. They've integrated this into services all throughout the phone. And it is like just on some fundamental level, like a kind of a huge failure, in my opinion, like this could not be pleasing to people. Right. So I was talking the whole time I was on my my Austin reporting trip, I was driving a lot.

So I kept asking Siri for things like, hey, you know, how far is this or what temperature is it here or how do I get get to this? And just like, stonewalled, just like nothing, nothing. It couldn't answer anything. Like couldn't tell me anything. It would, I was like, you know, it'd be like, yeah, because I was driving, it wouldn't tell me anything. It would just send me a link. Yeah. It was so useless. I don't know that driving thing is a setting, but I will tell you that the Siri stuff is especially aggravating to me. I don't wanna be like, I don't wanna just spend

like an Apple complaint session or whatever, which you know. And it might get better. Maybe next week, like we're gonna, you know. I'm sure it might, anything might get better. That's true. Like my shoes might be more comfortable tomorrow, but like if they feel bad, they feel bad today, I won't use them.

And like, I will probably put them back in the box and return them. Right. So, I think saying things might be better is awesome for a general vibe. It's not awesome for a product that's currently in a mass market production situation. And I think it's a, I mean, more than a problem with AI,

it feels like a problem for Apple that if this is their big, exciting, new cutting edge feature. And like, I'm sure there are, uh, I'm sure there are apologists who will talk about the kind of future. This is like to me, the new thing with Apple people and Apple generally is they're like, well, it's not about this product. It's like the Apple, the vision pro we were talking about last week, right? Where it's like, it's not about this product, it's like the Apple, the Vision Pro, which we were talking about last week, right? Where it's like, it's not about what this version does,

it's about it setting the stage for the future. And it's like, why don't you just work on it until it's good and then release that version. Some things you don't have to iterate in public. Some things you can not iterate in public. You can make them better. If they're good, make them better. This is like, it's not good and it could be good.

And it's like, well, but I think about that. I think this about, I gotta tell you, I was using Google's new, I also have a Pixel. I was using their new AI assist, their Gemini assistant. And you've written about this, that the way AI assistants have become worse. Right. They used to be good for a hot second there.

There was like a high watermark somewhere like five years ago. There are things that Gemini won't do that are like crazy basic things that you should be able to do that I think the assistant used to be able to do that I think the assistant used to be able to do. Right. Like Gemini can't play music on anything other than like it would not play music on other services for me. Really? It wouldn't integrate Spotify? Like, yeah, it had like Spotify might've been integrated. I don't think so. It kept trying to play things on YouTube music is what it was doing. I mean, a lot of times that's like the original setting. I remember when I got my Google's,

like the Google Assistant's at home, you have to like make it, because they want to go to Google services. Everything will come up as YouTube and then you have to like change it. So the default is Spotify. The default is something that isn't theirs. Yeah, here's good.

Gemini can't play music through other apps other than YouTube music. This is on Reddit. So Assistant Gemini opens YouTube music instead YouTube music. This is on Reddit. So, assistant Gemini opens YouTube music instead of Spotify. This is a Google help. Assistant getting worse. This is two weeks ago.

It's so funny because the top use cases for AI, or sorry, for the assistants, are these really basic things like what's the weather, play music, tell me the news of the day. The real simple stuff that it was really good at for a minute there, and then now they're getting rid of the thing that the vast majority of people use it for in hopes that this other better gen AI thing

will be more useful. But it's like, don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. We like that. So people are literally on Reddit going, here's how you switch back from Gemini to Google Assistant. I have to tell you, in some basic testing of Siri with Apple Intelligence, or whatever amount it has, it definitely is colored like Apple Intelligence.

And the new Gemini Assistant or whatever on a Pixel phone, I would describe the experiences as markedly worse and slower, which is not the way technology is supposed to move. And like it is, it really feels like there's something fundamentally flawed in how people, how major tech companies are approaching the use of quote unquote AI, which does not seem intelligent at all. Like it's supposed to make things easier that are hard. Like I should, it should be very easy for it to go,

hey, Josh has a Spotify account. Josh usually listens to music on Spotify. Like I wanted to know this much about me and it should on an Apple phone, it should be able to share this information anonymously just for the purposes. This is what he usually does. Nine times out of 10 that in terms of app time spent And it should on an Apple phone. It should be able to share this information anonymously. Just for the purposes. This is what he usually does. Nine times out of 10 in terms of app time spent on music apps,

Spotify is his preferred. He's asking for me to play a song. I'm going to play it on the thing that he obviously prefers. And it's like, not only does it not do that, certainly it doesn't do it on. I mean, Siri may do it a little bit better. Let me actually see what happens. I was actually going to try that.

Let me try that. Hey, Siri, play the new Tyler the Creator album. Now playing Chromacopia by Tyler the Creator on Spotify. OK. Siri did it. Siri did what I want. When I tried to do it on Gemini, it was, is it actually playing?

It's not actually playing though. No, it's playing. Okay, good. Great record by the way. All right. Incredible album and I highly recommend everybody listen to it. Okay. But yeah, but Gemini didn't do it

and in fact tried to default to YouTube music and also got like the stuff wrong that I asked it to do. So I think like, I think we're at a like very strange and critical and perhaps disturbing juncture in technology where the buzzwords are more important at this point than any actual experience for a user. And I think we actually, for a while, there are places where you can point to it. Certainly there's like photo stuff and like Samsung and Samsung's always doing stuff where it's like,

yeah, nobody, that's like not a great experience and nobody cares about it. Or they're like, you can take a picture of the moon. And it's like, it's a fake moon. And you're like, okay, you really can't take a picture of the moon. But more often than not in the last like decade or so, there's been a lot of stuff where Apple's like,

this camera is way better. And there have been leaps in that or like, you know, it's, you know, the Safari is more capable of doing X, Y or Z now. And it's like it is. I think this is a very disturbing trend that says a lot about the leadership of these companies that they're valuing this, these, these, these buzzwords and he's these kind of like broken experiences that seem to, they're trying to indicate we did it, we're there, we made something new,

but doesn't actually provide, like really actually in some ways degrades the experience for users. And the apologists for it are gonna do the same thing. This is the thing that a lot of Elon Musk fans do is they're like, okay, well, you know, like maybe, maybe my car will like, you know, cut off my hand if I put it in the trunk or, you know, doesn't break

or whatever, or, you know, kills people. But like in the future, it will mean X, Y, and Z. And like it's paving the way for this greater good. But in the present, we're kind of being like the test dummies and beta testing it, but it's like, we're not seeing the great bigger But in the present, we're kind of being like the test dummies and beta testing it. But it's like, we're not seeing the great bigger vision in the future. And that's where Apple's hoping to go, too, I guess,

is like everything's going to be AI. Everything's going to be thought for for you. But now it sucks. And it's actually notably regressing. It's a turn off. It's a turn off. It's a turn off. It's not doing.

I think of the turn off as a feature and a turnoff as like a, as a sign that anybody's really like pushing forward. I don't think it's like, I mean, the Tesla argument, there is some, I certainly will, like, we know how to make cars, you know, internal combustion engine cars, and we can make them, people can make them pretty well, and electric cars are new,

and I totally accept that, like, there is a balance of, and I say this as a guy who had two Teslas in a row, there's a balance of, hey, we're trying something new, and it's not gonna work exactly the way the old thing did, and I can make it legitimate, like, I can tell you, I hated

some things about how the Tesla's operated, but I can accept actually the things that were the worst were the ones that had no reason to change. I can accept the ones that had a reason to change and go, this isn't what I'm used to. And it might be different or less comfortable or whatever, but there's a clear truth. Like the acceleration on a Tesla makes me somewhat carsick, makes everybody who's in the car carsick, even on like the softer acceleration mode. There's something about the way an electric car drives,

the kind of lack of... Because it doesn't like gain, right? It could just go from... It's sort of instantaneous acceleration, instantaneous braking. I get that, yeah. And they have actually made modes that soften the experience, but there's still something kind of feels fundamentally different.

And I get that as we like make new types of like motors and new types of cars, the driving experience is going to change. And you may see it like there may be some negative side effects, but like the overall positive impact, like I actually believe say what you will about Elon Musk and the way Teslas are made and the way they drive, that them popularizing electric cars, even as weird and different as they were,

is like one of the most, I think, important developments in like modern technology. And I think is a huge deal for it. Now, I'm not saying it's like a perfect solution for a lot of the problems of pollution and climate change and stuff like that, or certainly doesn't help with things like congestion in major cities, but it definitely pushes a technology forward

that had never really made any significant commercial leaps. And so- Right, and I think Elon Musk gets a lot of goodwill because of that, and a lot, like his fans stick up for him because of that, because this is a big real move. And it's real, like his fans like stick up for him because of that, because like this is a big real move. And it's real and it's real. Like, and he may not have invented the car, but he definitely helped to market it and popularize its appeal to a larger group of people. And there's no taking that away in my opinion. But like,

but so, but like that's a place where I'm like, okay, I get it. Like, wow, I never have to put gas in this thing. Like I plugged this in like an iPhone and then I leave in the morning and I don't have to think about it at all. And it costs way less to fuel it. And it's way easier for me from a convenience perspective. And it, yeah, it drives a little weird. This is like things that were good got worse

for no perceivable reason, except that you, like if the only thing that the car, the only thing, let's just say the that The tesla was not an electric car But he love muscles like i'm gonna make a self-driving thing i'm gonna make this car so it drives itself and you're like okay It's the same internal combustion or whatever And they're like well the self-driving doesn't work it keeps crashing into things but someday No notable

crashing into things, but someday. No notable improvement. It'd be like, not only do I have the same car that uses the same gas and is just as like polluting and kind of a pain in the ass to have to refuel, but now also like the new mode they said was really good, like crashed into a tree or whatever. And it's like totally unreliable and like might run into a person. And you'd be like, yeah, I don't see that. There's not a balance here. Like the negatives are an in-service of some sort of some better, like, yeah, I don't see the, there's not a balance here. Right, the negatives are an in-service

of some sort of, some better like, you know, paradigm. They might be, but in the current iteration, there's also nothing to weigh out. It's like, oh, like Apple made a better camera, so I should have a shittier notification experience because the Apple intelligence doesn't know what's important to me. Like you've made the experience worse

for no clear upside, therefore I think. Just to say we have, we are an AI phone. That's their upside. Yeah, the calculation is off and for a consumer and for what it means for these products, does not strike me as encouraging. Give me one feature, tell me one. I have yet to see one meaningful feature on the phone where

I'm like, damn, they really helped me out here. Right. You know, I'm sorry. A bit of a rant there. A little bit of a rant. No, no, no. Totally. It just made me think of I sent you a picture this weekend or earlier this week of a Tesla

I saw in Austin, and it's had bumper stickers all over it, like apologizing for itself. It was like, a Tesla, I know. No, it's crazy. It was like, I bought this before he was an asshole or whatever. And it's, yeah, it is, yeah, that's a weird one. I know we talk about, we talk about this stuff a lot,

like Elon Musk a lot. He is obviously like one of the few truly like, I mean, he is good at getting people's attention, whether you like it or not. I mean, he's got like six businesses, he's a billionaire, he's making a lot of moves. It's like, you have to talk about it because he's doing so many things

in so many places related to the things we cover. Right, it's true. And it's, I guess, inescapable that we're gonna be confronted with that for the foreseeable future. Right. There's actually an interesting story about just on the pure business side of, I know we talk about Twitter all the time, which is only important to us and nobody else in the world, basically.

But we did a story, I think Luke wrote it, Luke Kawa, that for at least for a brief period of time. So Fidelity said, who invested in Elon Musk's Twitter takeover, said that basically he has deleted about 80% of value from the company. And I think it's- He bought for $44 billion back in 2022. Yeah, $44 billion. And at the time of the writing, this was on the 28th, so a few days ago, the company was,

the Fidelity's Blue Chip Fund said it was worth 9.4 billion. And at the same time, Trump's, Trump Media and Technology Group, DJT, traded on the symbol DJT, was worth, had a market cap of 9.48 billion. So- Oh, wow48 billion. So. Oh wow, amazing.

So you're saying Donald Trump's truth social was worth more than Twitter. Yeah, more than Twitter, which again, 80% of its value wiped out in the last couple of years. Also, I mean, what's notable is like, truth is actually like a unbelievably failing business with almost no revenue. If you look at their numbers, I mean, is actually like a unbelievably failing business with almost no revenue. If you look at their numbers, I mean, just purely like a bad business, like completely

pumped up on like Trump fumes, which like, fair enough, like if you're speculating and you think you can make some money off of the dips and the rises, like go, you know, have at it, but yeah, it's sort of staggering to think about that kind of like dismantling a value like that. Not that it's like, again, the most important thing in the world or not that it's like even affecting most human beings on the planet. It just is like a striking example.

By the way, I should say as of the time of this recording, DJT I think has like a seven something billion market cap. So Twitter is- X is winning again. X is back on top in terms of like the bottom of the barrel, it's like slightly higher up in the barrel than the truth is, truth social. Like, you know, but it's not a great look.

I wouldn't say it's, you know, a good sign. And just reading the the character limit Twitter book, just like how easy Elon Musk thought it was going to be to like increase Twitter's revenue, like, but like the first thing, things he did was like make it unpalatable to advertisers, you know, a lot of hate speech, just tell advertisers to go fuck themselves. And then also like, and then he like instituted the, the premium or whatever, you know, pay for blue check market.

That doesn't seem to be doing very well either. That's stagnating. I don't think, I don't think social media is his forte. I mean, I don't, I just don't think that's like. He likes it. Sure he might. I mean, we've talked about this so much. It's not even worth wasting breath on, but no, I think, and I will say this,

especially during this election cycle, I am increasingly, like I have been using Twitter. I kind of took a break from it for a while. Just like, there was so much weird racist stuff on it and just ugly behavior. I was like, I don't wanna even be in this environment. And then I wanted to, you know, I have a decent, you know, following there, whatever.

You know, and like, I was like, well, I should talk about the stories we're doing and I should try to participate in that conversation because there's still people are still there. I have to say, I feel really strongly. I've set a five minute limit for myself on my phone, by the way, for using it for using that and threads, though. Yeah, that's right. They're both bad in some way. But that experience is like, I think I'm at the point where it's very likely and I'm not trying to make a grand statement about it,

but it's very likely that at some point I will stop using it and not return to it because I don't, I'm not feeling the upside of it. And I'm not feeling an upside at all. And I think if you can detect no upside from the use of a service or a social network or a product such as Apple intelligence. Might be time to turn it off. Might be time to flip the switch.

Can you turn off your phone? No, I mean, you can definitely turn off the features. I can delete X, X, God in heaven. OpenAI's search engine is now officially live. OpenAI is a Google search competitor, so you could search for live stuff as it's happening. Is it? It appears that, yep, it just happened.

When did this launch? Just now? I just saw the news 12 minutes ago. Oh my god. Let me see. OpenAI Search. Let's do it. OpenAI Search Engine.

Oh, wait. So it looks like it's only available. So ChatGPT is from the verge. ChatGPT is officially an AI-powered web search engine. The company is enabling real-time information and conversations for paid subscribers today. So chat GPT is this is from the verge chat GPT is officially an AI powered web search engine. The company is enabling real time information and conversations for paid subscribers today. Every time there's some new thing with open AI that is everybody's like, oh my God, this is a crazy new feature.

I keep like resubscribing. Yeah. And like every time I'm like, this is so not worth $20 a month. It's just so like the only use case I have really seen so far is like to try to have weird conversations with it. But I like, I am surprised at how slow it is to respond to things. And, you know, as the boil the ocean before it,

as a boil the ocean before it, you know, gets your answer for you as opposed to just like looking it up in search index. That's right. It has to destroy the planet to have like a casual conversation with me. All right. So the feature, it says it's going to be integrated into chat GPT's existing interface. So, and it'll decide like when to tap into web results based on the query,

like when it should go to, you know, real time things as opposed to whatever it's been trained on. I mean, that's nice on the query, like when they should go to real time things as opposed to whatever it's been trained on. I mean, that's nice, you know, like that sounds fine. It's so interesting because it's like, for most people you're not gonna think about, one thing that was really confusing with chat GPT in the beginning was like, most people would go and ask it a question, right?

And then I'd have to explain like, well, it's only pulling from training material that went through 2023, so it doesn't have up-to-date information. And now apparently it's gonna be able to just like query the web and pull new information. It's like most people don't care how the sausage is made. Like how it decides which is what.

Which is fine. They just care they get the information they want. Right, and this is a big deal then because like if it's able to pull out what people want, which is like, yeah, what was the stock price yesterday or what happened that made it do this? Like that's a big deal. I mean, after asking in a variety of ways, I got it to say something. First it gave me the same response as to whether or not the search new search features of chat GBT would affect it.

Then I said, does open AI news affect the stock price? And then it listed a bunch of things that it could affect the stock price of, Microsoft, Nvidia, Broadcom. Then I said, what about Google? And it said, open AI's advancements in artificial intelligence have influenced the stock prices of major tech companies, including Alphabet Inc,

Google's parent company. It doesn't suggest that today has anything to do with it. But it says, in response, it says, open AI developments contribute to a $15 billion decline in Alphabet's market capitalization, reflecting investor concerns over Google's competitive position in AI. It cites the Motley Fool for that.

In response, Alphabet has significantly invested in AI to enhance its products and services. The company reported a 35% increase in Google Cloud revenue in the third quarter of 2024. We just talked about that. Anyhow, so this is great. Whatever. I also, like I'm asking Chachi Petey and I said, has OpenAI's search product that came out today affected Alphabet's stock price?

And it says Alphabet stocks saw a slight dip today following the launch of OpenAI's new search tool. There you go. Pulling new stories today. So it's kind of working a lot more like Google works. I mean, I think that's preferable from a user perspective. Obviously, like how much is it? It seems to be here's what seems to be doing, which is good, which is it's citing sources that seem somewhat credible

and it's saying in line where the information is coming from, which is good. I mean, I'll just say like from an information perspective, it's not randomly citing everything from what I can tell. It's not like some guy on Reddit said, put glue on your pizza. And so we'll just cite that, which is bad. Like I want to be fair. The citations I'm getting are, you know, Benzinga, UPI, and Washington News

Insider. Okay, that's not great stuff. That's not great stuff. That's not, I want to see, you know, I want to- Is this on your personal device? No, this is just, yeah, this is just me using Japt 4.0. Okay. 4.0.

Um, I don't know. Well, those are not great. I mean, those are a varying quality. Let's just put it that way. Right. I would like to see the Verge story, for example, which is owned by Vox and I know they have a deal with it. From Bloomberg, it says OpenAI said its tool won't preference news publishers who partnered

with the company. So that's, they're saying that like they're not necessarily, just because they have a content licensing deal doesn't mean they're going to only include those companies, those news publications in the search. Do you have ideas about what you consider to be credible? Now, other people have, you know, some people think the Daily Wire is a very credible publication. They think Daily Wire is my source of truth when it comes to finding out what's going on in the news.

That's those people are reporting real, important, true stories without any political agenda or bent whatsoever. Now, that's empirically untrue. But the question is, like, how will they deliver those results? This, to me, is always the question, which is like when it comes down to delivering search results for people, how is it parsing what is true and what is not? How is it parsing what is important and what isn't?

How is it parsing what is credible and what is not credible? Like it parsing what is important and what isn't? How is it parsing what is credible and what is not credible? Like, it's either going to be good at that or it's not. I hope it's better than Google is at it. Because Google is really about gaming Google. Like, it has nothing to do with like, yes, it has to do with authority and credibility. And they have that somewhere in its rankings.

But a lot of it is also like, how good are you at gaming the SEO sort of like landscape. And anyway, one of the bigger things today was the Zuckerberg saying that Meta is training Lama for on models that are bigger than anything that I've seen reported for what others are doing, which is, you know, this is his slight dig at Musk, but like, he's just training and I'm more great. I can't wait till I can't't wait till Lama's really good at helping me get a notification or whatever.

Maybe they'll make up, maybe the Facebook can solve the who's important to you notification question, you know? Right, and then there was also just the Microsoft reported earnings and they, there's sort of a narrative shift happening where people were worried so much about like return on investment for AI and Microsoft is saying like, our problem is we can't grow fast enough. We can't like scale fast

enough to deal with demand, which is like a slight shift in like what people are talking about. That's why they're doing the nuclear reactors. Yep. We need more. They need more. Yeah. Okay. Should we do feature or bug? I think it's time. I think we should just get into the segment that we like to call feature or bug? I think it's time. I think we should just get into the segment that we like to call feature or bug.

Feature or bug, Apple intelligence. It's, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I shouldn't even be swearing. It's children listening to this, but it's a bug. It's a huge bug. Are children listening to this podcast really? Many small children listen to this podcast. Very popular amongst the eight to 10 set. No, it's a bug. It's buggy and it's a bug.

It wants to be. It's buggy and it's a bug. It's a bug that wants to be a feature. It's this bug that dreams of someday growing up and being a feature. I really did have some high hopes for this and I know they're rolling it out incrementally. It might get better, but like, so far as it stands, without any like, you know, wishful thinking, I have not, it's not worth the, you know, $1,200 or whatever I've spent for

this phone. Conceptually, it's a feature. Sure. To be clear, like, in the concept of it, it could be a feature. It's just in the execution, it's more like a feature. Sure, but actually. To be clear, in the concept of it, it could be a feature. It's just in the execution, it's more like a bug. Right, when you get the picture of the new building and you see all these people working on laptops and walking around and ideating how they imagine

it's gonna be, that's Apple's pitch deck. But what's the meme of like what this actually is, like how sad this actually is. Oh, I thought I was thinking about the meme where it's like the future city with the flying cars. And it's like, if we all, you know, if Apple intelligence, if we all had Apple intelligence or whatever,

and it's like the future city, that's like, that's like clean energy and flying cars. And anyhow, it's not that. Yeah, this is more like a little tiny dumpster fire. Yes, a tiny dumpster fire is exactly how I would describe it. I mean, it's not good. Search on ChatGPT, integrated in ChatGPT. What do you think?

It's a feature. I think it's a feature. I think it's an imp... I think it's... I think anything that competes with Google to make search better, now, does it make search better? Who knows, will there be a mass of users using it? No one's gonna pay, people aren't gonna pay $20 a month

for better search, they're just not. I know people, I know humanity. And I know if you can get- But if you happen to have already been paying for it. Sure, yeah, if you're already using the service, now you have search, that's awesome for you. What I do know is that the end game of chat GPT search, if it is successful and people like it,

is to create an ad-supported tier that is free to everyone. Because you can't compete with Google if you have to pay for the service. And so I think it's ultimately a feature if it's good. Because anything that challenges Google's search good because anything that challenges Google search dominance and anything that makes Google try to be better at search is a good thing. However, I do feel increasingly we are moving

towards a future where the things that you and I make and a lot of other people make, which is like content or websites or whatever, becomes like a, just a, just a feed somewhere to be piped into. Right. Just so they can pluck the answer out of it. Right. Which is like, but like, you know, there has to be, there has to be an exchange because you can't produce stuff that you need like that. You can't produce it for free. And what we've seen, why people, a lot of the reasons why people talk about content on the Internet is bad and it's all, you

can't trust it and this and that. It's like, yeah, because it's like a lot of it's produced for free and it's produced for reasons that are not ultimately good. And yeah, it just doesn't work. I mean, it just doesn't. That's like, I think that's a problem. And so, so it's ultimately, I think it's a feature to add it. It's good to have a competitor to Google. It's good if it can make search results better for like the broad base of humanity. It's like there are negatives to it, to it though, that I wouldn't even consider. I mean, are they bugs? Yeah, they're bugs. Like, but also like we're trying, we're

evolving, we're evolving our ideas of how things work in the world. And if the inevitability is that people don't visit other things anymore, we'll all have to make some interesting pivots, but no one's actually proven out that that is a totally successful model, and no one's proven out that it's not still useful to visit core sort of like places.

And so, you know, feature and bug to some degree. I agree. It's a feature. I think it's great that you could now use ChatGPT a lot more like you would use Google and just kind of ask it for things that are relevant to today. My big concerns are that it actually cites good articles. It's actually the thing that it's summarizing is actually from those articles because there's been

doubt in the past that it's actually pulling from the articles it's saying it's pulling it from and that it's appropriately describing them. And then just even choosing good news sources to begin with, because as I saw just in my search today, it was pulling kind of crappy news sources. So like just to say something authoritatively and to put links doesn't mean it's a correct answer. So generally feature with some, uh, bug surroundings, bug-like qualities. Um, a fun one. Just getting your kids dressed up for Halloween for school.

I had to do this this morning and it was like, I was like, this is taking longer than normal, but it's supposed to be fun. I like anything that the kids delight in. I think it's a feature, but I will say Zelda is going as Lydia from, um, from Beetlejuice because she just saw the original and then the sequel. Lydia is the Winona Ryder character. She got a dress, there's this like costume shop that's like, they're only open on certain days

and they have all these crazy like costumes. She went there and found a dress that's like the perfect like dress or whatever and they tailored it for her, which is like so exciting. We didn't try it on until this morning and the hole for the head, they had like stitched it too tightly. Oh no.

So her head literally wouldn't fit through. Like we finally like, you know, her mom like cut it open and like widened the stitching or whatever, but I was like, I don't know what to do here. This is far outside of my, so anyhow, I think it's a feature, but I say, I gotta say if you get anything tailored, and this is like the, like by far,

it wasn't. Check the size of your head. Check to make sure the head will fit through the head hole because otherwise you're going to be in big trouble. Yeah. I mean, I'm always realizing the things that are supposed to be fun end up being a lot more work. But for an adult, still overall for the adults, the delight of my child, he was really excited to be dressed up as a ninja this morning,

although he tried to bring his foam ninja swords and I was like, maybe let's not bring that to daycare. Yikes, yes, let's not because we live in a hell world where nobody can have fun anymore. Yeah, I just don't want to try to bonk kids over the head with a foam sword. The kids would love that.

Maybe, and the baby I just, I was like, nah, I'll wait till he knows what's going on. You're not gonna dress the baby up like a sandworm from dune or like He kind of looks like one but no I left it alone. Yeah, yes, and there's definitely a baby sandworm costume, right? This has to exist, you know our Executive editor Walt is going as a sandworm, right? Now I know and it's amazing

Feature that's that is a feature. That is a feature. All right, do we even have an Elon Musk tweet? Do we have tweets? Do we do under the bracket? I know you have one at least. I have one tweet. What is it? What is the tweet?

This is a pretty standard Elon Musk tweet. He's been doing, I think a lot of versions of this, but he said he's talking about the polymarket, the crypto-based betting thing where you're trying to figure out who's going to win the presidential election. Well, people are betting on who's going to win the presidential election. It has nothing to do with actual reality. Yeah, it has nothing to do with reality.

It's bad. It's bad. It's bad. Which is like, you know, that's fine. Bet on it. It's fine for betting, but it's not good for like, you know, information. It's not a poll. I think we've discussed this.

It's not a poll. It's just people putting money into a betting market. Right. On Polly market, you see Trump very high. Trump's not. It's just people putting money into a betting market, right on poly market. You see Trump very high Trump's Going to win. He's not just gonna win. He's gonna win by a massive percentage That's never before been seen in the history of American politics is gonna be 20 or 30 percent of the higher Percentage gonna be 60 70 percent of the country is voting for him. So this is obviously incorrect. Anyway, Elon Musk is waiting for it to be 69%. Really excited because he's a 14 year old boy. I yeah, that can go in the bracket for sure.

It's honestly one of his less horrific tweets. But here, here, here's another one from an hour ago. OK, this is the same old thing, but he says, X is where you can learn what is real. Legacy media lies licentiously. Ooh, lies licentiously. I would cut that out if I were editing him,

but no one's editing him. And he's retweeting Doge designer. Oh, he loves Doge designer. Right, the media claims that X is ineffective against the surge in US election misinformation. It's not only ineffective. The reality is that X remains ineffective against the surge in US election misinformation. It's not only ineffective. The reality is that X remains the number one source for news. It's not only not effective in combating misinformation.

It is a driver. It is a significant driver of misinformation. Everything's backwards. Everything he says is like the exact opposite of what is real. And it's very Trumpian. Because it's very Trumpian. Yeah. It sucks. All right. On that point, the next time we broadcast this, the next time we podcast, there will be... We'll know if Elon Musk is our president. We'll know if Elon Musk is in charge of all of science and technology at the head at the US government at the head of the US government, which is,

you know, like, we'll be a fun, it's gonna be a fun time to exist if that's the case. All right. Well, I think that's it for this week, Ronnie. Anything else from you? Any other important? That's it. Have a happy Halloween. Yeah. Have a happy Halloween. That is our show. We'll be back next week with more on it in a, in a, in a, I assume a very politically charged environment. And as always, we wish you and your family, the whole crew of little trick-or-treaters, the very best.