Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of iHeart Podcasts and Kaleidoscope.
Speaker 1: I'm as Valoshian and today Cara Price and I will
Speaker 1: bring you the headlines this week, including some surprisingly rapid
Speaker 1: changes in the way people are using generative AI. Then
Speaker 1: on tech Support, we'll talk to the Washington Posts Naomi
Speaker 1: Nix about the first week of the Meta antitrust trial.
Speaker 2: This latest trial is a Now they're a piece of
Speaker 2: evidence that the companies haven't yet, to put it crudely,
Speaker 2: gotten what they've paid for.
Speaker 1: All of that. On the Weekend Tech It's Friday, April eighteenth,
Speaker 1: Hello us, Hello Cara.
Speaker 3: So I was thinking about you this week. I was
Speaker 3: seeing something Oliver Instagram, which is my preferred social media platform.
Speaker 3: Your preferred social media platform has nothing to do with socializing.
Speaker 3: It's called Lincoln.
Speaker 1: Well, maybe you're too old for TikTok and I'm too
Speaker 1: old for Instagram. So yes, LinkedIn is my absolutely.
Speaker 3: Right, at least you're not using Facebook. So on this
Speaker 3: I saw action figures. Yeah, that looked a lot like
Speaker 3: my friends, like my friend who works at Tory Birch.
Speaker 3: There was like there was an action figure of like
Speaker 3: a jewel and an iced coffee and a Tory Birch handbag.
Speaker 3: In a weird way, I've looked at it as a
Speaker 3: sort of LinkedIn's own version of the Jibbli portraits that
Speaker 3: we talked about a few weeks ago. You know, to
Speaker 3: make these, you upload a picture of yourself to chat
Speaker 3: GBT and prompt the model to turn you into a
Speaker 3: picture of a toy action figure.
Speaker 1: Imagine going into a toy store in nineteen eighty four
Speaker 1: and you have plastic packed action figurines like could be
Speaker 1: a Bobbie, could be a Gi Joe with some special
Speaker 1: swag that the character has which reflects on who the
Speaker 1: character is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think in a weird way, it sort
Speaker 3: of acts as this like pictorial resume of like this
Speaker 3: is who I like. I am podcast fundraiser, I have
Speaker 3: jim bag, I have a six sneakers.
Speaker 1: What are you talking about?
Speaker 3: I am here asking for some money. I don't know
Speaker 3: what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: Do you know what's very interesting? I used to work
Speaker 1: for a branding agency. I know that you know that,
Speaker 1: and our business cards were a pictorial representation of us
Speaker 1: and then a few representations of things that were important
Speaker 1: to us. So I had like a British flag and
Speaker 1: like a tennis racking or.
Speaker 3: Whatever one visa on visa.
Speaker 1: Exactly, you know. And there was like kind of a
Speaker 1: talking point at the beginning of the meeting and this
Speaker 1: is kind of the LinkedIn meets chatchybt version of that,
Speaker 1: and it's going completely viral.
Speaker 3: It's going completely viral and people love. I don't know
Speaker 3: if it's uncanny. I think it is uncanny Valley, like
Speaker 3: people love to see themselves represented in an animated format
Speaker 3: because it's sort of like the last frontier of like
Speaker 3: reality turned into surreality one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've seen The Real Housewives as Pixar characters,
Speaker 1: which is so good.
Speaker 3: Which they're starting to look like anyway with all the
Speaker 3: filters that you can use to post them on Instagram.
Speaker 1: But you know what this is what is driving something
Speaker 1: extraordinary that happened, which is that CHATGPT excluding games, became
Speaker 1: the most downloaded app in the world last month.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and actually at last week's TED conference, Sam Altman
Speaker 3: let slip that the usage of chat gbt had doubled
Speaker 3: in just a few weeks, indicating it now has eight
Speaker 3: hundred million weekly active users.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it is an extraordinary number, and I
Speaker 1: think you use the word indicating advisedly because he said
Speaker 1: it was about ten percent of the world's population. You know,
Speaker 1: at the beginning of this year, we were talking about
Speaker 1: would the business model for these charative ami companies ever work.
Speaker 1: There's a story in Information this week that the revenues
Speaker 1: at OpenAI are picking up dramatically. They've grown thirty percent
Speaker 1: so far this year, So that's in one quarter to
Speaker 1: around four hundred and fifteen million dollars per month in revenue.
Speaker 3: Which is very interesting for a company that built itself
Speaker 3: as a non brop no. But in some ways, I'm
Speaker 3: not surprised because it feels like there's a new use
Speaker 3: case for chat GBT every week. I'm more invested in
Speaker 3: it every week, and so I am sort of always
Speaker 3: interested when I see the data reflected in my own personal.
Speaker 1: Use I mean, you get hooked on, oh my god,
Speaker 1: what would my family photo look like as a Pixar movie?
Speaker 1: And then it's like, huh, you know, I what if
Speaker 1: I put this legal contract through chat GPT and asked
Speaker 1: it to advise me on what were the key points
Speaker 1: I should be paying attention to, which I did for
Speaker 1: the first time last week after I used the image
Speaker 1: generation feature. So I mean, it's a remarkable moment where
Speaker 1: I think a true consumer adoption is creating the business model,
Speaker 1: or could be beginning to create the business model, which
Speaker 1: is a question some people had, would that ever really
Speaker 1: actually happen? But we are not the only people observing
Speaker 1: what's happening. There was something actually fascinating I read last
Speaker 1: week in the Harvard Business Review that might shock you.
Speaker 3: So tell me about something fat fascinating that you actually
Speaker 3: were able to find in the Harvard Business Review.
Speaker 1: Well, the article was about AI use cases, and according
Speaker 1: to Harvard Business Review, the most common reason for generative
Speaker 1: AI usage over the last twelve months was therapy and companionship.
Speaker 3: It's actually very funny you say this, and this is
Speaker 3: not a setup. I've actually met a woman the other
Speaker 3: day who told me she'd created her own therapy bot,
Speaker 3: calling it a GPT. And I've been seeing a ton
Speaker 3: of stuff about using AI models for therapy everywhere, and
Speaker 3: I was honestly starting to wonder if all these articles
Speaker 3: on AI relationships were a bit blown out of proportion,
Speaker 3: But it seems to be a very real trend.
Speaker 1: Well, you've taken endorsement after slamming me for being fascinated
Speaker 1: by the Harvard Business Review, You've been swayed by their
Speaker 1: validation of your worldview.
Speaker 3: Judge where information comes from unless it's the Harvard Business Review.
Speaker 1: So this is a study and the methodology is quite interesting.
Speaker 1: Some might question it, but I thought it was interesting.
Speaker 1: They're basically a tool to scrape online forums like primarily
Speaker 1: Reddit but also kra and a few others that scrape
Speaker 1: for every single mention of how people are using AI,
Speaker 1: categorize them and then counted the number of posts about
Speaker 1: each use case, you know, filtering out the garbage and
Speaker 1: whatever else, to come up with the stat rank of
Speaker 1: the top one hundred use cases that people are talking
Speaker 1: about how they use AI.
Speaker 3: And so Reddit really is the treasure trove of this discovery.
Speaker 1: I think it is, and I think you know there's
Speaker 1: a reason why is because people post without using their
Speaker 1: real names in a very unfiltered way on Reddit, and
Speaker 1: so I think as a proxy for how people are
Speaker 1: using technology, you could do a lot worse than Reddit.
Speaker 1: And in fact, I also read in the Harvard Business
Speaker 1: Review that today ten percent of reddits revenues actually come
Speaker 1: from selling its user generated content as training data to llms,
Speaker 1: so you know that there is.
Speaker 3: Just like our friends of the Atlanta though there's.
Speaker 1: Gold in them hills. This is actually the second time
Speaker 1: this study has been published in the Harvard Business Review.
Speaker 1: It's published in twenty twenty five as well. What I
Speaker 1: found really really interesting was what change from twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four to twenty twenty five. Thirty eight new use cases
Speaker 1: have been added to the list, and last year's top
Speaker 1: use case was generating ideas, which has now fallen down
Speaker 1: to sixth place. This year, the second and third most
Speaker 1: popular use cases were new entrants to the list. They
Speaker 1: weren't in the top hundred mentions last year and now
Speaker 1: they're in second and third place. They were organizing my life,
Speaker 1: followed by finding purpose.
Speaker 3: You know, I think this speaks to something which is
Speaker 3: that people are lonely, and people don't know how to
Speaker 3: talk to other real people about these things. And I think,
Speaker 3: sort of like tinders the game game right that we
Speaker 3: did last week, it's much easier to kind of test
Speaker 3: these very human interactions on computers.
Speaker 1: Absolutely or in a computer no judgment judgment free zone.
Speaker 3: The other thing that I would mention is that regular
Speaker 3: therapy the kind that you have with the human therapist
Speaker 3: will put your bank account into negative numbers, absolutely, And
Speaker 3: so you may not want to constantly burden your friends
Speaker 3: with your issues and be the carry Bradshaw in your
Speaker 3: friend group. And so I can see why a person
Speaker 3: would turn to AI to help them through a hard time.
Speaker 3: I actually don't judge it at all.
Speaker 1: No, no, me neither. But on the contrary, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think what the HBr sort of pointed out as
Speaker 1: the kind of larger takeaway in the twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: versus twenty twenty five comparison was that in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: the most popular use cases were all around quote unquote
Speaker 1: technical assistance and troubleshooting, whereas this year they're in quote
Speaker 1: unquote personal and professional support, which kind of mirrors what
Speaker 1: we were talking about just a few minutes ago, which
Speaker 1: is how AI has become more ubiquitous and therefore like
Speaker 1: normal people are using it for more normal reasons.
Speaker 3: I think, more ubiquitous and also like imbued with our
Speaker 3: own humanity as opposed to like a place where we
Speaker 3: find how do I fix this thing?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: I think it's changed from how do I fix this thing? Too?
Speaker 3: How do I fix myself, which to me is both
Speaker 3: a little bit scary and also a little bit exciting.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, there is one really important exception to what we've
Speaker 1: been talking about just now, which is that two use cases,
Speaker 1: firstly generating code and secondly improving code, both had meteoric rises.
Speaker 1: So generating code was down in lowly forty seventh place
Speaker 1: on last year's list, is now in fifth place. And
Speaker 1: that brings me to my next headline, which is by Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: Under the headline AI Coding Assistant, Cursor draws a million
Speaker 1: users without even trying. So there's a hot new AI
Speaker 1: start up in town, one that you've probably never heard of,
Speaker 1: because I hadn't heard of it either until now. Its
Speaker 1: Bloomberg story. But also they don't advertise or market. Bloomberg
Speaker 1: reports that Cursor hasn't spent a single dollar on paid marketing.
Speaker 1: The startup behind it is any Sphere, Inc. And they
Speaker 1: make this AI powered coding editor called Cursor.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's this popular tool for both formally trained computer
Speaker 3: programs and this thing that I love, Vibe coders. A
Speaker 3: coding editor, from what I understand, is a program that
Speaker 3: does things like check your code for errors. Think of
Speaker 3: it like spell check for coding, and then on top
Speaker 3: of that, more recent AI coders like Cursor can also
Speaker 3: suggest lines of code for you based on what you've
Speaker 3: previously written.
Speaker 1: So Gen one is like spell check and Gen two
Speaker 1: is shifted response for emails.
Speaker 3: Exactly, And that's what vibe coding actually is. You just
Speaker 3: like accept all of the suggestions versus having to correct
Speaker 3: your code, sort of like writing a whole email and autocomplete,
Speaker 3: which I do when I send an email says thank you, Comma,
Speaker 3: Jennifer exclamation point. That is an email that's written entirely
Speaker 3: by autocomplete. And just to be clear, as of today,
Speaker 3: vibe coding does not generate code at the level of
Speaker 3: real coding.
Speaker 1: Nonetheless, Cursor has quietly become one of the fastest growing
Speaker 1: startups of all time. It's even used by programmers at
Speaker 1: companies like OpenAI, Instacra, and Uber. Although most of the
Speaker 1: revenue you comes from individuals people using it and not
Speaker 1: using it through corporate descriptions. They're getting their own subscription
Speaker 1: to help them with their work. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: coders are wanting to pay cash for a good user
Speaker 1: interface and adaptability. The passion is real for the product
Speaker 1: back In January, any Sphere reached one hundred million in
Speaker 1: annual recurring revenue. By March that number of doubled and
Speaker 1: over a million people are now using Cursor every single day.
Speaker 3: I mean, we've talked about this many, many times that
Speaker 3: there's a lot of anxiety about AI replacing people's jobs.
Speaker 3: Cursor is actually interesting because it's being used to help
Speaker 3: people with their jobs. It's a productivity tool, and it's
Speaker 3: what these AI companies have been parroting all along.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting paradigm thing here where it's not like
Speaker 1: here's a new product to make your redundant. It's like,
Speaker 1: here's a new product that makes you better so much
Speaker 1: so that you pay your own money to use it
Speaker 1: to make you better at your job. I mean that
Speaker 1: is I think, sort of a high watermark for what
Speaker 1: we can hope for from AI use cases.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's actually a concept that investors are falling
Speaker 3: in love with. Any Sphere, which is, as we said,
Speaker 3: the parent company has raised one hundred and seventy five
Speaker 3: million dollars in the likes of Andrees and Horowitz as
Speaker 3: well as one of open AI's co founders, among many others.
Speaker 3: Any Spheres and talks to raise more money at evaluation
Speaker 3: of nearly ten billion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's very competitive space. Open AI and
Speaker 1: Anthropic both seem to be eyeing the arena for their
Speaker 1: own AI for coding tools, but nothing beats user adoption.
Speaker 1: So we'll see how this story unfolds. The CURSA. We're
Speaker 1: going to take a quick break now. When we come back,
Speaker 1: carasches a rather surreal headline. Stay with us.
Speaker 3: So as we're back, and I'm warning you that our
Speaker 3: next story is something that you're really gonna love.
Speaker 1: Okay, tell me. So.
Speaker 3: Google has a generative video model called VO two, and
Speaker 3: the way it works is you type in a prompt
Speaker 3: or feed it some media like an image, and VO
Speaker 3: two will generate a video based on these materials. So
Speaker 3: late last year, Google announced that they were launching a
Speaker 3: new version of the model, which includes a better grasp
Speaker 3: of physics and more quote nuances of human movement and expression.
Speaker 1: When a tech company tries to capture the nuance of humanity,
Speaker 1: it's always you always know there's going to be some
Speaker 1: excitements in store, yet.
Speaker 3: They still try to do it. The news is that
Speaker 3: Google recently showed off the updated VO two at the
Speaker 3: Google Cloud next conference, which we were not invited.
Speaker 1: Two our invitations must have got lost in the mail.
Speaker 3: And maybe they could have made a bigger splash if
Speaker 3: they invited us. But they did want to make a splash,
Speaker 3: so they decided to appeal to both you and the
Speaker 3: art community.
Speaker 1: High risk bet the art community and not notoriously such
Speaker 1: big fans of the big tech world.
Speaker 3: Are you going to ask me what they show?
Speaker 1: Yes? What did they show?
Speaker 3: So they showed a trailer based on Salvador Dolly's unmade screenplay.
Speaker 1: Salvador Dolly's unmade screenplay? What's that about?
Speaker 3: So let me set the scene. I was not there,
Speaker 3: but it's nineteen thirty seven. You're Salvador Dolly, you're in
Speaker 3: your early thirties, you're my age, and you were hanging
Speaker 3: out with Harpo Marx, one of the Marx brothers, who
Speaker 3: I adore.
Speaker 1: This is a great collection of characters, and it's like,
Speaker 1: you can make it up that these people were hanging
Speaker 1: out together and thinking how do we make a movie?
Speaker 3: And my favorite character, who's of course the naysayer, also
Speaker 3: factors into this. So you, as Dolly, write a fantastical
Speaker 3: screenplay for the Marx brothers to star in. But when
Speaker 3: you bring it to MGM, Louis B. Mayor of MGM
Speaker 3: kills the project and the screenplay is never realized as
Speaker 3: a film.
Speaker 1: Was there a reason for spiking it?
Speaker 3: Well, in a world where now tent pole films are
Speaker 3: very important, and then being able to sell a film
Speaker 3: was very important. Pitching a film called Giraffes on Horseback
Speaker 3: Salad is not exactly something that they think jumps off
Speaker 3: the screen.
Speaker 1: The biting Dali and the Marx brothers hands off for
Speaker 1: this one.
Speaker 3: They weren't umping at the salad fit for I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: I couldn't help myself. But the movie itself was a
Speaker 3: kind of broadly about an aristocratic man who falls in
Speaker 3: love with a woman from a world where dreams are reality,
Speaker 3: and it's so surreal it was likely unfilmable at the time.
Speaker 3: The other important piece I think that kind of made
Speaker 3: me laugh is that some of the Marx brothers like
Speaker 3: didn't even think it was funny.
Speaker 1: They were like, eh, so it never got made, no until.
Speaker 3: Now, until now, Google is trying to at least right now,
Speaker 3: it's just a trailer because this is a big feat. Uh,
Speaker 3: it's a trailer that is produced by the Dolli Museum
Speaker 3: and Gooldbee Silverstein and partners. And I'm gonna play you
Speaker 3: just a little sample of the trailer, and then you're
Speaker 3: gonna tell me if you think this is true to
Speaker 3: one of your I don't know if he's one of
Speaker 3: your favorite artists, but you do like him Catalan culture.
Speaker 3: So let's see.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you how the strangest movie never made
Speaker 1: the world wasn't ready for into No.
Speaker 3: I called it.
Speaker 2: Horseback Solid. Prepare yourself because the impossible is coming to life.
Speaker 3: Tell me a little bit about what you saw.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a giraffe on fire. There is obviously Salvador
Speaker 1: Daly's voice recreated. It does have the kind of vibe
Speaker 1: of a movie trailer. However, the esthetic is one that
Speaker 1: I think would make Salvador Dahi personally turn in his grave,
Speaker 1: because it is basically what you might imagine one of
Speaker 1: the camps at Burning Man might reinterpret Salvador Dali through
Speaker 1: the lens of It is so on the nose quote
Speaker 1: unquote surrealist, with people wearing like funny hats.
Speaker 3: It looks like clouds people on fire.
Speaker 1: It's got a very Burning Man vibe.
Speaker 3: It also has a very google commercial vibe, yes, which
Speaker 3: I think isn't the greatest thing ever, But yeah, I
Speaker 3: think fever dream is how I describe it. And actually,
Speaker 3: as you said, the narration is supposed to be Salvador,
Speaker 3: there's enough of his audience.
Speaker 1: Does he actually sound like that? Who knows? Did we
Speaker 1: did in fact shake his voice?
Speaker 3: We did? I did listen to it. Well, I did
Speaker 3: listen to him on radio program a little bit later,
Speaker 3: and he does sound a little bit like you know,
Speaker 3: But I always think about him twirling his.
Speaker 1: Mustache actually character in Rettaitui.
Speaker 3: There's no evidence to me that this is exactly what
Speaker 3: Salvador Dolly sounds like. But I think they definitely tried
Speaker 3: to recreate his voice, which we know by now is
Speaker 3: like what.
Speaker 1: They tried to do it. They probably did do it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: According to Art News, this isn't the first time that
Speaker 3: there's actually been an AI generated Dolly. The same Dolly
Speaker 3: museum who's co producing this movie, actually had an exhibition
Speaker 3: called Ask Dolly that allowed museum goers to talk to him,
Speaker 3: meaning to talk to an AI created based on his voice.
Speaker 3: At the time. The museum COO said that if these
Speaker 3: technologies had been around when Dolly was alive, he would
Speaker 3: have played around with them.
Speaker 1: My take was, it's not horrible, but it's pretty horrible.
Speaker 1: And I don't disagree that Darli would have played around
Speaker 1: with AI tools if he were around today, but I
Speaker 1: don't think he would have used them like this. I mean,
Speaker 1: the whole point of Dahali as a painter was that
Speaker 1: he made the medium new. He basically reinvented the media
Speaker 1: of paintings through his incredibly interesting and unforgettable serialus take.
Speaker 1: So I think if he did use Jennet of AI tools,
Speaker 1: he would come't with the considerably more interesting application than this,
Speaker 1: which ultimately feels a bit druotism. You would imagine if
Speaker 1: an artist like Darli used Jenet AI, he would have
Speaker 1: done so to critique or to push the medium forward,
Speaker 1: or to make us really think, versus to kind of,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: Make a gimmick, make a gimmick. Yeah, that's very true.
Speaker 3: Can we run through the rest of the headlines?
Speaker 1: Yes? And can you start yes? So Ours Technica reports
Speaker 1: that Nvidia is producing AI chips for the first time
Speaker 1: outside of Taiwan. Blackwell chip and are now being made
Speaker 1: at TSMC. That's the Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company at their
Speaker 1: plant in Phoenix, Arizona, and other companies in the state
Speaker 1: will test and package these chips. Nvidia also announced that
Speaker 1: they plan to build complete supercomputers on us soil, and
Speaker 1: their reports of the promise of up to five hundred
Speaker 1: billion dollars of investment in us AI infrastructure having been
Speaker 1: agreed to at a dinner between Jensen Huang and you
Speaker 1: know who recently at Mari Lago. In return, Kwang reportedly
Speaker 1: hoped to avoid yet more stringent export controls on chips
Speaker 1: to China, but seemly that hope has not materialized.
Speaker 3: I do wonder what's going to happen there, so please
Speaker 3: keep me posted. I also do wonder if the food
Speaker 3: is good at mar Laga.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I bet it's old school.
Speaker 3: Well, it's food that has to benefit a discussion about semiconductors,
Speaker 3: so it can't stand out too much. So if you
Speaker 3: are a big enough nerd to be covetous of Sam's
Speaker 3: Sung technology, but you're loyal to the Apple ecosystems, it's
Speaker 3: a very it's slender. There may be a phone for you.
Speaker 3: Nine to five Mac reports that there are rumors of
Speaker 3: and this is very mind blowing a foldable iPhone, which
Speaker 3: has been dubbed very surprisingly the iPhone fold be like
Speaker 3: I need the fold pro. I have to say this,
Speaker 3: and I hope it's not too embarrassing. If I do
Speaker 3: get this, I will be walking around saying my iPhone,
Speaker 3: don't jiggle, jiggle it folds.
Speaker 1: But no.
Speaker 3: According to the one report, the rumored phone may look
Speaker 3: like a normal iPhone but expands to roughly the size
Speaker 3: of an iPad Mini when unfolded to its full size.
Speaker 3: It also might feature a touch ID enabled power button.
Speaker 3: The most important thing in the reporting here is that
Speaker 3: I plan to use it as a picnic blanket in
Speaker 3: Central Park if it ever does come to fruition and
Speaker 3: does an overheat. I hate an overheated phone.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You have to wonder what this one is. Is it
Speaker 1: really going to come out or is it gonna be
Speaker 1: another one of these Apple projects. Since Steve Jobs, may
Speaker 1: he rest in peace, past that have never seen the
Speaker 1: light of day.
Speaker 3: And speaking of Dolly rolling over in his grave, this
Speaker 3: is the stone pillow in Steve Jobs's grave.
Speaker 1: I always like to talk about tech stories that inspire
Speaker 1: me and capture my imagination, and there was a report
Speaker 1: in the Washington Post this week about scientists who have
Speaker 1: been using technology to uncover the remains of past civilizations
Speaker 1: in the Amazon. So, this team of archaeologists in South
Speaker 1: America is using lidar or light detection and ranging, which
Speaker 1: is basically a laser sensor that can see through dense
Speaker 1: forests from above, either with planes or drones to find
Speaker 1: hidden structures beneath the canopy. You know, you don't need
Speaker 1: to be Indiana Jones anymore. You can just fly drones.
Speaker 1: The team has found a lost Portuguese colony ceramics made
Speaker 1: by an indigenous society. And what I find particularly cool
Speaker 1: here is that these findings are being used to protect
Speaker 1: the rainforest from clearing and logging. You can't protect the
Speaker 1: rainforest on its own term, sadly, but if it has
Speaker 1: archaeologically significant ruins beneath, it turns out you can.
Speaker 3: Finally, if you live in Silicon Valley, you may have
Speaker 3: heard eerily familiar voices when crossing this I'm obsessed with
Speaker 3: this story. While crossing the street last weekend, Palo Alto
Speaker 3: Online reports that some crosswalk buttons seem to have been hacked,
Speaker 3: which is something I would notice immediately. I just wish
Speaker 3: they were hacked by Almo. Some people cross the street
Speaker 3: to the sound of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, who
Speaker 3: I now call Mark x Infandel.
Speaker 1: So you press the button and rather than a walk
Speaker 1: sign is on.
Speaker 3: It's like walk signs on. I don't know who. I
Speaker 3: don't know if that was a Zuckerberg or an Elon Musk.
Speaker 3: I can't really do a Musk impersonation, but some in
Speaker 3: Silicon Valley heard an impression of Elon Musk welcoming them
Speaker 3: to Palo Alto, while others heard fake Mark Zuckerberg say
Speaker 3: it's normal to feel uncomfortable, even violated, as we forcefully
Speaker 3: insert AI into every facet of your conscious experience. And
Speaker 3: I just want to assure you you don't need to
Speaker 3: worry because there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.
Speaker 1: I love this gorilla anti tech marketing campaign. I have
Speaker 1: no idea how you hack a crosswalk light, but props
Speaker 1: to these people.
Speaker 3: If there's any place it's going to happen, it's palle Alto.
Speaker 1: I like your Zach impression. Elizabeth Helmes reminds me of
Speaker 1: one of the most iconic ever Zuckerberg moments, when he
Speaker 1: was testifying before the Senate a few years ago and
Speaker 1: was asked how Facebook's business works, to which he responded, well, ads,
Speaker 1: Sir Mark Kackerberg back in the spotlight this week because
Speaker 1: Meta is facing an anti trust trial brought by the Federal
Speaker 1: Trade Commission, and Zackerberg has been on the stand this
Speaker 1: week in Washington. Naomi Nicks of the Washington Post has
Speaker 1: more on the trial when we come back, stay with us, So, Carot,
Speaker 1: it seems like every week that we make this show,
Speaker 1: there are headlines we cover, and then there's a kind
Speaker 1: of the headline that kind of emerges as the biggest
Speaker 1: story of the week.
Speaker 3: Right last week was tiff Mania, which is the gift
Speaker 3: that keeps giving.
Speaker 1: And this week it's Meta's day in court, or rather
Speaker 1: many weeks in court. And the trial's actually been nearly
Speaker 1: five years in the making.
Speaker 3: It's been one of those news stories that's been like
Speaker 3: in the back of my mind, like I will just
Speaker 3: be going about my business and then say, oh wait,
Speaker 3: did the government soon matter? What happened to that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And it's also I mean when you and I
Speaker 1: first started working on kind of tech journalism together in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen twenty nineteen, the ideas that the government would
Speaker 1: ever effectively regulate technology companies was at best a fantasy
Speaker 1: or a pipe dream, and now it seems to be
Speaker 1: happening in real time, albeit slowly. And this also comes
Speaker 1: at a time when people are questioning whether the judiciary
Speaker 1: will continue to be, you know, a functioning pillar of government.
Speaker 1: But right now, at least in the realm of business,
Speaker 1: it sure is. Back In twenty twenty, the Federal Trade
Speaker 1: Commission sued Meta, as you said, and if you recall,
Speaker 1: Meta had previously purchased Instagram and WhatsApp in the years
Speaker 1: leading up to this. The FTC argued that Meta had
Speaker 1: acquired these companies specifically in order to strangle competition, which
Speaker 1: is illegal under anti trust laws.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the lastuit began on Monday in federal court, and
Speaker 3: over the next many weeks, DC will be filled with
Speaker 3: some star witnesses, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who took
Speaker 3: the stand this week.
Speaker 1: Hit Hops Understand how we got here and what's going
Speaker 1: to come next? Is Naomi Nicks. She's a staff writer
Speaker 1: at The Washington Post, where she covers social media companies,
Speaker 1: particularly Meta. So Naomi, I can imagine this has been
Speaker 1: an absolutely crazy week for you.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's been very busy, but it's been very interesting.
Speaker 1: I can only imagine. But take us back to twenty
Speaker 1: twenty when the FTC sued Meta and how this will begin.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So remember at the time, there was a lot of
Speaker 2: conversation among regulators about whether big tech companies had gotten
Speaker 2: too big, right, whether they had stifled competition from upstarts,
Speaker 2: whether they were prefacing their products over potential competitors, and
Speaker 2: so a lot of big tech companies were sort of
Speaker 2: wrapped up in that uproar and Meta was one of them.
Speaker 2: And back then the FTC under the tail end of
Speaker 2: Donald Trump's administration, sued Meta, challenging to break the company
Speaker 2: up apart from Instagram and WhatsApp, and we've been sort
Speaker 2: of locked into this anti trust battle ever since.
Speaker 1: So this is a continuation of that same case.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 2: So what happened was the judge initially put out a
Speaker 2: ruling that said, you know, I don't think the FTC
Speaker 2: has given enough evidence to establish that there's really a
Speaker 2: case here. And so when the Bide administration took over,
Speaker 2: Amena Khan was chair of the FTC, the commission filed
Speaker 2: an amended lawsuit and at that point the courts allowed
Speaker 2: it to proceed, and you know, they said, look, I
Speaker 2: think you now have established enough evidence that there is
Speaker 2: a potential case that Meta has a monopoly and the
Speaker 2: personal social networking market.
Speaker 1: So this is potentially bipartisan enforcement, which I want to
Speaker 1: come back to. But just first off, as somebody who
Speaker 1: hasn't been following this that closely, why were Meta allowed
Speaker 1: to buy Instagram in twenty twelve and WhatsApp in twenty
Speaker 1: fourteen and didn't the regulators in a sense like, isn't
Speaker 1: this a case of building a stable after the horse
Speaker 1: has gone? If they didn't block these transactions at the time.
Speaker 2: That's certainly a case in an argument that Meta has
Speaker 2: been making. They're like, you know, one of the dangers,
Speaker 2: they argue, is that what the message of the FTC
Speaker 2: is sending to the general marketplace is that that no
Speaker 2: merger is final. That after an anti trust regulator deems like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you're allowed to buy that market, that a decade after
Speaker 2: the fact, they can decide to change their minds. And
Speaker 2: in some ways that is what's happening here. But I
Speaker 2: do think the politics around anti trust law and the
Speaker 2: conversation about whether the United States anti trust laws are
Speaker 2: up to date with the current technology industry. Is one
Speaker 2: of the reasons both Republican and Democratic nominated anti trust
Speaker 2: regulators have been willing to take a chance in this case.
Speaker 3: So you've been in the courtroom the past few days.
Speaker 3: What is the FTC's argument against Meta right now?
Speaker 2: They're making a couple of points. One is they're saying, look,
Speaker 2: we actually think that Meta has a monopoly. And what
Speaker 2: the FTC has decided is called a personal social networking
Speaker 2: market that's mostly relying a market of tech pokforms that
Speaker 2: are designed to facilitate person communication among your friends and families.
Speaker 2: And so what the FTC is saying is they actually
Speaker 2: think that Meta's next biggest competitor is Snapchat. They don't
Speaker 2: include TikTok in that, they don't include YouTube, in that
Speaker 2: they don't include x in that they're saying that Meta
Speaker 2: has a monopoly in that market. And they're saying that
Speaker 2: the company acted anti competitively when it bought WhatsApp and Instagram.
Speaker 2: And they rely on a lot of internal emails to
Speaker 2: suggest that the goal that Mark Zuckerberg had at the
Speaker 2: time wasn't necessarily to improve Instagram or to help users
Speaker 2: have more choice in the social media market, but to
Speaker 2: neutralize a potential competitor. And they're saying that all those
Speaker 2: actions have hurt consumers, that if Meta hadn't done these things,
Speaker 2: that we as Internet users would have more vibrant social
Speaker 2: media options at our disposal.
Speaker 3: What is Meta's counter argument here?
Speaker 2: They say that the FTC misses the mark when it
Speaker 2: defines the marketplace, that they're not just competing agains Snapchat,
Speaker 2: that they are competing against TikTok and YouTube and all
Speaker 2: these other Internet platforms, and that that ecosystem is robust
Speaker 2: and vibrant.
Speaker 1: The attention economy, so to speak.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. You know, Mark Zuckerberg earlier sort
Speaker 2: of talked to the court about how when TikTok was rising,
Speaker 2: the company really had to double down and introduce its
Speaker 2: own product called Instagram Reels, right, and that that has
Speaker 2: been a competitive space for the company ever since. As
Speaker 2: a piece of evidence to show that like this industry
Speaker 2: is quite thriving.
Speaker 1: Now without getting to inside baseball, I mean, the history
Speaker 1: of antitrust in the last few years before Lee Na
Speaker 1: Khan came in as the FTC chair under President Biden
Speaker 1: was basically all around consumer price like harm was defined
Speaker 1: as consumers having to pay more because of monopoly. However,
Speaker 1: meta services are free. And I think one of the
Speaker 1: interesting things here is the FTC d position visa via
Speaker 1: the tech industry was considered to be a big reason
Speaker 1: why the tech industry broke for Trump so dramatically in
Speaker 1: the most recent election. So there's a kind of irony
Speaker 1: here around the kind of the FTC's theory of the
Speaker 1: case being so consistent with how the lots of administration
Speaker 1: viewed regulating monopolies. Can you speak a little bit about.
Speaker 2: That, Yeah, I mean it's interesting. There's both sort of
Speaker 2: a political element here and a legal element. It is
Speaker 2: true that, like the courts have traditionally relied on price
Speaker 2: as a measure of harm, and what they're doing here
Speaker 2: is kind of novel. They're saying, actually, we think harm
Speaker 2: can be measured in the fact that, you know, meta
Speaker 2: maybe didn't improve users' privacy. You know, what are the
Speaker 2: points they've made in their opening arguments. Was like after
Speaker 2: Cambridge Analytica, consumers were really unhappy with Facebook and yet
Speaker 2: they still used it, which means they didn't have enough options.
Speaker 2: But I think there is a political element here. To
Speaker 2: your point, which is the tech companies and Meta. Mark
Speaker 2: Zuckerberg in particular made a big bet on Trump right
Speaker 2: in the election, and you know we've reported and other
Speaker 2: news outlets have reported that, you know, he went to
Speaker 2: the White House in hopes to encourage the Trump administration
Speaker 2: to encourage the FTC to resolve the lawsuit before a trial,
Speaker 2: but was ultimately unsuccessful. In order to drive this point home,
Speaker 2: remember back to when Trump was first elected in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: how the tech industry reacted then, right like we saw
Speaker 2: them come together and form forward the Immigration Reform Organization.
Speaker 2: There was really this sort of groundswell of activity by
Speaker 2: the tech industry both workerwed but also CEO led to
Speaker 2: be willing to kind of stand the ground in the
Speaker 2: face of potential attacks from the Trump administration. And this
Speaker 2: time around we saw much different tone. Right, So, Mark
Speaker 2: Zuckerberg called Trump a badass during the campaign over how
Speaker 2: he handled the shooting attempt on his life. The company
Speaker 2: gave a million dollars to the inauguration committee, he dined
Speaker 2: with Trump, and then I think in January he backed
Speaker 2: up that rhetoric with a lot of policy. They scrapped
Speaker 2: the fact checking program, the NDDI programs. He said in
Speaker 2: a video that they were hoping to partner with the
Speaker 2: Trump administration to go after international regulators who are introducing
Speaker 2: what he terms was like onerous regulations. And so the
Speaker 2: tone has been really, really remarkably positive and has attracted
Speaker 2: some compliments from Trump allies and Trump himself, But the
Speaker 2: compliments only go so far. What the company obviously wants
Speaker 2: is regulations to change, and so that so far hasn't
Speaker 2: been an outcome of this olive branch from Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 2: and Meta. And I think this latest trial is another
Speaker 2: piece of evidence that the companies haven't yet, to put
Speaker 2: it crudely, gotten what they've paid for.
Speaker 3: So can you tell us a little bit about the
Speaker 3: atmosphere in the courtroom this week? You know, we're taping middanday.
Speaker 3: What have the first few days been like in the courtroom.
Speaker 1: Cara, sorry to jump on you, but also we all
Speaker 1: saw the photo of Mark Zuckerberg arriving in what looked
Speaker 1: like a presidential limousine and was in beast mode wearing
Speaker 1: his own Meta ray bands, looking very much sho.
Speaker 3: I heard the success in theme music as he arrived
Speaker 3: to the courtroom.
Speaker 2: It has been you know, on the point about Mark's look,
Speaker 2: it's been interesting because he's had to look at videos
Speaker 2: like talking about some of these mergers in the past,
Speaker 2: and so you're seeing sort of like a new book,
Speaker 2: you know, looking back in the old version of him.
Speaker 2: But particularly I think on Tuesday, there was a really
Speaker 2: heated exchange I think between the FTC lawyer and Mark Zuckerberg,
Speaker 2: and we saw repeatedly the lawyer really tried to pin
Speaker 2: Mark Zuckerberg down to essentially admit to some of the
Speaker 2: reasonings that he weighed out in his emails at the
Speaker 2: time for wanting to buy Instagram, you know, because the
Speaker 2: reality is he does talk about it in those competitive terms.
Speaker 2: Back then, Met at the time was trying to build
Speaker 2: its own camera app and it wasn't going so well.
Speaker 2: They were disappointed with the results of that program, and
Speaker 2: so at the time, Mark is like, maybe we should
Speaker 2: just like buy Instagram.
Speaker 3: Right, I was going to say, in the scheme of things,
Speaker 3: it's actually much better that they just spent a cool
Speaker 3: billion dollars to have one of the most popular apps
Speaker 3: in the app store.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it is also rapidly becoming their key to
Speaker 2: retaining a really important audience, which is young people in
Speaker 2: a way that Facebook is not.
Speaker 3: Can you talk a little bit more about some of
Speaker 3: the other high profile cases against big tech that are
Speaker 3: going on right now, Like where do these lawsuits stand?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest example is Google, right,
Speaker 2: you know there Right last year, a federal court century
Speaker 2: ruled that the Justice Department was right to say that
Speaker 2: Google violated in a trust clause because it had created
Speaker 2: these sort of restrictive contracts with Apple and other device
Speaker 2: makers to essentially require them to install Google as the
Speaker 2: default search engine on their smartphones anyone. What the judge
Speaker 2: said is like, you know, this prevented rivals from competing
Speaker 2: on a level playing field. And so Google had argued, look, actually,
Speaker 2: our search engine has lots of competition. People are looking
Speaker 2: for information in lots of different places, whether it's on
Speaker 2: Amazon and TikTok and Reddit other Internet you know search engines.
Speaker 2: But essentially the judge ruled against him, and so where
Speaker 2: we are now is we have to figure out like
Speaker 2: what the remedy is to that anti trust violation. I think,
Speaker 2: you know, one of the things that's a little bit
Speaker 2: easier about that case in this case, which is it
Speaker 2: probably was easier for the Justice Department to establish that
Speaker 2: Google had maintained a monopoly in the search business in
Speaker 2: a way that I think the discussion around what defines
Speaker 2: social media and what defines the social media market for
Speaker 2: meta is a little bit more fraught. But this is
Speaker 2: like one of the biggest wins right for ntrust rigilators
Speaker 2: against a big tech company in two decades since the
Speaker 2: Microsoft case. And whether that will continue, whether the Justice
Speaker 2: firement at FTC and in to circulators around the world
Speaker 2: will be able to continue to rack up as an
Speaker 2: open question.
Speaker 1: What I find is so personally fascinating about this story
Speaker 1: is it has both the drama of the TikTok of
Speaker 1: week by week politics and of courtroom testimony and stuff,
Speaker 1: but it also exists in this kind of grander sweep
Speaker 1: of the history of the twentieth century. I mean, you
Speaker 1: had IBM subject to anti trust action in the sixties,
Speaker 1: which led to them unbundling their hardware and software business,
Speaker 1: which created a software marketplace, which in turn allowed Microsoft
Speaker 1: to rise. Microsoft intern was subject to anti trust legislation
Speaker 1: the late nineties early two thousands, which meant that they
Speaker 1: couldn't force Internet Explorer down consumers throats who were using
Speaker 1: Windows operating system. This in turn allowed Google to emerge,
Speaker 1: and now Google and Meta are facing antitrust action of
Speaker 1: their own. So I was wondering if you can kind
Speaker 1: of reflect on where this sits in the history of
Speaker 1: tech and government.
Speaker 2: I think at a time when the industry is really
Speaker 2: focused on artificial intelligence and generative artificial intelligence, these cases
Speaker 2: that are going on now really have the power to
Speaker 2: kind of reset the competition among who's going to rise
Speaker 2: and fall in this marketplace, Who's going to have the
Speaker 2: ability to make the right deals, make the right mergers
Speaker 2: in order to assume top place in the AI race,
Speaker 2: which they all want to do. And I think it's
Speaker 2: also unclear how a spinoff would affect the company right.
Speaker 2: There was a really poignant moment on Tuesday in which
Speaker 2: Mark Zuckerberg is being asked about an internal message he's
Speaker 2: sent in twenty eighteen where he said, and I'm just
Speaker 2: going to read the quote as calls to break up
Speaker 2: the big tech companies grow, there is a non trivial
Speaker 2: chance that we will be forced to spin out Instagram
Speaker 2: and perhaps WhatsApp in the next five years. And he
Speaker 2: later said, well, most companies resist these kinds of breakups,
Speaker 2: companies actually performed better after they split up. And if
Speaker 2: you think about it, people might have written Microsoft for
Speaker 2: dead right years ago after their ANIHS battle. Is anyone
Speaker 2: really saying that now? No, this is just one part
Speaker 2: of that story.
Speaker 3: This is the first week of what might be a
Speaker 3: two month trial, and we are nowhere near ruling. Just
Speaker 3: in your opinion as somebody who is attending these things,
Speaker 3: like what do we think could happen and what are
Speaker 3: the things that you're looking out for.
Speaker 2: I think one thing I'm going to be really paying
Speaker 2: attention to is how the judge asks questions about market size,
Speaker 2: because I think the definition of the market is one
Speaker 2: of the hardest parts that the FDC has to prove
Speaker 2: that the market that Meta operates is this sort of
Speaker 2: personal social networking market, and I'm not sure that the
Speaker 2: tech industry has understood it that way, and certainly Meta
Speaker 2: hasn't understood it that way. His own lawyer asked him
Speaker 2: if he had even heard of that phrase before the
Speaker 2: FTC's lawsuit.
Speaker 1: She said no.
Speaker 2: And so I think how the judge asks questions about
Speaker 2: how the marketplace is structured and defined is like one
Speaker 2: issue that I'm going to definitely be paying attention to
Speaker 2: another thing is just like Honestly, these top executives that
Speaker 2: were expected to hear from We're expecting to hear from
Speaker 2: Cheryl Samdberg, We're expecting to hear from Instagram head Adam Masseri.
Speaker 2: We might expect to hear from Zakoyo Capital and Google
Speaker 2: and whatnot. And so I am very curious to see
Speaker 2: how they talk about how they were thinking about these
Speaker 2: mergers at the time. If there is some more relenting
Speaker 2: from meta executives about their true motivations for making these purchases,
Speaker 2: I think that'll be interesting to watch and then like
Speaker 2: it's boring, But I think how THEUS talk about harm
Speaker 2: and how users are harmed or not harmed, And it
Speaker 2: feels like this game of like what if, right, what
Speaker 2: if these mergers hadn't happened. What would have happened to Instagram?
Speaker 2: Would it be as popular as like Snapchat is right now?
Speaker 2: Or would it be an even bigger global industry threat.
Speaker 1: What's a fascinating moment, Naomi, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: That's it for this week for tech Stuff. I'm as
Speaker 1: Valoshian and I'm Kara Price.
Speaker 3: This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis and Victoria Domingez.
Speaker 3: It was executive produced by me Oz Valosian and Kate
Speaker 3: Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvel for iHeart Podcasts. The
Speaker 3: Engineer is Bihied Frasier and Kyle Murdoch mixed this episode.
Speaker 3: He also wrote our theme song.
Speaker 1: Join us next Wednesday for tech stuff The Story when
Speaker 1: we'll share an indepth conversation with the former editor of
Speaker 1: The Financial Times, Lionel Barber about his book, Gambling Man.
Speaker 1: It's all about the enigmatic founder of SoftBank mas Son,
Speaker 1: and we'll also talk about Masayshi Son's relationships with Sam
Speaker 1: Altman and the Stargate Project.
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