Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the tech are you? It is time for
Speaker 1: the tech news for Tuesday, February seven three and I'm
Speaker 1: late to the game on talking about this, but here
Speaker 1: in the United States, one of the big news stories
Speaker 1: at the end of last week was the discovery of
Speaker 1: and subsequent destruction of a Chinese made balloon that drifted
Speaker 1: across the United States West coast to East coast. US
Speaker 1: officials say the balloon was a spy vehicle. Chinese officials
Speaker 1: claim it was for science rather than surveillance. It's all
Speaker 1: a moot point now, because late last week the US
Speaker 1: military shot down the balloon off the coast of South Carolina.
Speaker 1: It's turned into a giant political matter here in the
Speaker 1: United States because conservatives are arguing that the President was
Speaker 1: indecisive and delayed too long before taking action. The president
Speaker 1: says he gave the order to shoot down the balloon
Speaker 1: as soon as the military deemed it would be safe
Speaker 1: to do so and would have the best chance of
Speaker 1: retrieving the balloons payload to make sure you know that,
Speaker 1: in fact, this is like an espionage device, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure we're gonna see both major parties here in the
Speaker 1: United States try to use this event to earn political
Speaker 1: points with their respective basis, and it's all very exhausting,
Speaker 1: so I ain't gonna give it any more air time.
Speaker 1: Like I don't object to incorporating politics into tech stories,
Speaker 1: because the two do have overlap. I mean, one affects
Speaker 1: the other and vice versa, but this is getting to
Speaker 1: a point where he gets so petty. It's just exhausting. However,
Speaker 1: what I will do is plan a future episode about
Speaker 1: spy balloons and their history, because that's actually really neat stuff.
Speaker 1: So we will do that and and avoid the kind
Speaker 1: of weird argumentative politics that we're hearing right now in
Speaker 1: the States. Last week, I also talked about how a
Speaker 1: lot of publicly traded tech companies here in the US
Speaker 1: we're holding earnings calls with their investors. On Thursday, we
Speaker 1: got the Triple A calls, that would be the Amazon,
Speaker 1: Alphabet and Apple earnings calls, and I suspected the call
Speaker 1: showed that these companies are facing some challenges to have
Speaker 1: investors a little concerned in some cases. Apple reported that
Speaker 1: it had a revenue drop, so not a loss. It
Speaker 1: didn't operate at a loss, just a drop in revenue.
Speaker 1: But this would be the first revenue drop for Apple
Speaker 1: in more than three years, and investors really don't like
Speaker 1: it when winning streaks are interrupted. Sales were down five
Speaker 1: percent quarter over well year over year for quarter four
Speaker 1: of two, and that was a larger drop than what
Speaker 1: analysts had predicted, and the fault was largely laid at
Speaker 1: the fee of China, specifically having manufacturing facilities in China
Speaker 1: shut down during COVID nineteen outbreaks, and considering the reported
Speaker 1: conditions of what it's like to work at one of
Speaker 1: these places, that all feels really gross to me. I
Speaker 1: don't think China has taken the right approach to handling
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen. But at the same time, it's really hard
Speaker 1: for me to say, ah, man, we weren't able to
Speaker 1: make as many do dads because the government was trying
Speaker 1: to stop the spread of a highly infectious disease. So
Speaker 1: I guess what I'm saying is that, ultimately I'm glad
Speaker 1: I'm not the one who has to make those kinds
Speaker 1: of decisions. Anyway, on top of the falling sales, Apple's
Speaker 1: profit fell by thirteen percent. Now again, Apple was still profitable,
Speaker 1: it just wasn't as profitable as it was this time
Speaker 1: last year. Apple did not indicate that it would be
Speaker 1: following the big tech trend of laying off thousands of employees, however,
Speaker 1: so that's good news for Apple employees. Amazon's news was
Speaker 1: even worse in that the company reported that you one
Speaker 1: three operating profit might turn out to be a big
Speaker 1: old goose egg a zero in other words, so no
Speaker 1: operating profit in the beginning of according to current estimations.
Speaker 1: Amazon executives have said that customers have been cutting way
Speaker 1: back on spending and that was causing a massive hit
Speaker 1: to Amazon's revenue, and that even the layoffs and downsizing
Speaker 1: in Amazon is not counteracting that that drop in customer purchases.
Speaker 1: And you know, we're talking about eighteen thousand jobs cut
Speaker 1: at this point in Amazon. One area where Amazon is
Speaker 1: doing okay is in its cloud computing services, where the
Speaker 1: company actually saw higher revenues than analysts had predicted. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the pandemic days of rampant online shopping have all really
Speaker 1: slowed down as people are being more frugal with their
Speaker 1: spending during this undefined economic downturn. But I call it
Speaker 1: a recession by an We have Alphabet, the parent company
Speaker 1: of Google and YouTube, and some other companies as well. Overall,
Speaker 1: the companies saw declines in both revenue and profit, which
Speaker 1: again is not a huge surprise because Alphabet draws the
Speaker 1: vast majority of its revenue from digital ads, and digital
Speaker 1: ad spending is down. In fact, according to Alphabet, the
Speaker 1: ad revenue fell by four percent in general and eight
Speaker 1: percent on platforms like YouTube and like Amazon. Alphabet has
Speaker 1: also slashed a lot of jobs twelve thousand in the
Speaker 1: case of Alphabet, So the call did not present a
Speaker 1: lot of surprises. None of these did, I would say,
Speaker 1: But yeah, kind of confirms stuff that we already either
Speaker 1: new or suspected. Other tech companies are also cutting back
Speaker 1: by eliminating more jobs. Dell Technologies recently revealed it will
Speaker 1: be laying off around five percent of its workforce. That
Speaker 1: would be more than six thousand, five hundred employees. So why, well,
Speaker 1: we all know why. It's the economic situation that again
Speaker 1: we don't have a word for. We just call it challenging.
Speaker 1: And while I hate seeing more tech employees face the
Speaker 1: possibility of being out of a job. I can't say
Speaker 1: that I'm really surprised by Dell's move. I mean, we
Speaker 1: all know that consumers have cut way back on spending
Speaker 1: in general, and that includes buying new computers. People are
Speaker 1: sticking with their devices longer rather than updating or replacing them,
Speaker 1: so the hardware cycle has changed a bit. This impacts
Speaker 1: companies like Dell big time. On top of that, Dell
Speaker 1: has seen some other competitors in the consumer PC space
Speaker 1: gain ground on them and get more competitive. So it's
Speaker 1: not just that Dell is selling fewer PCs. It's also
Speaker 1: that other companies are starting to catch up to Dell
Speaker 1: or to really be a competitive threat. So it's a
Speaker 1: double whammy. And Boeing is yet another company in tech
Speaker 1: that has announced it will be holding layoffs. The company
Speaker 1: said it plans to eliminate around two thousand jobs, primarily
Speaker 1: into part meants like human resources and finance, and then
Speaker 1: other departments like engineering and manufacturing are going to be protected.
Speaker 1: Boeing blends to outsource HR and finance roles to a
Speaker 1: company called Tata Consulting Services that is part of a
Speaker 1: larger conglomerate that is located in India. But unlike the
Speaker 1: other companies I mentioned so far, Boeing actually plans to
Speaker 1: grow its workforce this year. So last year Boeing hired
Speaker 1: on fifteen thousand new employees, so still a net gain
Speaker 1: even when you consider the two thousand layoffs coming up,
Speaker 1: and this year they plan on adding another ten thousand
Speaker 1: by the end of the year. So really this sounds
Speaker 1: more like Boeing is putting its eggs in the in
Speaker 1: the products and services basket with engineering and manufacturing, and
Speaker 1: that this move is more about shifting finance and human
Speaker 1: resources focused parts of the business to outsourced jobs. So
Speaker 1: it's really more like a reorg than anything else, at
Speaker 1: least as of right now. Now we're about to enter
Speaker 1: into the AI slash chat bought part of our episode,
Speaker 1: because that's been the big news so far in Tree.
Speaker 1: So we all know about chat gpt in the various
Speaker 1: concerns and criticisms and wild experiments that are related to it,
Speaker 1: and you likely know that Microsoft had previously invested a
Speaker 1: billion dollars in the company behind chat GPT called open Ai.
Speaker 1: At least you would know that if you listen to
Speaker 1: my episode about open Ai. Also Microsoft is going to
Speaker 1: invest a lot more in open Ai, up to around
Speaker 1: ten billion dollars according to at least some reports. Well
Speaker 1: later today, Microsoft is holding a press event. In fact,
Speaker 1: might have already happened by the time you are listening
Speaker 1: to this podcast. But since it hasn't happened yet as
Speaker 1: of when I'm writing the darn thing, the best I
Speaker 1: can do is talk about what people think is going
Speaker 1: to happen. That is that Microsoft is going to make
Speaker 1: an announcement that it's incorporating chat GPT into being search
Speaker 1: in some way. Now, Google yesterday, in a kind of
Speaker 1: panicked and rushed way, unveiled its own chat bought called Bard.
Speaker 1: We had already heard about Bard, but at the time
Speaker 1: I was talking about it was referenced as Apprentice Bard
Speaker 1: and it was only an internal tool. So Google has
Speaker 1: now already launched a closed and private beta for a
Speaker 1: select group of users to experiment with Bard, and plans
Speaker 1: to open this up further to a lot more people
Speaker 1: in the near future in the coming weeks, for example.
Speaker 1: So Google also plans a press event that will now
Speaker 1: happen tomorrow on Wednesday. So it looks like Microsoft and
Speaker 1: Google are facing off in the AI chat bought space,
Speaker 1: particularly with regard to how it could be interwoven with search. Now,
Speaker 1: I've already talked about how this approach could ultimately cause
Speaker 1: a whole lot of problems online, mainly through cutting off
Speaker 1: vital Internet traffic to various websites that depend upon search
Speaker 1: results to get visitors. But yeah, it looks like this
Speaker 1: fight is coming to us pretty quickly. The two chat
Speaker 1: bots will be based off different language models open aies
Speaker 1: g PT or generative pre train transformer is based off
Speaker 1: the transformer model that Google pioneered. Now, in this case,
Speaker 1: transformer doesn't refer to either a robot in disguise or
Speaker 1: a device that can step voltage up or down. Instead,
Speaker 1: a transformer in this sense is a machine learning model.
Speaker 1: Google introduced it in two thousand seventeen, and it's very
Speaker 1: popular model in machine learning applications. Google's language model is
Speaker 1: called Language Models for Dialogue Applications or land up. So
Speaker 1: you have GPT on one side and lambda on the other,
Speaker 1: things do get a little more muddeled. However, Google has
Speaker 1: invested several hundred million dollars in an AI company called Anthropic,
Speaker 1: which was founded by some folks who had formerly been
Speaker 1: researchers at open Ai. So both Microsoft and Google are
Speaker 1: launching AI powered tools that share some common DNA. I
Speaker 1: have a been invited to the beta for Google, so
Speaker 1: I haven't seen what that looks like yet, and the
Speaker 1: Microsoft event hasn't happened as the time I'm recording this,
Speaker 1: so I can't really comment on what these look like
Speaker 1: or how they perform. And I am sure that people
Speaker 1: at Google and Microsoft are already aware of the potential
Speaker 1: dangers this AI could pose to business practices. So I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about, you know, doomsday prophecies about AI destroying
Speaker 1: the world or anything. Instead, I'm talking about AI eliminating
Speaker 1: an advertising platform that Google has depended upon for most
Speaker 1: of its existence. I'm sure they have contingencies in mind.
Speaker 1: I just don't know what those happened to be, but
Speaker 1: it should be fascinating to see how this unfolds. Also,
Speaker 1: if it gets good enough, it'll put me out of
Speaker 1: a job. I mean, why would you listen to me
Speaker 1: when you can just have your tech questions answered by
Speaker 1: a super fast robot unless it's you know, from a
Speaker 1: Southern charm Okay, I I gotta take a break from
Speaker 1: being charming. We will be back after these messages. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back, and we're actually back with another AI chat
Speaker 1: bought story. So the United States is not the only
Speaker 1: country that's obsessed with this idea. By Do, the enormous
Speaker 1: company in China, announced today that it has been testing
Speaker 1: a chat butt that it calls Ernie bot. There's no
Speaker 1: word of this chat bot has a roommate that's called
Speaker 1: bert Bot, but Ernie has been tested internally for some time,
Speaker 1: it seems, and these tests are scheduled to conclude sometime
Speaker 1: in March. Presumably at that point by Do will unveiled
Speaker 1: the chat bot into some sort of public facing phase
Speaker 1: where people will get a chance to use it outside
Speaker 1: of by Do itself. Ernie actually is an acronym. It
Speaker 1: stands for Enhanced Representation through Knowledge integrat SHILT, and it
Speaker 1: sounds like it has a lot of the same sort
Speaker 1: of features that we've seen in stuff like chat GPT
Speaker 1: as well as doll E, in that it is said
Speaker 1: to be able to generate text based on user prompts,
Speaker 1: so you can ask it questions and it will generate
Speaker 1: a response by drawing information from around you know, its databases,
Speaker 1: and it can also do things like create images based
Speaker 1: on prompts, so you could tell it to create a
Speaker 1: serene landscape with a windmill next to a river or something,
Speaker 1: and it would do it. I think it will only
Speaker 1: be a matter of time before someone creates a roundtable
Speaker 1: discussion session with these various chat bots all talking to
Speaker 1: each other and have them discuss some sort of topic
Speaker 1: like you know, which Nintendo game is the best, or
Speaker 1: how to achieve world peace or something like that. It's
Speaker 1: just a matter of time. Even if it's done as
Speaker 1: a parody, I expect we'll see it. In fact, I'm
Speaker 1: sure we'll see lots of parodies where people will purposefully
Speaker 1: create fake conversations between these different chat bots for comedic purposes,
Speaker 1: and yet they will not reveal that it's all fake,
Speaker 1: because that's the world we live in, where you can't
Speaker 1: tell that something satire because there's no indicator to let
Speaker 1: you know that, in fact, it is satire. It's just
Speaker 1: passed off as the truth, so it is, in other words,
Speaker 1: a lie. Yeah. I have thoughts about this. Now. I've
Speaker 1: got a couple of gaming stories to cover, both of
Speaker 1: which are a little rough. First up, Meta announced last
Speaker 1: week that it's going to sunset the VR game Echo
Speaker 1: VR coming this August. This game will having a relatively
Speaker 1: small player base, has received critical and popular acclaim, and
Speaker 1: the folks who do play it are said to be
Speaker 1: really loyal fans, so this announcement came as a disappointment.
Speaker 1: Meta explained that the reason behind the decision is that
Speaker 1: the company wants to create other games and VR experiences,
Speaker 1: and maintaining a game requires resources that the company would
Speaker 1: rather focus on new opportunities. Now that does make sense.
Speaker 1: Any online focused game is going to require ongoing support
Speaker 1: or it will eventually fail, and considering that the player
Speaker 1: base is down to the low ten thousands according to
Speaker 1: The Verge, you can understand why Meta would want to
Speaker 1: shift to something else that could potentially have a bigger impact.
Speaker 1: Even if revenue isn't a concern right now, it's bound
Speaker 1: to be at some point. Unfortunately, this kind of decision
Speaker 1: is also the sort of thing that can discourage adoption
Speaker 1: because buying into VR is expensive, The equipment is costly,
Speaker 1: and that's before you even start buying games for it.
Speaker 1: So if you're thinking about getting into VR, but then
Speaker 1: you hear that one of the more praised titles is
Speaker 1: getting shut down later this year, you might find yourself,
Speaker 1: you know, reviewing the situation, as Vegan would say. John Carmack,
Speaker 1: who until recently was a consultant for Meta on All
Speaker 1: Things VR, voiced his disappointment with this decision. He said
Speaker 1: that Meta is taking something away from the community and
Speaker 1: that never really goes over very well. And I agree
Speaker 1: with that. If you want to learn more about this,
Speaker 1: I recommend the article in The Verge titled Here's why
Speaker 1: Meta is shutting down Echo VR. The ViRGE also reports
Speaker 1: that Amazon is phasing out fifty three games and it's
Speaker 1: Luna cloud streaming service this month. So it's got this
Speaker 1: video game streaming service called Luna, and fifty three titles
Speaker 1: are going to leave in February over different dates. Back
Speaker 1: in December, Luna rotated out another forty titles. Amazon says
Speaker 1: the game strategy is to consistently switch out titles to
Speaker 1: keep the service fresh. That makes sense to a degree
Speaker 1: to me, but it does mean that gamers might find
Speaker 1: themselves focusing more on titles that are good for short
Speaker 1: sessions and don't involve long protracted storylines because you never
Speaker 1: know when that title is gonna go away. There's nothing
Speaker 1: like being halfway through saving the world and then finding
Speaker 1: out you can't access your game anymore, and what happens
Speaker 1: to a world y'all think of the world. Well, according
Speaker 1: to game Rant, Luna Plus has around a hundred ninety
Speaker 1: titles on its service, so fifty three games. That means
Speaker 1: we're looking at around a little more than a quarter
Speaker 1: of all the the game titles leaving the service this month.
Speaker 1: I'm curious how popular the services. I'll try to look
Speaker 1: into it. I'm thinking about doing an episode about the
Speaker 1: different cloud based gaming services out there and any information
Speaker 1: we have about how well they're performing. In some cases,
Speaker 1: we don't really have any information at all, but we've
Speaker 1: definitely come a long way since the Uyah. Finally, last
Speaker 1: week I talked about Nothing Forever. That's the AI generated
Speaker 1: Seinfeld episode simulator that was broadcasting on Twitch. It uses
Speaker 1: GPT to create the dialogue. Well, they had a real
Speaker 1: problem recently in that uh, the character Larry, the standing
Speaker 1: for Jerry Seinfeld, was doing his stand up and started
Speaker 1: spouting off transphobic and homophobic thoughts as part of his
Speaker 1: stand up routine. This should not have ever happened and
Speaker 1: twhich banned the channel for fourteen days as a result
Speaker 1: of It turns out the issue was that the GPT
Speaker 1: model they had been using, which was codenamed Da Vinci,
Speaker 1: had problems at some point, and the the model just
Speaker 1: stopped creating content, so you just had these empty rooms.
Speaker 1: So the team decided to roll back to an earlier
Speaker 1: version of GPT called CURI, and this one lacked the
Speaker 1: content moderation blinders that the Da Vinci model had, and
Speaker 1: so CURI was more lax and allowing problematic content to
Speaker 1: come through, and that's when we got the transphobic and
Speaker 1: homophobic content. So the creators say they do plan on
Speaker 1: coming back. They're going to put more content moderation features
Speaker 1: in place to prevent this sort of thing from happening,
Speaker 1: because obviously they don't want harmful content to come out
Speaker 1: from their little fun diversion. Uh, And that this was
Speaker 1: just a mistake based upon going to an earlier version
Speaker 1: of this language model. So it was really unfortunate. I'm
Speaker 1: glad that they're addressing it, and hopefully we don't see
Speaker 1: anything like this in the future. But it is one
Speaker 1: of the the downsides to AI that's pulling from across
Speaker 1: the internet to generate its content. All Right, that's it.
Speaker 1: That's the news for Tuesday, February seven three. Hope you're
Speaker 1: all well. I'm doing pretty well myself. If you would
Speaker 1: like to contact me with some future ideas for shows
Speaker 1: that I should do, you can do so on Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle for the show is tech Stuff hs W,
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Speaker 1: you can leave a voice message up to thirty seconds
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