Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the
Speaker 1: tech are you. It's time for the tech news for
Speaker 1: the week ending Friday, June fourteenth, twenty twenty four. For
Speaker 1: all you gamers out there, this past weekend and following
Speaker 1: week was an absolute smorgas board of video game trailers
Speaker 1: as well as commercials for like gaming hardware, though no
Speaker 1: new consoles. I'm sad to say so. While E three
Speaker 1: is really most sincerely dead, we had Jeff Keeley's Summer
Speaker 1: Games Fest, we had the Ubisoft Forward Event, the PC
Speaker 1: Gaming Show, and the Xbox Showcase, and I'm probably missing
Speaker 1: a couple in there. Soon we're gonna have Nintendo Direct
Speaker 1: that has not yet happened. In fact, last I checked,
Speaker 1: they had not even mentioned what date that is going
Speaker 1: to happen on, but most people are expecting it to
Speaker 1: happen next week anyway. Tons of games have been announced,
Speaker 1: though not very many in the category of Triple A titles,
Speaker 1: apart from some of the Ubisoft stuff, like they had
Speaker 1: an Assassin's Creed title that kind of thing. It's been
Speaker 1: a rough few months for the games industry, largely because
Speaker 1: of layoffs and shutdowns. I'm specifically looking at you, Microsoft,
Speaker 1: But if you'd like to hear more about what was
Speaker 1: announced over the last few days, well, there's like tons
Speaker 1: of resources. You know. You could go to Polygon or
Speaker 1: ign just go to YouTube and do a search on
Speaker 1: these sorts of things, or you can listen to a
Speaker 1: show like the Besties podcast. And I don't have any
Speaker 1: connection with any of those things, by the way, I
Speaker 1: don't work with them, and I don't know them. I
Speaker 1: just I'm just a fan as well. So check those out.
Speaker 1: But now let's get to some tech news. Apple held
Speaker 1: its Worldwide Developers Conference or WWDC this week, and as
Speaker 1: I'm sure everybody anticipated, AI was foremost on the menu.
Speaker 1: When it came to keynotes and presentations. CEO Tim Cook
Speaker 1: took the stage and showed off how an AI boosted
Speaker 1: serie could do more complex tasks with features like emails, messages,
Speaker 1: and even third party apps. Not everyone is happy with
Speaker 1: Apple's recent decisions regarding AI. More on that in a second,
Speaker 1: but investors they were happy as a clam Apple saw
Speaker 1: its stock price go up enough to the point where
Speaker 1: the company bumped Microsoft off the top of its most
Speaker 1: Valuable Corporations list. Now Apple once again stands triumphant as
Speaker 1: the most valuable company in the world with evaluation of
Speaker 1: good golly like three point twenty nine trillion dollars. But
Speaker 1: back to the WWDC, Apple's version of AI stands for,
Speaker 1: of course, Apple Intelligence. Apple announced it was incorporating the
Speaker 1: GPT four oh large language model into its products so
Speaker 1: that the AI can help assist with specific user needs.
Speaker 1: Now this means that Apple has entered into a sort
Speaker 1: of partnership with open Ai, which you might recall is
Speaker 1: also working very closely with Microsoft because Microsoft initiated a
Speaker 1: ten billion dollar investment in open Ai. According to just
Speaker 1: Weatherbed of The Verge, Apple isn't handing out bucket loads
Speaker 1: of cash the same way Microsoft is, but rather, quote
Speaker 1: believes the exposure it's giving chat GPT is payment enough
Speaker 1: end quote. That's kind of funny. I've always said, you know,
Speaker 1: you can't live off exposure, but you sure can die
Speaker 1: from it anyway. Weatherbed says that Apple is reportedly in
Speaker 1: talks with other companies that have AI models, and the
Speaker 1: plan appears to be that Apple users will actually have
Speaker 1: options when it comes to whichever AI overlord they want
Speaker 1: to use, so those who prefer Google's Gemini AI could
Speaker 1: use that instead, for example, assuming a deal between Apple
Speaker 1: and Google through Apple set some expectations early with the
Speaker 1: AI talk, saying that these enhanced features will only be
Speaker 1: available on some hardware, mostly the newest and highest ended
Speaker 1: stuff like the iPhone fifteen Pro and the iPhone fifteen
Speaker 1: Pro Max models or Max and iPads that have at
Speaker 1: least an M one or later chip in them. Also,
Speaker 1: it will only work if the language on the device
Speaker 1: is set to English. Apple's presentation largely focused on context
Speaker 1: of use, meaning that let's say you launch an app
Speaker 1: and that you then ask that some information that's on
Speaker 1: a different app get incorporated into the one you're using.
Speaker 1: The AI would then handle what you want. So let
Speaker 1: me give you a hypothetical example. Let's say that I
Speaker 1: open up a messenger app and I want to send
Speaker 1: a link to a video that's in a different app, right, Like,
Speaker 1: I've got YouTube open on a different in one of
Speaker 1: the other apps, and I want to send a link
Speaker 1: to the YouTube video I was just watching to a
Speaker 1: friend of mine on message, and the AI would theoretically
Speaker 1: be able to suss all that out and save me
Speaker 1: the effort of figuring out how to do that myself,
Speaker 1: like to go in through the share feature on YouTube
Speaker 1: or whatever in order to pull the link and post
Speaker 1: it to my friend. I could just do it very
Speaker 1: quickly by asking the assistant to do it. Apple also
Speaker 1: showed off an AI image generation feature called gen Moji,
Speaker 1: and as that name suggests, it will let users generate
Speaker 1: an emoji that otherwise does not exist, so that you
Speaker 1: can suitably express whatever it is you're feeling without you know,
Speaker 1: having to use words. I mean, you do have to
Speaker 1: use words to generate the emoji in the first place,
Speaker 1: but then you won't be using words for whomever is
Speaker 1: on the receiving end of that, you know, custom made emoji.
Speaker 1: I guess I don't actually understand any of this because
Speaker 1: I was an English major. I still think writing actual
Speaker 1: letters is cool. But anyway, Apple announced this and lots
Speaker 1: more stuff at the WWDC this year, and it got
Speaker 1: developers and investors really excited. But it's not all good
Speaker 1: news for Apple. There's a growing anti trust lawsuit mounting
Speaker 1: against the company here in the United States. It's led
Speaker 1: by the US Department of Justice, and so far nineteen
Speaker 1: states as well as the District of Columbia have joined. Nevada, Massachusetts, Washington,
Speaker 1: and Indiana are the latest for states to get involved
Speaker 1: in this lawsuit. And it pretty much follows an argument
Speaker 1: that we have heard for years now in various variations.
Speaker 1: So Apple maintains a tight ecosystem, largely in an effort
Speaker 1: to maximize profits and to discourage competition. What's more, of
Speaker 1: these lawsuits say that Apple pairs that strategy with a
Speaker 1: decision to sell iPhones at higher prices, and this maximizes
Speaker 1: their profit margins, all the while forcing partners to pay
Speaker 1: hefty fees for the privilege of being allowed to play
Speaker 1: within Apple's sandbox. Apple has responded by saying, uh uh no,
Speaker 1: we don't. And plus, even if we did, that's not
Speaker 1: the definition of anti trust because no court has ever
Speaker 1: said that, so that could be a valid point. But
Speaker 1: you know, the interesting thing about courts is that they
Speaker 1: can make new interpretations of old laws. That's kind of
Speaker 1: what they do. So we'll have to see how this
Speaker 1: develops further. Meanwhile, in Japan, Apple will have to allow
Speaker 1: third party app stores and payment providers on iOS devices
Speaker 1: in order to comply with a new law passed by
Speaker 1: Japan's parliament. Google will also have to obey this law
Speaker 1: with its Android devices. And again, this follows a growing
Speaker 1: trend of regulators and other government officials cracking down on
Speaker 1: the walled garden approach that both Apple and Google have used.
Speaker 1: The companies have long argued that their policies protect consumers
Speaker 1: by preventing malicious actors from tricking people into downloading malware
Speaker 1: or sharing personal information with the wrong party, a claim
Speaker 1: that I think is only partly valid because both Google
Speaker 1: and Apple have a history of allowing third party apps
Speaker 1: that later turned out to be malicious. But we're seeing
Speaker 1: more governments say I'm not buying it. You do this
Speaker 1: so that you can maintain control over ecosystem and then
Speaker 1: profit off of other people's work. So by that, I
Speaker 1: mean Apple and Google both have a practice of collecting
Speaker 1: a percentage of every in app transaction for most apps,
Speaker 1: So regulators are saying this is kind of like the
Speaker 1: mobs skimming off of profits of businesses that the mob
Speaker 1: quote unquote protects. Now, I mentioned earlier that one person
Speaker 1: in particular isn't happy about the Apple and open Ai
Speaker 1: news and that happens to be our favorite Bunker's billionaire
Speaker 1: Elon Musk. You know, there's some weeks that I managed
Speaker 1: to do a whole news episode without talking about him
Speaker 1: at all. But today we've got a few stories that
Speaker 1: involve him, and I guess that's because I invoked his
Speaker 1: name when I did an episode earlier this week about
Speaker 1: the origins of Tesla. Anyway, Musk threatened to ban Apple
Speaker 1: computers and Apple devices from his various companies in the
Speaker 1: wake of the open Ai announcement. So if you recall,
Speaker 1: once upon a time, Elon Musk was a co founding
Speaker 1: member of the original incarnation of open ai, which at
Speaker 1: that time was a non profit dedicated to developing responsible
Speaker 1: and safe artificial intelligence. But then Musk stormed out of
Speaker 1: that organization, or perhaps he was encouraged to leave, and
Speaker 1: he says that his decision was due to open ai
Speaker 1: turning to the dark side of the force and embracing
Speaker 1: a for profit approach. More on that than just a bit. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Musk has been in a pretty darn public tiff with
Speaker 1: open ai ever since, and he's also building out his
Speaker 1: own AI company, which of course is called Xai. Musk
Speaker 1: has said that if Apple devices incorporate open AI into them,
Speaker 1: which is what is now happening, then that would mean
Speaker 1: the Apple devices would pose quote an unacceptable security violation
Speaker 1: end quote. And yikes, that's got to be tough because,
Speaker 1: of course, now Microsoft also has tight integration with open AI.
Speaker 1: I mean, the company is launching the Copilot plus PC
Speaker 1: line next week. So if Microsoft and Apple are both
Speaker 1: working closely with open AI, and open ai cannot be trusted,
Speaker 1: I guess that means everyone working for one of Musk's
Speaker 1: companies is going to have to switch to a Google
Speaker 1: Chrome computer or something. I mean, there's also Linux and such,
Speaker 1: but you know, everyone switching I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I would imagine the boffins at SpaceX might need something
Speaker 1: with a little bit more oomph than a Google Chrome computer. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Will Musk actually put a ban on Apple devices in
Speaker 1: place at Tesla and SpaceX and Eurolink and XAI and
Speaker 1: x Perhaps I've given up predicting on what he will
Speaker 1: and will not do. I imagine that if he does put
Speaker 1: it in place, it won't apply to him. That seems
Speaker 1: to be the way rules work in his world is
Speaker 1: those are things for other people, Okay, We've got lots
Speaker 1: more to cover, including some more Elon Musk news, But
Speaker 1: before I get to all that, let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break to think our sponsors. So related to Elon Musk say,
Speaker 1: he had previously brought a lawsuit against open Ai. He
Speaker 1: argued that open ai had violated the founding principles of
Speaker 1: the original nonprofit and that the company was purposefully withholding
Speaker 1: the most useful and advanced AI tools for high paying customers.
Speaker 1: And that does seem to fly in the face of
Speaker 1: the open part of open ai, right, Like, if you're
Speaker 1: an open company, you're not withholding stuff for the folks
Speaker 1: who just pay you more. But then open ai has
Speaker 1: now published a blog post that included a bunch of
Speaker 1: emails written by Elon Musk, and those emails indicated that
Speaker 1: back when Musk was part of open ai, he not
Speaker 1: only knew that open ai would need to generate an
Speaker 1: enormous amount of money to pay for AI research and development,
Speaker 1: but he also wanted to be the one to lead
Speaker 1: those efforts. The emails show that Musk agreed that open
Speaker 1: ai would not be able to just raise money from donations.
Speaker 1: It would have to create a means of generating actual
Speaker 1: revenue in order to survive. That's essentially what the for
Speaker 1: profit arm of open Ai was founded on, although lots
Speaker 1: of other folks have questioned as whether or not that
Speaker 1: means the nonprofit arm is the prime beneficiary of all
Speaker 1: that revenue. The blog post seems to say, Hey, Elon,
Speaker 1: this thing you're complaining about, it's the same thing you
Speaker 1: wanted to do. Whether that had any influence on the
Speaker 1: decision or not, I can't say, but Elon Musk's lawyers
Speaker 1: have now dropped the lawsuit not long after that blog
Speaker 1: was published. Open Ai and Musk himself have remained fairly
Speaker 1: quiet about all of that. Now, we're not done with
Speaker 1: Musk just yet. Some former SpaceX workers have filed a
Speaker 1: lawsuit against him for sexual harassment and retaliation. Gebby Delvall
Speaker 1: of The Verge reports that eight former engineers are part
Speaker 1: of this lawsuit, and they say that Musk quote knowingly
Speaker 1: and purposefully created an unwelcome, hostile work environment based upon
Speaker 1: his conduct of interge into the workplace, vile sexual photographs,
Speaker 1: memes and commentary that demeaned women and or the LGBTQ
Speaker 1: plus community, which is a big old yuck. The lawsuit
Speaker 1: argues that Musk is responsible for creating and fostering a
Speaker 1: hostile work environment at SpaceX one that encouraged a sexist
Speaker 1: culture within the company. The lawsuit even claims that a
Speaker 1: video featuring C suite executives appeared to mock situations involving
Speaker 1: sexual misconduct, which is a big old' yikes. I mean, y'all.
Speaker 1: One thing all iHeart employees have to do every year
Speaker 1: is go through a training course about appropriate conduct. And
Speaker 1: I cannot tell you how horrified I would be if,
Speaker 1: in the course of that training we were to see
Speaker 1: our company's executives acting out inappropriate scenarios while making jokes
Speaker 1: about it. Of course, that does not happen here. It's
Speaker 1: just unthinkable to me that it happens anywhere, let alone
Speaker 1: it's SpaceX. Moving away from Elon, let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about Microsoft. The company has faced mounting criticism
Speaker 1: regarding an unres least Windows eleven feature called Windows Recall
Speaker 1: and If You Recall. This feature essentially takes snapshots of
Speaker 1: what's going on on your PC and then keeps those
Speaker 1: snapshots as a record. So hypothetically, if for some reason
Speaker 1: you needed to know more about something you once did
Speaker 1: on your PC in the past. You could search through
Speaker 1: those snapshots for answers, but critics worried that the feature
Speaker 1: would become a huge, juicy target for malicious actors. Microsoft
Speaker 1: stress that all Windows Recall functions would just take place
Speaker 1: on the native machines, meaning the information would not get
Speaker 1: shared to the cloud or anything like that. But this
Speaker 1: week the company also faced questioning from US Congress regarding
Speaker 1: how Microsoft is handled, or rather failed to handle, various
Speaker 1: security crises. So I'm guessing all of that convinced Microsoft
Speaker 1: that maybe, just maybe, it would not be the best
Speaker 1: time to release Windows Recall, even if the tool is
Speaker 1: relatively secure, due to those concerns. So next week, on
Speaker 1: June eighteenth, Microsoft still plans to launch its Copilot plus
Speaker 1: PC program, in which new Windows PCs will have the
Speaker 1: Copilot AI more tightly integrated into them, but the Windows
Speaker 1: Recall feature will be absent. The company does say that
Speaker 1: Windows Recall will get rolled out at some future date,
Speaker 1: but did not give a timeline as to when that
Speaker 1: will happen. Brandon viglia Rollo of The Register reports that
Speaker 1: Weimo is responding to an incident that happened with one
Speaker 1: of its driverless taxis back on May twenty first in Phoenix, Arizona.
Speaker 1: So apparently that incident involved a Weimo vehicle driving into
Speaker 1: a wooden telephone pole at around eight miles per hour. Now,
Speaker 1: I'll remind you that wooden telephone poles are inanimate, and
Speaker 1: they are stationary objects, and they're ones that you would
Speaker 1: expect a driverless car to naturally avoid. Weimo claimed that
Speaker 1: the problem came from quote a mapping and software issue
Speaker 1: end quote. No one was harmed in the incident, so
Speaker 1: that's good at least. But even though this was a
Speaker 1: minor accident in the grand scheme of things, it comes
Speaker 1: at a time when cities are scrutinizing driverless proms a
Speaker 1: little bit more closely than they used to. Weaimo is
Speaker 1: in the midst of a software recall on its automated
Speaker 1: driver system, so we'll see whether or not this leads
Speaker 1: to bigger headaches for driverless taxi efforts. In general, I
Speaker 1: think there's a growing skepticism around those. Natalie Cratch of
Speaker 1: The Wrap has an upsetting piece about the New York
Speaker 1: Times as art department. So recently the newspaper reduced its
Speaker 1: art production department by more than half, from sixteen positions
Speaker 1: down to seven. The New York Times Guild alleges that
Speaker 1: this move is in an effort to offload work that
Speaker 1: would normally go to human artists to AI instead. This
Speaker 1: is ryan line with the concerns many have expressed for
Speaker 1: the creative industries as a whole that companies will favor
Speaker 1: AI over human creatives. That's a huge problem for many reasons,
Speaker 1: not the least of which is that it puts creatives
Speaker 1: out of work. But also, you know, consider that the
Speaker 1: training methods for image generating and image altering AI often
Speaker 1: involved feeding countless exams samples of art and human created
Speaker 1: work to the AI model. So it's entirely possible that
Speaker 1: the stuff the AI does will at least in part,
Speaker 1: be based off the work of the very human beings
Speaker 1: who are laid off in the first place, which is
Speaker 1: kind of like being fired and then replaced by a
Speaker 1: really crappy copy of yourself. But a spokesperson for The
Speaker 1: Times now has said that AI did not factor into
Speaker 1: this decision at all, and that in fact, the employees
Speaker 1: were offered a buyout and the whole decision to downsize
Speaker 1: the department reflects a push to create a more efficient
Speaker 1: process that doesn't need as many staff to do its work,
Speaker 1: though some have said that that's because of the incorporation
Speaker 1: of AI tools. So the story is still unfolding. And
Speaker 1: then a story that makes me wonder how this actually works.
Speaker 1: We have a piece by Takeshi Nhirabi of the Asian
Speaker 1: Shimbun about a company using AI in order to protect
Speaker 1: its customer service staff from angry customers. All right, so
Speaker 1: the story goes that Soft Bank, which is a massive
Speaker 1: conglomerate that's had a bit of a roller coaster of
Speaker 1: a history in recent years, has rolled out an AI
Speaker 1: tool that acts as a go between for staff and customers.
Speaker 1: So the idea is that the AI receives the angry
Speaker 1: calls of customers seeking a solution and turns them into
Speaker 1: a calm and reasonable voice, or at least one that
Speaker 1: doesn't turn into an intimidating, angry tirade. So you know,
Speaker 1: a customer could be screaming, listen, you idiot, I'm telling
Speaker 1: you that I need a solution, but the AI might
Speaker 1: turn that into could you please help me resolve this issue?
Speaker 1: Actually that's not true. According to the article, the AI
Speaker 1: doesn't actually change the wording at all, So if someone
Speaker 1: calls a staff an idiot, that idiot is still going
Speaker 1: to get through in the message. But what it does
Speaker 1: do is it changes the pitch and the tone of
Speaker 1: the voice. So presumably the person on the other end
Speaker 1: of the line, if they start getting no a bit heated,
Speaker 1: the AI might start increasing the pitch of their voice
Speaker 1: up to chipmunk levels, because you know, it's hard to
Speaker 1: feel stressed out about a chipmunk being angry at you. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: the developer said one of the challenges was figuring out
Speaker 1: how much anger to leave in because obviously, if a
Speaker 1: customer is getting angry, the staff member needs to know
Speaker 1: about in order not to escalate matters further. And apparently
Speaker 1: SoftBank hopes to make this tool a product it can
Speaker 1: sell to other companies starting next year. Okay, some article
Speaker 1: recommendations for y'all. First up is a piece by Kyle
Speaker 1: Chaika in The New York Are titled is Google SEO
Speaker 1: Gaslighting the Internet? So the article describes how some leaked
Speaker 1: internal Google documents paint a very different picture of how
Speaker 1: search works than what Google has said to the general public.
Speaker 1: It's well worth a read. Next up is Ron Amadeo's
Speaker 1: piece for Ours Technica titled the Google Pay App Is Dead,
Speaker 1: which tells the story of how Google put to rest
Speaker 1: yet another Google feature in favor of another one that
Speaker 1: does pretty much the same thing. And this is like
Speaker 1: the fourth time that's happened. And finally, Ashley Blanger has
Speaker 1: another piece on Ours Technica. This one's titled Microsoft in
Speaker 1: Damage Control Mode says it will prioritize security over AI.
Speaker 1: Now I alluded to this earlier in the episode. Microsoft
Speaker 1: has had to face questioning from Congress about some recent
Speaker 1: security breaches that have affected thousands of government staff, and
Speaker 1: the piece raises serious questions about whether the US government
Speaker 1: has put too much faith and responsibility on the shoulders
Speaker 1: of Microsoft, and whether Microsoft has behaved responsibly in the
Speaker 1: wake of cybersecurity breaches. According to one whistleblower, Microsoft made
Speaker 1: the conscious decision to not respond and to not reveal
Speaker 1: certain attacks in an effort to avoid putting these lucrative
Speaker 1: government contracts in jeopardy, which is a heck of an accusation,
Speaker 1: so well worth a read. That's it. I hope you
Speaker 1: had a great week. I hope you have an even
Speaker 1: better weekend. And I'll talk to you again, really soon.
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