What a Difference Three Years Makes

00:00:00:04 - 00:00:34:16
Jason Howell
Coming up next, Jeff Jarvis and I unpack Apple's new AI chief ChatGPT. S third birthday and what it actually says about AI's growing pains and how Silicon Valley is creating its own versions of some of the biggest websites to train its AI agents without getting blocked by the real thing. That's all ahead on this episode of the AI Inside podcast.

00:00:34:18 - 00:00:52:25
Jason Howell
What's going on, everybody? Welcome to another episode. One of many and many to come, I hope, of the AI insight podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Jason, how will we take a look every week at the AI that is layered throughout the world of technology? And my co-host Jeff Jarvis is here as well. A day early.

00:00:52:28 - 00:01:09:04
Jeff Jarvis
It is my fault we're a day early because I'm flying out of the country tomorrow to report to Austria for a media conference. And so Jason was nice enough to switch today. There's all kinds of discombobulation going on because because worlds collide tomorrow. Because guess where Jason is going to be tomorrow?

00:01:09:04 - 00:01:15:13
Jason Howell
Where? Up we go. Oh, that's true, that's good to know that. I'm going to be on your other podcast. You, so promote.

00:01:15:13 - 00:01:22:19
Jeff Jarvis
In this podcast, which is, which is good. Yeah. And by the way, adjacent what number show is this?

00:01:22:22 - 00:01:24:18
Jason Howell
This is number 101.

00:01:24:18 - 00:01:26:13
Jeff Jarvis
Rising and Nick. Great. Yeah.

00:01:26:13 - 00:01:47:14
Jason Howell
That's cool. Yeah. Last week we had our first three digits. Now we're 101. And, we'll continue on. Got lots of actually have some really cool things planned for this month. So we got our normal episodes. We've got some interviews I don't want to reveal too much, but holy cow, we've got some excellent voices coming on the show throughout this month, so.

00:01:47:16 - 00:01:49:17
Jeff Jarvis
Let's look for those that are.

00:01:49:17 - 00:02:13:27
Jason Howell
Episodes. I am, I am, I'm working harder at at kind of supporting this show on the back end and trying out some new things along those lines. You know, just, yesterday I hopped on the live stream again. I done this last week with Bill Meeks, and, this week did it with Jared Guralnick, who is the CEO and co-founder of a company called Your 360.

00:02:13:27 - 00:02:33:10
Jason Howell
I actually was connected to him through a friend of mine, a mutual friend. And, it's an AI service. It's all about kind of like voice chat, voice, voice chat, bot kind of interaction around 360 reviews. And we just spent 45 minutes kind of taking a look at the product, talking about it and everything. And that's on the AI inside YouTube channel.

00:02:33:10 - 00:02:49:26
Jason Howell
So if you want to check that out, I highly recommend go over, check it out. Just kind of playing around with different things to see, what you all like. And, that was a ton of fun to, chat with Jared. So there we go. But why don't we talk about some news? Because that's why we're here today.

00:02:50:00 - 00:03:06:29
Jason Howell
And even though even though it's only six days since the last episode, you think that might mean that there was not enough to talk about. But, boy, that is not the case. Let's, I suppose start with ChatGPT being a wee little three years old. Can you believe it? Only three years ago.

00:03:07:00 - 00:03:16:04
Jeff Jarvis
It's only three years. Yeah. And the the amount of upset and and volcanic change that's occurred in that time.

00:03:16:07 - 00:03:35:20
Jason Howell
I mean, really phenomenal. It is it is say what you will about about this moment in artificial intelligence. There's a lot of people that the second they hear that word, you know, their eyes roll. You can practically hear the eyeballs rolling behind their eyelids. And, and they're like, I don't want to hear about it anymore. I'm sick of hearing about AI.

00:03:35:20 - 00:03:45:25
Jason Howell
And like, I just I hate to tell you this, but like, the technology industry has changed because of AI, and I don't think that's hyperbole.

00:03:45:25 - 00:03:47:09
Jeff Jarvis
I don't think not at all.

00:03:47:09 - 00:04:09:11
Jason Howell
It's it's just it's proven itself at this point, to, to be pivotal and, and, yeah, architecturally necessary, I guess. Or at least, at least all the companies believe that it is necessary. I guess that'll prove itself over time. But I don't think it's going anywhere. And I think the fact that only three years ago, ChatGPT was born.

00:04:09:11 - 00:04:17:06
Jason Howell
And yet everything on, you know, in the technology landscape looks so completely different now in its shadow.

00:04:17:08 - 00:04:36:15
Jeff Jarvis
There's a story I didn't put in the rundown today, about, how college students are now opting instead of, for, computer science degrees, going for AI degrees, which colleges are starting to run. And I've been working on a new program at Stony Brook, and I did, in technology, AI and society. And so a lot of universities are doing this.

00:04:36:21 - 00:04:54:01
Jeff Jarvis
And there was a discussion that occurred among the faculty then, and one of the people said, well, now that that's kind of, you know, I remember a student who years ago, quit college because he learned HTML and he said I could make a living making web pages and then along came tools making it easier. So, you know, that wasn't the best thing to do.

00:04:54:03 - 00:05:18:24
Jeff Jarvis
And you wouldn't want to get a degree in Bitcoin. True, true. And one could make fun of this. And, you know, we'll see how long that goes. But I think this is a lot bigger than it's not bigger than the web. The web I think is is a huge, huge factor in society. But, I think that, AI is also a huge factor in society.

00:05:18:27 - 00:05:29:29
Jeff Jarvis
And so hats off to ChatGPT. They, they blew the lid off of all this when they did it. And they've been the leader. Well, they stay the leader.

00:05:30:01 - 00:05:43:02
Jason Howell
That's I think. Yeah. A real, real big question. Something we continue to talk about is the, you know, the either the bubble or the ChatGPT bubble. I think we said a couple of weeks ago, you know, maybe it's not an AI bubble, maybe it's a ChatGPT or.

00:05:43:02 - 00:05:44:05
Jeff Jarvis
An LLN bubble.

00:05:44:11 - 00:05:46:10
Jason Howell
Or an a land bubble. You know, where's your.

00:05:46:12 - 00:05:47:00
Jeff Jarvis
Air bubble or.

00:05:47:00 - 00:05:49:00
Jason Howell
Bubble spotting? Yeah.

00:05:49:02 - 00:05:55:15
Jeff Jarvis
But then there's also the if you go to GPT bubble, it's, OpenAI is scared right now.

00:05:55:16 - 00:05:56:13
Jason Howell
Yeah.

00:05:56:15 - 00:06:28:29
Jeff Jarvis
It's pretty clear. Altman issued a code red memo to the staff, because I think that Google's advances, are tangible and real. And I think it it freaked them out a bit. And Google's do is what's fascinating about Google is they're doing it across multiple domains in AI. Right? They've done great. A they invented, the structure for generative AI through, transformer B their models are now getting raves.

00:06:28:29 - 00:06:45:23
Jeff Jarvis
They're applications out of that. Like that a banana are getting raves. They're a hosting company like AWS and like Microsoft, in a huge scale. And as we'll talk about in a few minutes, Google has chips.

00:06:45:26 - 00:06:46:23
Jason Howell
Yeah, they've had to.

00:06:46:28 - 00:06:58:15
Jeff Jarvis
And so there are those who are saying OpenAI is still and it's going to stay ahead. No no no no no. But I think that people are starting to question whether OpenAI will still be taking the oxygen out of the room. What's your bet?

00:06:58:17 - 00:06:59:25
Jason Howell
Yeah.

00:06:59:28 - 00:07:06:24
Jeff Jarvis
What do you think in the next, year from a year from now, hour or episode 201.

00:07:06:27 - 00:07:09:23
Jason Howell
Will open year and at episode 200.

00:07:09:23 - 00:07:15:15
Jeff Jarvis
Well, yeah. Or will it still be the leader or will we be talking about, that that's great question.

00:07:15:16 - 00:07:43:22
Jason Howell
Is it nuts? Yeah. No, man, I have a real hard time believing that ChatGPT would end up or OpenAI would end up in the in the Netscape category, but I guess at the time when Netscape was was flying high, you wouldn't have guessed that either. I don't know, I think they've they've done a lot to prove themselves and, and everything over the last couple of years doesn't mean that it's a guarantee, but they have created a lot of relationships.

00:07:43:25 - 00:08:05:08
Jason Howell
I, I guess I would say that I think that it would take a pretty large, epic sized failure for OpenAI to be completely doomed. You know what? I yeah, right. And I don't think that's necessarily impossible. We were talking pre-show about the circular financing of everything and how much of a, house of cards that could be potentially.

00:08:05:11 - 00:08:26:15
Jason Howell
But, I don't know, because then I look at companies like Napster and, you know, these other companies that granted, it's a you know, AOL, it's a shell of what it once was, but it didn't go away entirely. I just have a hard time believing that that that OpenAI would go away entirely unless they really, really fumble.

00:08:26:18 - 00:08:29:07
Jeff Jarvis
Let me look up and see what AltaVista has to say about that.

00:08:29:10 - 00:08:32:16
Jason Howell
Yeah.

00:08:32:19 - 00:08:49:27
Jeff Jarvis
Yeah. I'm not going to count OpenAI out by no means. However, comma, I think a few things, are very challenging to them. One is on the road that they're on. They have to keep investing.

00:08:49:29 - 00:08:50:11
Jason Howell
Yeah.

00:08:50:18 - 00:09:21:01
Jeff Jarvis
And this is where the circular deals come from. And, so that's a question. Number two is there is competition that is very real. And we keep on talking about how they leapfrog each other. So the advantage they have is short lived. And then three is our friend Yann LeCun out there or somebody else like him who goes to the next paradigm after, the neural nets and the LMS that we have today.

00:09:21:03 - 00:09:31:04
Jason Howell
So as far as Yann LeCun goes in that direction, and as meta kind of goes along with Yann and his effort, because if he.

00:09:31:04 - 00:09:33:06
Jeff Jarvis
Does sort of a partial decision.

00:09:33:09 - 00:09:54:00
Jason Howell
If they do. Yeah. That's right. Do we I guess we don't know that for certain. But if that were to happen, I mean, I would also see OpenAI exploring that for itself too. Like I feel like they'll travel in packs. It's like, yeah, thank you. When there's when there's a trend. And one of them spots the trend, they all move in that direction to make sure that they're covered on that trend.

00:09:54:00 - 00:10:01:24
Jason Howell
In case that trend, it really is a big deal. And I don't know, I guess I assume that OpenAI would probably do that too.

00:10:01:26 - 00:10:20:24
Jeff Jarvis
Well, I think Google and OpenAI are in that same pack. They're in that that same pack of wolves where they're chasing large scale and they think that's going to get them there. Yeah. That's why Yann interest me so much is because he's going elsewhere. He's not the only one. But he's the, I think the most visible one.

00:10:20:26 - 00:10:44:07
Jeff Jarvis
And so is there some is there. You know as ChatGPT was three years ago. This is one that comes to mind. Is there a chance for another paradigmatic wow that could come from some other structure that makes everybody who's in this pack look like frail old wolves, as along comes the I don't know where this metaphor is going to go, so I'll stop it.

00:10:44:14 - 00:10:45:09
Jeff Jarvis
Yeah.

00:10:45:11 - 00:10:46:14
Jason Howell
But I get it.

00:10:46:20 - 00:10:59:06
Jeff Jarvis
From here come the elephants, I don't know, yeah. So it's interesting. It's just it's just fascinating to watch. So if you consider the change we've seen in three years, God knows what comes in the next year or 2 or 3 years.

00:10:59:08 - 00:11:13:18
Jason Howell
Totally. And you put in an article, Business Insider article, which I thought, you know, it was not that long ago that the Will Smith eating spaghetti like this is this is the quality of Will Smith eating spaghetti at two and a half years ago.

00:11:13:20 - 00:11:20:13
Jeff Jarvis
Which is pretty big. 12 years ago, we were pretty amazed. It was it was freaky, but it was and it was funny.

00:11:20:13 - 00:11:22:02
Jason Howell
And alien life form.

00:11:22:09 - 00:11:24:17
Jeff Jarvis
But it was pretty amazing. When you get down to it.

00:11:24:19 - 00:11:44:04
Jason Howell
Alternate universe. And yet now where is the video? I swear I just said play it and now it's not playing. Let's see here. I'll try and click through. You won't get any audio if there is even any audio. But you know, now we've got Will Smith eaten spaghetti like it's actual spaghetti and boy it yeah, it's getting closer and closer to reality.

00:11:44:04 - 00:11:55:02
Jason Howell
And that was only a couple of years ago. That's just video. That's one aspect of all of this, but it's a pretty easy one to take a look at and be like, man, you come see, it's still fog.

00:11:55:05 - 00:12:05:11
Jeff Jarvis
Steam is coming out of his mouth. He eats spaghetti and none goes away. We can criticize it, but it's a hell of a lot better than freaky alien will Smith from 20 years ago. Yeah.

00:12:05:13 - 00:12:30:24
Jason Howell
And I mean a couple of years prior to that. Like, I can't remember who I was talking to about this, but the deep, went, man, what was it? The. It wasn't it wasn't deep. It's clearly it's not deep fake. It was deep. Something back in like 2017, 2018. And it was the image generation. Everything looked really psychedelic and sort of like it was generating something, but still very wrong.

00:12:30:24 - 00:12:31:18
Jeff Jarvis
But yeah.

00:12:31:23 - 00:12:44:10
Jason Howell
Getting closer to something and everything, you know, everything had millions of eyes deep, something I was totally blanking on the name. But anyways, that was just a few years before that, right? And so when we're looking at, yeah.

00:12:44:10 - 00:12:54:08
Jeff Jarvis
They saw things it couldn't this, this stuff couldn't handle text at all. Now it handles text very well. Daniel bananas. Amazing attic. Yeah. They keep on solving the problems.

00:12:54:10 - 00:13:13:19
Jason Howell
Yeah, man, I wish I could remember the name of it. It was deep something. And it'll come to me when we stop thinking about it. Or someone in chat will, will know. Yeah. What the heck? I'm talking about going on and on about, And did you already mentioned the fact that, like, Google had its own code red a couple of years ago?

00:13:13:21 - 00:13:14:27
Jeff Jarvis
I don't think you didn't know.

00:13:14:27 - 00:13:35:03
Jason Howell
We did. We didn't mention that. That's another really interesting thing about that, too, is that just a couple of years ago, Google recognized, oh, shoot, we've got OpenAI and other, you know, newcomers out googling us when it comes to AI. We should have been the ones to do this. And they really had to kind of really shift things around.

00:13:35:03 - 00:13:56:05
Jason Howell
And I mean, by all accounts, couple of years later, it seems like that worked. You know, Google's no longer, you know, much less the target of, oh, wow, you were here so early. Like, why aren't you the ones reaping all the rewards here? Why are other, you know, incumbents doing it? And, yeah, cable seemed to possibly be shifting at least a little bit as far as that's concerned.

00:13:56:12 - 00:14:13:25
Jeff Jarvis
So six months Google stock is up from 170 to today. 316. Which is pretty amazing. 16 well I mean the other AI angle of this is, is this is that the rich always get richer the big always get bigger.

00:14:13:27 - 00:14:14:16
Jason Howell
Yeah. Right.

00:14:14:17 - 00:14:26:25
Jeff Jarvis
Does this mean that this is the hegemony of the, legacy air quotes around the big guys. Google and probably Amazon will win every time or not.

00:14:26:27 - 00:14:27:08
Jason Howell
Right?

00:14:27:14 - 00:14:32:01
Jeff Jarvis
Then there's Apple,

00:14:32:04 - 00:14:37:12
Jason Howell
Deep dream. That's what it was. Deep dream. Do you remember deep dream.

00:14:37:15 - 00:14:39:21
Jeff Jarvis
Do you remember that vaguely. Yeah.

00:14:39:23 - 00:14:41:00
Jason Howell
Okay. Here I'm just going to.

00:14:41:00 - 00:14:41:29
Jeff Jarvis
What will happen to what we should.

00:14:41:29 - 00:14:54:20
Jason Howell
Do when we get to Apple? I have deep love that you did the Segway there. But remember, all the images kind of look like Davos. Oh, right. Watching the video version you'll know. And if not, it.

00:14:54:20 - 00:14:58:07
Jeff Jarvis
Looks like real like bad paisley on acid.

00:14:58:09 - 00:15:09:28
Jason Howell
Yes it's very it's very psychedelic. And it's the kind of thing that like the deeper you look into it the more you see, oh, that kind of looks like a dog, but it kind of doesn't. Or is that a bird or is that?

00:15:09:28 - 00:15:12:28
Jeff Jarvis
But this was the root of it. This is the beginnings of trying to figure all this out.

00:15:12:28 - 00:15:37:05
Jason Howell
But I mean, this is certainly the early stages. This I think is like 2018. This was a deep, deep think around the Mona Lisa, deep dream and deep dream. And, yeah. And I remember looking at these images and going, whoa, that's really weird. That AI machine just, like, conjured this up out of thin air, and it doesn't look like absolute noise by today's standards.

00:15:37:05 - 00:15:41:01
Jason Howell
It looks like noise. But then it was like, wow, how did it do that?

00:15:41:02 - 00:15:44:01
Jeff Jarvis
Then it was, whoa, a computer did this on its own.

00:15:44:04 - 00:15:44:18
Jason Howell
Yes.

00:15:44:18 - 00:16:04:05
Jeff Jarvis
It's freaky. There are 40 dog snouts here and windows all around and things that look like aliens, and it's kind of yucky nonetheless, I think it made us see that there was something to create that creativity the way we want to think of it, but it was creative in its sense because nobody would ever think of making this.

00:16:04:07 - 00:16:23:29
Jason Howell
Yeah, what? Right. Unless you were on a serious amount of drugs. Yeah. And if you are, you suffer from a fear of holes, also known as trypophobia. I'm really sorry that I showed this image, because, boy, this is probably a big trigger for you. And I will go ahead and remove that. Now, because that is the thing.

00:16:24:01 - 00:16:36:15
Jason Howell
Anyways, so OpenAI three years old and, yeah, what a three years been. But you said you had a wonderful segue way to Apple, and I'm sorry that I took that from you. That's okay.

00:16:36:16 - 00:16:41:08
Jeff Jarvis
I forgot that after you're that you're the host. You're the boss. I got ahead of us.

00:16:41:11 - 00:17:17:24
Jason Howell
I love it, I love it. Apple. Apparently naming a new AI chief. John. John. Andrea is how you pronounce his last name. I learned that this morning. I know I had heard it before, but I didn't. I didn't know that it was the name that I was looking at. So John, John, Andrea has been leading, Apple AI for a while now, and apparently next spring has plans to retire until then, shifting to an advisory role and former Microsoft corporate VP of A for AI and long time Google Gemini engineering leader.

00:17:17:24 - 00:17:36:19
Jason Howell
So someone with a pretty solid kind of, background in AI for, you know, successful AI companies or companies doing AI. Amar Subramanian is going to step in as VP of AI at Apple to replace, to replace him.

00:17:36:21 - 00:17:43:18
Jeff Jarvis
So, so but I mean, Apple has been the also ran absolutely right AI. We've talked about it many times.

00:17:43:23 - 00:17:45:14
Jason Howell
Steps and yeah they've.

00:17:45:14 - 00:17:55:13
Jeff Jarvis
They've pulled back. They haven't had a strategy series been a laughing stock for years now. So who knows what this means.

00:17:55:16 - 00:18:14:03
Jason Howell
Well that's that's that right. Like it it could just be, like, coincidental timing. Right. Like, we talked about this on the daily taking a show this morning and Tom Merritt, you know, mentioned like, you know, he's he's night young. He's, you know, he's up retirement age. Maybe he just decided like, hey, you know what? It's time for me to retire.

00:18:14:03 - 00:18:19:06
Jason Howell
And it so happens to coincide with this, I would imagine that is probably a little bit of that.

00:18:19:06 - 00:18:26:14
Jeff Jarvis
A little bit. Yes. Well well cook took Siri away from him in March. So he was already

00:18:26:16 - 00:18:27:13
Jason Howell
Kind of.

00:18:27:16 - 00:18:29:19
Jeff Jarvis
Retracted him. Shame.

00:18:29:19 - 00:18:30:08
Jason Howell
Yeah. Right.

00:18:30:08 - 00:18:31:07
Jeff Jarvis
Right, right.

00:18:31:07 - 00:18:34:24
Jason Howell
That's that's definitely important point I think that's true. Yeah.

00:18:34:26 - 00:18:59:08
Jeff Jarvis
That is so he didn't solve the Siri problem. Seriously. And and then the larger AI strategy, if you couldn't, if you couldn't figure out how to get that into Siri. At some level now with it with the Microsoft Google guy going in, does this mean that they reinvent things entirely or just has become a way to, to, perhaps integrate, those competitors into Apple?

00:18:59:08 - 00:18:59:25
Jeff Jarvis
I think that's.

00:18:59:25 - 00:19:00:08
Jason Howell
Well.

00:19:00:13 - 00:19:00:29
Jeff Jarvis
To be seen.

00:19:00:29 - 00:19:36:20
Jason Howell
That's a that's a great question. We have definitely talked about on this show that Apple has been reportedly investigating using, looking into using Gemini for Siri sometime next year. So actually integrating Gemini AI into its Siri product, into its Apple intelligence. If that's the case, then, Superman. Yeah. Who's coming in, who has a long history at Google and much of that, you know, working and leading AI at Gemini could be a really useful person in that role.

00:19:36:22 - 00:20:02:13
Jason Howell
You know, that can be really good for them. But what does that mean for Apple strategy, which is I think your question. Right. Does it do they continue to lean into the. Well, we do partnerships because we don't have our own AI. The way Google and these other companies do Amazon or whatever, or, you know, do do we do the partnership thing or do we use this knowledge to create our own so that we aren't reliant on, on someone else's technology or both?

00:20:02:14 - 00:20:17:25
Jason Howell
We just do one until the other is is feasible. And he could be very useful for that. But yeah, coming at a time when Apple has, definitely had, had made some missteps, let's say, as well.

00:20:17:25 - 00:20:31:01
Jeff Jarvis
And if Jony Ive actually comes up with something at OpenAI, that's another challenge to Apple. So I think Apple's got to say where's where's it going to put its, brainpower.

00:20:31:04 - 00:20:45:06
Jason Howell
I yeah that's true. How far are we from Apple reinventing the AI hardware space and coming out with another product, this time a dedicated AI, piece of hardware? I think we're pretty far away from that.

00:20:45:06 - 00:20:50:29
Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, I think so, too. But you can bet they're just dying for it. The on Apple is always.

00:20:51:01 - 00:20:58:06
Jason Howell
Totally out because Apple is continually looking for what is the next what is our next iPhone? What is our next iPhone?

00:20:58:08 - 00:21:00:16
Jeff Jarvis
What is the thing that people haven't thought of on their own.

00:21:00:19 - 00:21:01:14
Jason Howell
Yes.

00:21:01:16 - 00:21:02:05
Jeff Jarvis
Right.

00:21:02:07 - 00:21:30:06
Jason Howell
And it wasn't Apple so Pro. No it wasn't Apple Vision Pro. No I agree you know and AI is such a big deal right now. You have to imagine Apple wants to wants to have a play there. So so that's happening. Real quick before we continue onward, I do want to let you know about our Patreon on Patreon.com slash AI Inside Show.

00:21:30:09 - 00:21:46:07
Jason Howell
We've got some amazing patrons who help us do this show each and every week, each and every month. Daniel Croft, who helps me immensely behind the scenes with, social media and kind of taking clips from shows and stuff. So if you see stuff on the socials, Daniel is helping me with that. Daniel.

00:21:46:07 - 00:21:48:23
Jeff Jarvis
Thank you Daniel. We're really grateful.

00:21:48:26 - 00:22:14:25
Jason Howell
And another friend, also named Daniel Daniel Patterson, is is a supporter of this show and through the Patreon. So Daniel what's up? Daniel actually, Dan was on was he on episode 3 or 4? He was on one of the earliest episodes. And then Brenda muir. You're awesome too. Brenda, I want you to know that, patreon.com slash Ironside show is how you can support us on a direct and deep level.

00:22:14:25 - 00:22:38:00
Jason Howell
You get an ad free episodes. You get, you know, when we're doing special things, if it's tied exclusively to patrons, you get access to that. Really? You're just helping, to support the show and continue the show, each and every week and month. And we can't thank you enough for that. Let's take a break. And then when we get on the other side of the break, we'll talk a little bit about we got some like AI chips news.

00:22:38:03 - 00:22:40:05
Jeff Jarvis
Which is unusual for us such into.

00:22:40:07 - 00:22:43:16
Jason Howell
Yeah indeed. We'll talk about that in a moment.

00:22:43:18 - 00:23:01:09
Jason Howell
Yeah I will I will be honest that, you know, the chips side of things sometimes can lose me a little bit. Sometimes it just seems like a lot of, like, I know that's important. And I know some people really speak the chip language, but for me, sometimes it's it's obscure or it's. Yeah, you know what I mean?

00:23:01:09 - 00:23:20:19
Jason Howell
It's out there. It's not like tangible for me other than, wow, that number is bigger. That must be better. You know what I mean? Right? Right. That's how I feel about some of the stuff. But nonetheless, this is the the opening day, at least at the time of this recording of AWS Reinvent and Amazon made some announcements that are notable.

00:23:20:19 - 00:23:46:00
Jason Howell
Definitely hitting the top of tech meme today and have had some people interested in excited. One of those announcements is Trainium three. This is a three nanometer AI training chip. It's packaged in a new Trainium three ultra server system, and Amazon says that it combines custom computer and networking for training and inference. So it'll be four times faster than the current system that they have.

00:23:46:00 - 00:24:18:28
Jason Howell
The Trainium two. I guess it would be, AWS says anthropic lamb. Kara curry, splash Music Descartes have been testing Trainium three systems. They have cut their inference costs by up to 50%. By doing that. So Amazon, releasing its new chip, kind of going anytime I see this sort of stuff, I'm like, okay, so going toe to toe against the the Dominator, which is Nvidia, but is this different because it's in the cloud?

00:24:19:00 - 00:24:26:07
Jason Howell
I don't know. That's that's where my knowledge loses me a little bit. Yeah. For as far as that's concerned.

00:24:26:10 - 00:24:34:20
Jeff Jarvis
And so I'm just trying to catch up with the story a little bit. Yeah. So.

00:24:34:22 - 00:25:00:18
Jeff Jarvis
AWS Trainium for power Systems will be able to interoperate and extend their performance with Nvidia GPUs while still using Amazon's homegrown lower cost server rack technology. I'm reading from TechCrunch. It's worth noting, too, that Nvidia's Cuda, which is its operating system, the that is critical here has become the de facto standard that all the major AI apps are built to support.

00:25:00:20 - 00:25:25:06
Jeff Jarvis
The Trainium for powered systems may make it easier to woo big AI apps built with Nvidia GPUs in mind to Amazon's cloud. So I mean this this is why it gets past chips of course into the stack, into software where Cuda is really important to Nvidia. The fact that it's become a standard is good for Nvidia.

00:25:25:06 - 00:25:46:10
Jeff Jarvis
But does this make it mean that as a result of that interoperability that they open the door to their own competitors. It just gets past my pay grade here. But it's interesting to see how this, how this ecosystem is expanding. Obviously AWS is an incredibly important, pioneer in the cloud. And AWS is bigger than Google.

00:25:46:13 - 00:26:10:11
Jeff Jarvis
Microsoft is out there too. I think that Nvidia is doing some of this as well. So what does the cloud really mean anymore with these big, huge data centers and how they operate? And so I think what we're seeing is a Venn diagram of all these pieces coming together of who has the cloud infrastructure, who has the chips, which are in scarcity and who has the operating systems to make it all work.

00:26:10:13 - 00:26:18:14
Jeff Jarvis
So it's a fascinating thing to watch. And we're going to have to try to find some people who can explain these chips to us. So complicated.

00:26:18:16 - 00:26:33:19
Jason Howell
Yeah. And I should also mention the trainium for different from the training him. Three. So the Trainium three that I mentioned at the top, that's the three nanometer AI training chip now available Trainium for still in development. And that's what you were talking about right. Supports Nvidia's NV

00:26:33:21 - 00:26:34:16
Jeff Jarvis
Link strategy where they're.

00:26:34:16 - 00:26:45:00
Jason Howell
Going to interop rates with the Nvidia GPUs that's coming soon. I don't think in the case of Trainium four, it means a four nanometer process.

00:26:45:02 - 00:26:46:20
Jeff Jarvis
I would think it goes the other.

00:26:46:22 - 00:26:56:29
Jason Howell
Of three with a three nanometer. You know, obviously you this morning, maybe they need to call it Trainium two if it didn't already exist. If it's a two nanometer. But I guess we don't actually know that they don't mention that.

00:26:56:29 - 00:27:01:22
Jeff Jarvis
Then you can see some really dumb executives somewhere saying, no, I want the I want the larger one.

00:27:01:24 - 00:27:04:05
Jason Howell
Either going in the opposite directions.

00:27:04:10 - 00:27:05:22
Jeff Jarvis
We always get bigger.

00:27:05:24 - 00:27:34:09
Jason Howell
Yep. Amazon also announced, Nova Forge, which is a new AWS service for enterprises. Now, this one I understand a little bit better. This is for enterprise who want to build their own frontier class models. So essentially what it means is they can start with their own internal nova checkpoints and then mix in their their own specific proprietary data across the different training stages.

00:27:34:09 - 00:28:07:14
Jason Howell
So they could integrate their training data pre pre-training, mid training or post training. And essentially what they're billing this as a positioning it as is a more powerful alternative to fine tuning or to rag being able to put that data in, I think at an earlier position to really bake that knowledge directly into the base model. Base model still has a standard layer of understanding and context of on everything, but this just brings it closer into, I guess, the the core of the model.

00:28:07:22 - 00:28:09:10
Jason Howell
That makes sense.

00:28:09:13 - 00:28:31:08
Jeff Jarvis
I threw these into the last bit I just wanted to mention real quickly is that at the same time, again, talking about this ecosystem, Amazon and Google are launching a multi-cloud service for faster connectivity after AWS went down. They're trying to enable things to interoperate across those two and their competitors that they're dire competitors. But people are working across many places.

00:28:31:11 - 00:28:50:03
Jeff Jarvis
And then Amazon is also investing $50 billion to expand AI, super conducting super computing infrastructure for U.S government agencies. So there's a lot going on in, the cloud around AI, which is fascinating.

00:28:50:05 - 00:29:03:03
Jason Howell
So there you go. That's the big Amazon news from their big conference that's happening right now. And then we've got Google which yes last. So last week we did talk about Google's TPU.

00:29:03:09 - 00:29:03:29
Jeff Jarvis
Rumor.

00:29:03:29 - 00:29:09:12
Jason Howell
Or the rumor around Google. Renting I think it is. It's TPUs to matter. Meta.

00:29:09:12 - 00:29:10:05
Jeff Jarvis
Right.

00:29:10:07 - 00:29:33:19
Jason Howell
So we already discussed that we've got a couple of takes here on the TPU V7, that you put in here. I don't know. It'll tell me a little bit about this. I know that one of the reports is from Semi Analysis and it looks it compares Google's TPUs to Nvidia's GPUs and honestly it looks like Google's TPUs come out ahead as far as that analysis is concerned.

00:29:33:19 - 00:29:34:19
Jason Howell
But what did you take.

00:29:34:24 - 00:29:52:07
Jeff Jarvis
Yeah the the tip of the read here is the TPU v7 Ironwood, which is Google's, close to Nvidia's JB 200 or JB 300. Throughput has been much lower. Total cost for ownership. That's the key thing here. So that it's a comparable chip at a lower cost.

00:29:52:09 - 00:29:54:07
Jason Howell
20 to 50% lower.

00:29:54:07 - 00:30:22:22
Jeff Jarvis
Which is considerable. But I think to me, Jason, what matters even more is that is that the fears of a lack of supply because of Nvidia, I think this makes me see that there can be multiple, opportunities to still get the hardware and the compute that people need. And so any fear that the bubble gets burst because they run out of compute, I think news like this helps change that question.

00:30:22:25 - 00:30:49:29
Jeff Jarvis
And it also says there's competition for, Nvidia. Let's see what their stock is doing Nvda the stock let's see there is is up a bit today let's say over a year a little interesting. So a year ago Nvidia was at 138 and now it's at 181 and a Nvidia, which was, you know, the killer stock going up and up and up.

00:30:50:01 - 00:31:12:01
Jeff Jarvis
Google has had a more of a of a hockey stick there. And that's what this news last week that we talked about led to it. People said wow, Google's got in in models and it's good in applications and it's good in chips and it's good in hosting days. So I think that's where we see this going. So it's worth, I think, paying some chip attention here just to see what Google's doing versus Nvidia.

00:31:12:02 - 00:31:14:17
Jeff Jarvis
That's pretty much all I can. Yeah.

00:31:14:19 - 00:31:27:16
Jason Howell
And I mean and you know, as we mentioned last week, Google reportedly believes it can take about 10% of Nvidia's, you know, server AI server revenue.

00:31:27:23 - 00:31:28:03
Jeff Jarvis
Which is.

00:31:28:05 - 00:32:14:06
Jason Howell
Concern, which is a considerable. Yeah, kind of first take on this, apparently anthropic has a 1 million TPU v7 commitment right now, with around 400,000 TPUs bought directly, 600,000 rented. Their estimated training cost per flop is around 50 to 60% lower than Nvidia's GB 300. So yeah, like what you're talking about, something like this could really shift and restructure the landscape for Nvidia, which they've really enjoyed to date, kind of illustrates just by Google opening up its TPU and going in a different direction with it, a more kind of publicly accessible direction with it.

00:32:14:09 - 00:32:23:10
Jason Howell
They stand to immediately benefit a lot. And Nvidia, yeah, maybe a little bit on shakier ground than it was just a couple of weeks ago.

00:32:23:17 - 00:32:25:11
Jeff Jarvis
Italy's created competition.

00:32:25:13 - 00:32:26:13
Jason Howell
Yep.

00:32:26:15 - 00:32:27:04
Jeff Jarvis
And.

00:32:27:07 - 00:32:27:18
Jason Howell
Changed.

00:32:27:24 - 00:32:29:23
Jeff Jarvis
60% of the beer. Yeah.

00:32:29:24 - 00:32:31:23
Jason Howell
That's that's insane.

00:32:31:25 - 00:32:53:09
Jeff Jarvis
How long have you and, like, gone to io back in the days when I was still going to it. And one of the tents, they always. Here's our tensor chip, and we'd stare at it and say, oh, that's a chip. And it was Google's kind of secret weapon, what they used internally. So now going external, I think it's a huge deal.

00:32:53:11 - 00:33:02:17
Jeff Jarvis
I think Nvidia is still strong company. I don't have any doubts about that. Oh yeah Cuda is still strong and all that still matters. But a competitive landscape is probably good for everybody in AI.

00:33:02:19 - 00:33:15:04
Jason Howell
Yep. Yeah. Just kind of yeah. It things change so quickly and yeah, I don't think that Nvidia is going anywhere. I don't know, obviously because of this. But it's.

00:33:15:07 - 00:33:15:23
Jeff Jarvis
There's not a that.

00:33:15:23 - 00:33:19:00
Jason Howell
Video. Lydia isn't the only one breathing that air, you know.

00:33:19:03 - 00:33:21:13
Jeff Jarvis
Right.

00:33:21:16 - 00:33:27:00
Jason Howell
Very interesting stuff. So there we go a little bit of chip talk. Now we'll get into something.

00:33:27:00 - 00:33:31:08
Jeff Jarvis
That's how those chips get used for good Intel.

00:33:31:11 - 00:34:00:11
Jason Howell
Yeah. I'm curious to hear your take on this. An MIT Technology Review article has an interesting look. I thought, this is super interesting at how AI systems are being used inside prisons and monitoring phone calls to and from from inmates. So when inmates are in prison and they want to talk to their, you know, their family or whoever, they get their their phone call, they are notified that any of their calls that they make out through that system are monitored.

00:34:00:11 - 00:34:21:00
Jason Howell
And I imagine that includes logging, you know, that sort of thing. It definitely includes it because they have that data. And what we're finding out in this article is that though their prey, I don't believe it mentioned that they're being told that any of that data is being used for AI training. But apparently it is. Yeah. Yep.

00:34:21:01 - 00:35:05:22
Jason Howell
Telecom provider Securus. Apparently mines years worth of recorded calls, video chats, texts, emails, all in an effort to flag in quotes contemplated crimes in real time. So these are conversations that happen from the prison phone and patterns that are being detected in how they're talking, to determine whether there might be a planning or something along the lines of a of a criminal thought or act, without, you know, even without them explicitly saying it, picking up on patterns that allude to it, which I imagine, I imagine people who are doing this are speaking in certain.

00:35:05:25 - 00:35:06:28
Jeff Jarvis
You know, code.

00:35:07:00 - 00:35:16:20
Jason Howell
Code. Yeah, code is the right word. So it seems like a good use of AI from a, from a purely technological, ethical. Yeah, theoretical standpoint.

00:35:16:20 - 00:35:34:10
Jeff Jarvis
When it comes to human rights, it's another question. And the other part of the story too, is that there were attempts at reforms in 2024 because prisons were making a fortune off charging for communication by, residents of the prisons, and they have to pay in.

00:35:34:10 - 00:35:35:27
Jason Howell
Order to make the calls.

00:35:35:29 - 00:35:38:11
Jeff Jarvis
Oh, yeah. It's expensive as hell.

00:35:38:13 - 00:35:39:03
Jason Howell
Oh, wow.

00:35:39:08 - 00:36:06:00
Jeff Jarvis
And, so then then there were, let's see here in 2003 four, the FCC issued a major reform. This is in, MIT Technology Review, as you said, no, I just lost my place. Yeah, there it is. There was in favor. There was favored by prison, reform advocates that forbade telecoms from passing the costs of recording and surveilling calls on to inmates.

00:36:06:02 - 00:36:32:18
Jeff Jarvis
So there's the cost of the calling structure itself is one question. Yeah, but they were also, surveilling all these calls and charging the inmates for doing that surveillance. So then there was a up a hue and cry from sheriffs and wardens and such and not surprisingly, under Trump, Brendan Carr, the head of the FCC, delayed those reforms.

00:36:32:20 - 00:36:55:18
Jeff Jarvis
So that fits into this two, where how do you monitor this stuff? The other question that I don't think this addresses that I find interesting is it's one matter to say, okay, you're in prison and you've given up certain rights and you are being monitored in every possible way. And that's that's life in prison. We can debate that, but that's just reality.

00:36:55:18 - 00:36:57:29
Jeff Jarvis
But what about the people on the outside? The call?

00:36:58:02 - 00:36:59:08
Jason Howell
Yeah, right.

00:36:59:10 - 00:37:19:21
Jeff Jarvis
And could somebody get ensnared, because of this, they you could argue that. Well, if they're working with the prisoner on something dastardly, then they deserve this. On the other hand, do they have some rights of privacy in their communication? Do they give all that up? If you call somebody in a prison, they give it up. They need a stent.

00:37:19:23 - 00:37:21:23
Jason Howell
When they call, are they notified? Yeah.

00:37:21:26 - 00:37:45:28
Jeff Jarvis
I don't know that. Probably, but but do you give it up then to the next extent that it's used in AI. Yeah. To try to find out whether you're doing something bad. So it's just an interesting. Yeah. These are the cases where AI raises humanistic issues, both legal and humanitarian. Issues of human rights, not just technical issues.

00:37:46:01 - 00:38:08:20
Jason Howell
Yeah. I mean, it's like, you know, face scanning and all that, that the technology enables and opens up the possibility to do all these things and maybe at the core or definitely at the core of a lot of this stuff, the intention, the the intention is good, right? Like we want to prevent somebody from getting murdered or we want to prevent, you know, this or that bad thing, but what?

00:38:08:26 - 00:38:33:22
Jason Howell
Yeah. What are those rights that end up getting, sideswiped or swept out, you know, along that line, just because the technology can do it. And it's important to look at that for sure. Yeah. In this system, if something is detected as being contemplated, it is that information is fed to human reviewers. So it's not like the AI makes the determination.

00:38:33:22 - 00:38:57:01
Jason Howell
There are human reviewers who are part of, of the, the chain and they would from there do the investigation and stuff. But and of course they say you know, hey, this is this is actually disrupted human trafficking. It's actually disrupted gang coordination, contraband, smuggling. But but yeah, has some, some privacy implications as well.

00:38:57:04 - 00:39:00:21
Jeff Jarvis
Yep. That are worth looking out.

00:39:00:24 - 00:39:17:18
Jason Howell
James Cameron. So I guess these next, these next two stories are more about kind of like the, the AI replacing human effort, sort of thing. So that's that's how they're packaged. James Cameron, who's the director? Famous director. He's got a new movie coming out. Avatar.

00:39:17:18 - 00:39:19:22
Jeff Jarvis
Which did you like? Avatar.

00:39:19:24 - 00:39:41:10
Jason Howell
Yeah, I've enjoyed avatar. Yeah, I understand it's it's kind of bloated. And I mean, James Cameron's movies are often very. Yeah, he's. And. Yeah, but I've, I've kind of always been kind of a sucker for a lot of his films. Anyways, from an early age I was big into Terminator and all that kind of stuff. So, the abyss stuff.

00:39:41:10 - 00:39:47:20
Jeff Jarvis
But if any movies would be prime for AI creation. Yeah, you'd think it'd be his.

00:39:47:22 - 00:40:12:09
Jason Howell
Yeah, because he from an early from an early point a spent like talking about Terminator. Terminator two, the T-1000. I think it was called a cheated. I can't remember what it was called. I think that was it. That was a really early example of computer assisted, visual, you know, technology making its way into film and doing things that you just hadn't seen before, that liquid robot that kind of oozes through.

00:40:12:10 - 00:40:12:20
Jeff Jarvis
Exotic.

00:40:12:23 - 00:40:33:25
Jason Howell
Holes and stuff that was very like, incredible. I remember it was incredibly cutting edge at the time, and that was definitely utilizing computers to do things. And I'm, I'm pretty certain back then people were making the same complaints about just using computers in, in movies like that, like, why not? Why do you know, why do you have to use a computer to create digital imagery?

00:40:33:25 - 00:40:45:06
Jason Howell
It looks fake, it looks awful, blah blah blah. You know, I'm sure there were some similar, correlations between that and now with using AI for motion pictures, but. Right. Yeah.

00:40:45:08 - 00:41:08:19
Jeff Jarvis
But you can see it's not hard to imagine many of the characters in avatar to be computer generated. Oh, they they're they're so, made up anyway, the whole thing, voice and everything could be computer generated and so you could see strikes me as a little defensive of him. To say, well.

00:41:08:21 - 00:41:14:17
Jeff Jarvis
The idea of generative AI replacing actors is horrifying. He says oh yeah.

00:41:14:21 - 00:41:41:12
Jason Howell
Yeah. I mean I kind of get the sense that he's. Yeah. So, so that's basically what he said. I realized we started talking about about his opinions, but we didn't actually address what he actually said. He's basically said that Gen AI can be a useful way to cut costs like virtual effects, costs and film. But he it sounds like he draws a line acting between that and using AI to replace actors.

00:41:41:12 - 00:42:16:15
Jason Howell
He calls that horrifying, and he says that human involvement is our human. Creativity is sacred. And and I mean, there's I, I feel that there's a truth in there as well that that there is I think part of what he's saying is in a future where AI tools exist and can help us do all these things, I speaking as James Cameron, I believe that things that have humans directly involved will carry with them a premium because people will highly value the human side of things versus the purely generated side of things.

00:42:16:17 - 00:42:20:14
Jason Howell
And I don't, I don't know, I find some truth in that. And for my own person.

00:42:20:16 - 00:42:46:07
Jeff Jarvis
Yeah. But just to play devil's advocate, James Cameron can get money for huge budgets to hire big stars and huge casts. With even the makeup is expensive as hell to create. And what if somebody comes along who is as creative as he is, or more so and can use these tools, at a much lower cost to express themselves?

00:42:46:10 - 00:43:01:12
Jeff Jarvis
Yeah. Yeah. The the obvious. The problem with that is that actors lose a job, but they may never have had that job in the first place, because that person had never been able to get the budget to make the movie. So that's what we have to figure out how to balance. And so it's easy for him to say I'm pure.

00:43:01:14 - 00:43:18:12
Jason Howell
He sees himself largely in this conversation, not just this, but over time, decades. He he inserts himself into conversations like this because he sees himself as kind of like a deliverer of ultimate film truth. You know, he's very he's very self.

00:43:18:15 - 00:43:24:25
Jeff Jarvis
I have to admit that I, that I saw him in person once and pardon me for saying this in Davos.

00:43:24:27 - 00:43:27:20
Jeff Jarvis
Drink and yeah, he's a little pompous.

00:43:27:23 - 00:43:33:24
Jason Howell
Yeah. Yeah. He's also made an insane amount of money directing some of the, you know bigger.

00:43:34:00 - 00:43:34:22
Jeff Jarvis
Yeah. Absolutely.

00:43:34:22 - 00:43:53:24
Jason Howell
Films of in Hollywood and, and also Titanic. I have a I have a lot of respect for his for his abilities as far as that's concerned. And on a personal level, I'm always kind of like, taken with a grain of salt. Yeah. Because he is on a completely different level and yeah, you're right. But, you know, there's some truth in there.

00:43:53:24 - 00:44:15:15
Jason Howell
I can kind of understand where he's coming from, and I can I can agree with parts of it. Then you also included a New York Times article that has a different kind of human replacement story. And this is this is really interesting because I hadn't considered this until reading through this. But Silicon Valley startups are now cloning major, sites.

00:44:15:15 - 00:44:27:25
Jason Howell
So, you know, we're talking to united.com, Amazon, Airbnb, Gmail, that sort of stuff. So that agents can learn from those cloned sites how to click type.

00:44:28:01 - 00:44:48:13
Jason Howell
Without being blocked by, by bot protections. So they're realizing, like, we want our agents to know how to do all this stuff. But if we train it on your actual live site, you know, you don't want bots on there doing this stuff, so you're going to have a system to prevent our bots from doing stuff. So we're going to clone your site, train on that, and then you won't know that the bots are at your site.

00:44:48:16 - 00:45:12:29
Jeff Jarvis
Right. And it was fascinating. United got wind of this. And so they sent a takedown notice thinking this was a matter of copyright. So all that the company did was change the name to Fly Unified and remove the United logo, because the point wasn't to deal with copyright, it wasn't as content. It was trying to be able to make the technology and the, UI accessible.

00:45:13:01 - 00:45:16:20
Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, for trading. So I find it absolutely fascinating and at some.

00:45:16:20 - 00:45:18:16
Jason Howell
Point about architecture than it is.

00:45:18:18 - 00:45:46:05
Jeff Jarvis
Absolutely. And the thing is, this is where we get push comes to shove, too. But access on the one hand, you know, media companies, as we've discussed often on the show, are cutting off access wherever they can say, no, leave us out of this. No, no, no. Well, they're not going to be discovered at some point. United is going to say, no, we actually want to be found by these bots because we want business from them.

00:45:46:05 - 00:46:06:11
Jeff Jarvis
We want them to recommend our flights to wherever Amazon is cutting off all these bots because it wants to do it all internally to Amazon. But, you know, I don't know what happens with, with with with Commerce. I think that they're going to want to do this. And so I don't know why these companies, in a sense, were necessary.

00:46:06:13 - 00:46:11:23
Jeff Jarvis
But on the other hand, it creates a safe, sandbox.

00:46:11:26 - 00:46:12:11
Jason Howell
Totally.

00:46:12:11 - 00:46:13:14
Jeff Jarvis
Where I can be. Trade like that.

00:46:13:14 - 00:46:14:29
Jason Howell
Makes a lot of sense to me.

00:46:15:04 - 00:46:28:14
Jeff Jarvis
That it does. I can almost imagine a commerce company hiring this company to make a mock up of their own site, so that I can go and deal with it on the side, and it's harmless.

00:46:28:16 - 00:46:29:07
Jason Howell
Yeah.

00:46:29:10 - 00:46:39:18
Jeff Jarvis
Right. And and they can also maybe get some data and see what they're doing and understand what's what and maybe help out and try to direct things. So it'll be really interesting to hear to see, where this goes.

00:46:39:20 - 00:47:04:05
Jason Howell
Yeah. Yeah. I hadn't thought about the whole the copyright versus architecture thing related to this. Like if a, if, if I'm a company and I can go to your website and easily pull down the site map or the, you know, the whole hierarchy of your website, because websites are publicly available, there's probably a lot of hooks and stuff in there that make the website that you copy from it, you know, completely unusable.

00:47:04:05 - 00:47:22:24
Jason Howell
But if I did that for my own use, am I breaking? Like, am I breaking the law by doing that? Or is it the fact that they would be? Or maybe not the law, but maybe terms of service or whatever, you know, is it the fact that they're doing that and then they're training their AI systems off of that?

00:47:22:26 - 00:47:24:13
Jason Howell
Yeah, I don't know. That's kind of a.

00:47:24:16 - 00:47:25:02
Jeff Jarvis
I don't know.

00:47:25:07 - 00:47:26:26
Jason Howell
Think the refrain.

00:47:26:29 - 00:47:31:28
Jeff Jarvis
And it's all the more confusing because if this company takes off its name is AGI now.

00:47:32:02 - 00:47:37:05
Jason Howell
Great. So what if AGI never happens. Well AGI I think well we got AGI.

00:47:37:05 - 00:47:49:00
Jeff Jarvis
It's right here. It's a fake world. So yeah I just find this fascinating because it's, it's it's it's other uses for fake reality that I hadn't thought of.

00:47:49:03 - 00:47:53:12
Jason Howell
Yeah I totally have thought I thought that was super fascinating. I appreciate you putting that in there.

00:47:53:12 - 00:48:06:29
Jeff Jarvis
So they've cloned sites for Amazon, Airbnb and Gmail with names like, listen, Stay and Be and Go Mail. I have been able to find any of them yet. That's what I'm curious about.

00:48:06:29 - 00:48:10:14
Jason Howell
But they wouldn't be they wouldn't be publicly facing right if the House.

00:48:10:14 - 00:48:20:03
Jeff Jarvis
Today was on them for United to find out about it. And don't they want the bots to be going out there in the world? I don't know, that's what I couldn't figure out the the story. That's what confused me.

00:48:20:05 - 00:48:42:03
Jason Howell
Yeah. I mean, I would guess not knowing the answer here and totally guessing, but I would guess that if they're creating these a duplicate sites purely for the training of their, you know, their, agents, like, why would they need that site to be publicly facing, you know, so maybe maybe they found out about it just because there's people on the inside or, you know, some sort of thing leaked out.

00:48:42:03 - 00:48:45:27
Jason Howell
It's like almost. Or did they actually get access to it? Yeah. That's a that's.

00:48:45:27 - 00:48:48:04
Jeff Jarvis
Yeah. I don't know. That's what I but it's fascinating.

00:48:48:04 - 00:49:06:21
Jason Howell
So but I mean it's here I, I guess I can show show at least. What, what airline is this this is this United AGI built a United Airlines replica site, fly unified. So this is the replica with all the garbled gook, you know, the gobbledygook.

00:49:06:21 - 00:49:11:01
Jeff Jarvis
Yeah. Yeah, I know it. Well, I'm going on United tomorrow. Yep.

00:49:11:03 - 00:49:13:22
Jason Howell
So this looks pretty true to the overall.

00:49:13:24 - 00:49:17:00
Jeff Jarvis
Yeah. It just feels like oh God. Where am I going now.

00:49:17:02 - 00:49:32:15
Jason Howell
Yeah I see what you mean. How would how would United have even known that this existed if it was kept on its own internal thing and but but why would they are the flip side. Why would they make it publicly accessible? Because then you really are stepping into like, you know.

00:49:32:18 - 00:49:53:11
Jeff Jarvis
What ifs, surely. Yeah. At some point in this, if if your dumb agent thinks it's making a plane reservation and goes away through the process at Fly Unified and comes back and says, I have your ticket for you, and it's not, then that's fraud of a sort. Yeah. That's misleading. So, I don't know.

00:49:53:13 - 00:50:16:29
Jason Howell
Yeah. Got a few other replica sites Gmail, Amazon, Airbnb, sorry, go Mail, Amazon and Stan. Me, I love it. I love those Dave. Those are great. We need actual sites that have those names. And maybe that'll happen. We'll see. All right. Let's take a super quick break before we do just a quick reminder. Leave us a review.

00:50:16:29 - 00:50:34:29
Jason Howell
Why don't, you listen to the show every week? You watch the show every week. You enjoy the show. I hope you enjoy the show. So go go on to your podcast or go on Apple Podcasts and leave us a review. We haven't had one in a while. And so I'm getting I'm getting lonely looking at the review page and not seeing a new one.

00:50:35:02 - 00:50:48:10
Jason Howell
So maybe you'll be the one that's right and pointing at you. Do it. Okay, let's take a break. We'll come back and, touch on a few speed round items before we get you out of here. So that's coming up in a moment.

00:50:48:12 - 00:51:08:15
Jason Howell
Okay, a few of these, to knock out here, we've got deep seek. Remember, deep seek. The Chinese, I call it my. The thorn in my side. Start up thorn in my side for Silicon Valley AI startups who thought they had it all nailed, thought they had it all figured out. And then Deep sea came along and showed them a different way.

00:51:08:15 - 00:51:43:19
Jason Howell
Well, they've released two open weight 685 billion parameter models. There's V 3.2 and V 3.2 special. It's, it's actually written that way. So I like it. They supposedly match or beat GPT five ChatGPT five and Gemini 3.0 Pro on elite math on coding, on reasoning benchmarks. Also, they've cut long context inference by a, cost by around 70% and, makes it all free under an MIT license.

00:51:43:19 - 00:51:46:27
Jason Howell
So take that us competitors.

00:51:46:29 - 00:52:04:00
Jeff Jarvis
Yeah. And I think that's the risk here. There's another story that I just put up there. More of Silicon Valley is building on free Chinese AI. Okay. And I and I had a story, a paper I think I read last week. I think we're in danger, if we haven't already. Of, Is we going too far to say we haven't already?

00:52:04:02 - 00:52:22:14
Jeff Jarvis
I think we're in danger of losing the lead in the US. In AI, I think the Chinese are speeding along here. And even without Nvidia chips, they're doing good work there. Pretty this stuff out there. And if you're going to build a company, if you're trying to build it out of nowhere, if you're a university, why wouldn't you use this?

00:52:22:16 - 00:52:25:15
Jeff Jarvis
It's free. It's as good as good.

00:52:25:17 - 00:52:27:18
Jason Howell
If not better. Yeah, absolutely.

00:52:27:18 - 00:52:42:21
Jeff Jarvis
Yeah. So, and this is where Yann LeCun, to quote him, many, many times, shouts about the necessity of, of open source, because the demand for that is going to be there. And if the Chinese are going to meet it, then what do we do about it?

00:52:42:24 - 00:53:07:09
Jason Howell
Yeah, indeed. Indeed. Thank you for putting that. We've got ChatGPT. Yes. We can't stop talking about that. Yeah. Introducing shopping research. Although I do wonder because we talked about the red alert thing earlier in the shopping. Tendrils is one thing that we're cutting back on. So I wonder the timing of this November 24th. This is about a week ago.

00:53:07:12 - 00:53:12:13
Jason Howell
Is this being. You know what I mean? Like, is this part of that I don't know, I actually don't know the answer.

00:53:12:13 - 00:53:33:18
Jeff Jarvis
But this is this is, I think, the the foot in the door to a new revenue stream in advertising. And I think that they're trying to they're under pressure to, to create more revenue because they've got all these deals going on and they're not bringing in revenue sufficiently. They're not showing the underlying value. They're presuming that Google is going to figure it out and has already started.

00:53:33:20 - 00:53:52:29
Jeff Jarvis
So just hoping I have the infrastructure. And don't forget, there is now 5G CMO X of Facebook and Extra of Instacart. Who's there as the president or CEO of apps. And she has talked about advertising. So I my guess on this is this is a gentle way to say think of chat. GPT went shopping time. Oh gee, look at that.

00:53:52:29 - 00:54:20:19
Jeff Jarvis
And they can start to gather data and they can go to advertisers and brands and say, look, when people are looking for TVs, they ask us they're not asking Amazon anymore. They're asking us. And Amazon's cut us off, in fact. So we are our own thing and Google's going to be there. Be interesting thinking. This is where Europe has gone after Google in the past on, antitrust is shopping applications, which I always thought was ridiculous because shopping was not a major application of Google.

00:54:20:19 - 00:54:29:15
Jeff Jarvis
It was the huge application at Amazon. Yeah. Nonetheless, I think shopping and thus advertising is going to be a next battleground across all the eyes.

00:54:29:17 - 00:54:43:17
Jason Howell
Yeah, indeed. For sure. That is that is true. I'm still really curious about the red alert thing because he said in the red alert memo, scaling back on advertising, scaling back on shopping.

00:54:43:19 - 00:54:46:10
Jeff Jarvis
And so but I think the market is going to give me half of that.

00:54:46:13 - 00:54:50:00
Jason Howell
Yeah. Yeah. Because you got to be there. Yeah. Because I know.

00:54:50:06 - 00:54:54:06
Jeff Jarvis
Maybe it indicates some tussling inside I don't know.

00:54:54:09 - 00:55:25:02
Jason Howell
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Nonetheless, regardless, you know, this shopping research mode very visual. Right. It's it's kind of, it's it's all about, kind of making the shopping experience more conversational and then pulling in current prices, specs, reviews, all this kind of stuff, presenting it in a very visual sense, taking all that, presenting it to the buyer, in like a buyer's guide of sorts with trade offs, top options, recommendations tailored to budget, all that kind of stuff.

00:55:25:05 - 00:55:53:07
Jason Howell
And eventually they hope to offer instant checkout as well. But there you go. Don't know when we're going to see that. Maybe maybe it's there right now. I don't know. I haven't seen it yet. Interesting. Nonetheless. Runaway, which is video generation site or not site model, let's say, announced its new Gen 4.5 video model aimed squarely at high end creators and studios like James Cameron.

00:55:53:10 - 00:55:55:10
Jeff Jarvis
Exactly.

00:55:55:12 - 00:56:20:01
Jason Howell
Doing very well, actually, on the artificial analysis leaderboard, it's outperforming all competing models. So that includes, you know, Vo three, Aveo 3.1, Sora two Pro, I mean, it's yeah, it's doing a lot better than those on the, on those leaderboards and things, you know, look pretty good, as they say in this video that I'm showing you for watching the video version.

00:56:20:01 - 00:56:23:24
Jason Howell
Every pixel was generated with runway.

00:56:23:26 - 00:56:30:23
Jeff Jarvis
But you you have an elephant swimming underwater. You have people flying. You have. Pardon me.

00:56:30:25 - 00:56:32:27
Jason Howell
So I'm running in the dark.

00:56:33:00 - 00:56:47:13
Jeff Jarvis
Yeah. It's, I think to become impressive. They've got to push more unreality to it. Fantasy stuff is interesting and it's fun and it's easier to do it away. But I think the challenge is to make it credible.

00:56:47:15 - 00:57:17:19
Jason Howell
Yeah. Yeah, that's certainly a proof point if you if but yeah that that proves the technology. If you go to real and it can even do real because when it's fantasy and when it's visual effects replication and everything, we're used to that being a fake representation. And, we're not used to seeing a really solid representation of what's real in these system, because that's that's where you really start to see the.

00:57:17:21 - 00:57:34:06
Jeff Jarvis
And does it get used in a narrative? Which goes back to Cameron one more time, you know, back in the NFT in the crazy NFT days, you know, I remember Gary Vee saying, I made a character and this character is going to be everywhere. It's just because of a little drawing of a of an imp, something.

00:57:34:13 - 00:57:52:16
Jeff Jarvis
There was nothing behind it. There was no story behind it. There was no characterization, no character behind it, no creativity behind it. It was nothing. And in a way, that's what strikes me some of these things is that, yeah, you can have a black leopard going through the snow. Wow, that looks great. But does it fit into anything that's a fit into a larger creative work?

00:57:52:18 - 00:58:05:02
Jeff Jarvis
And that goes back to to Cameron and company. If this becomes a tool that people can use to create them, express themselves in ways they couldn't before, that's when I get impressed. That's when the humanity comes in.

00:58:05:04 - 00:58:41:23
Jason Howell
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Being able, you know, be taking a single clip and making a single random weird clip of an ape doing push ups is is, I suppose, interesting in its own. But we've seen so many of them, even in this short amount of time, even with Sora, you know, the the app. You know, I've kind of gotten a little bored with it with the app because as as much as everything you look at is different and, you know, fabricated and, and, you know, grand in some cases, whatever, it's like, you see so much of that that it stops being impressive.

00:58:41:25 - 00:58:43:04
Jeff Jarvis
And I and I know I'm.

00:58:43:07 - 00:59:01:08
Jason Howell
Telling you the bigger story, I guess where I'm headed is telling the bigger story. That's the destination. It's like, how do you use these tools to create these things, but to have them all integrated into a single thing? One of the things that I've wondered is, when do we get to the point? And I guarantee you it's going to happen.

00:59:01:10 - 00:59:24:28
Jason Howell
When do we get to a point to where you can take a screen, like a script, a like a 80 page film script and throw it into an AI and say, understand this movie script and create all the characters based on what this movie script details. Because usually movie scripts are pretty detailed, you know, they give you a baseline and obviously there's a lot to interpret around that.

00:59:25:05 - 00:59:40:03
Jason Howell
But an AI, a smart enough focused, I could totally do that and create the consistent characters across them and just say, here's an 80 page script, give me an 80 minute movie off the script, and then you have 20 different versions of that script. I know what's going to happen, guaranteed, is.

00:59:40:03 - 00:59:59:16
Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, yeah. You're right. Well, at a simpler level. Storyboard the script. Yes. Don't give me every detail, but make it look realer to me. Make me see what it what it feels like so I can do something with it. And I wouldn't be surprised if that's happening already. I'll bet it's happening with. Advertise it. What? There's one.

00:59:59:16 - 01:00:19:10
Jeff Jarvis
There's one commercial out there. It's a woman. I think it's a it's not a it's either an insurance company or an investment company or something. I don't even know. That's how bad the advertising is. But she's walking through. She's talking to a very seriously to a counselor, and then she's walking down the street and she's looking up. And every time I look at it, I think, is she real?

01:00:19:13 - 01:00:38:06
Jeff Jarvis
It's getting to that point where it's hard and and the way I want her not to be, because I want to say, okay, that's a good that you did a good job using this stuff. This point. You're right. It's almost it's it's a fully uncanny valley. But I think, yeah, we're both saying that if you don't fit this into a creative narrative, expressive context, it's just wacky images.

01:00:38:08 - 01:00:40:23
Jason Howell
Yeah, totally. And that gets old.

01:00:40:24 - 01:00:46:29
Jeff Jarvis
We could be going back to Will Smith 1.0, and I'd rather be here.

01:00:47:02 - 01:00:50:23
Jason Howell
Yes. Yes, indeed. And finally, you mentioned this story.

01:00:50:28 - 01:00:53:11
Jeff Jarvis
Sorry. I just you know, I mentioned it's okay.

01:00:53:11 - 01:01:13:15
Jason Howell
It's okay. But just to make sure that it gets, you know, that that it gets flagged for people. You mentioned the story, in The New York Times about colleges and their focus on, on, AI programs, essentially. And according to the New York Times, colleges are rebranding and reshaping their community computer science, programs into specialized AI degrees.

01:01:13:22 - 01:01:40:13
Jason Howell
Students, of course, coming into, you know, their college years looking for ways to futureproof themselves. It's got to be a weird time to be a student of that age right now. Yeah, I, I like I, I have a hard time putting myself into those shoes to be like, what does it look like to prepare for my future? Because we're right on this, like border of the way things were and the way things will be, and we still don't know exactly what the way things will be, will be.

01:01:40:16 - 01:01:43:15
Jason Howell
And God, it's got to be a weird, weird time to be in college.

01:01:43:17 - 01:02:25:05
Jeff Jarvis
Yeah. And I my duties just ended this week on a task force, a steering group for a new degree in technology and society, at Stony Brook. And, so that's moving forward. And and that would be interesting. I think my hope is that things like that become interdisciplinary. Is that you you involve that I think that the that the reign of computer science, the Sputnik reign comes to an end when other human, disciplines come in anthropology, sociology, philosophy, design, political science, ethics, at all of those.

01:02:25:05 - 01:02:47:13
Jeff Jarvis
And I hope that what this drives people to is to say, I mean, very, very high in computer science will make these models very high in math, will make these models. We'll still have those folks. But if you're going in to do, run of the mill computer science, I don't think it's like saying that you're getting a degree in Bitcoin or you're getting a degree in, HTML.

01:02:47:15 - 01:03:19:03
Jeff Jarvis
I think there are ways to look at the use of these tools that go beyond the presumption that it's just code. So I think there are real opportunities here. And areas around AI and policy, and creativity and things like that. I think there's, I think there's opportunities for students. I also think there's opportunities to go out of AI and to be studying things like, creativity and community and collaboration and other parts of society.

01:03:19:06 - 01:03:21:11
Jeff Jarvis
And that's the stuff that I like to work on.

01:03:21:13 - 01:03:26:15
Jason Howell
Yeah, maybe, maybe study the, the Linotype.

01:03:26:17 - 01:03:34:15
Jeff Jarvis
You could do that. I'm turning my hair out right now because I'm in the midst of the copy editing, and I'm going crazy because you go blind.

01:03:34:17 - 01:03:35:20
Jason Howell
Yeah, I bet you read it.

01:03:35:20 - 01:03:36:20
Jeff Jarvis
Again and again.

01:03:36:28 - 01:03:40:23
Jason Howell
Yeah, you probably have to do it in in bits and pieces, because.

01:03:40:25 - 01:04:05:05
Jeff Jarvis
You know, I think I think, I think I can get through this. I can power through this. No. Because just today it's the nightmare that I have. So I was talking about all of the prior machines, and I either meant to say 1800s or I meant to say 19th century, but what I said was 18th century. And I'd read that sentence a good hundred times, and only today do I look at that and say, oh, you idiot!

01:04:05:07 - 01:04:05:22
Jason Howell
Yeah.

01:04:05:22 - 01:04:17:19
Jeff Jarvis
You know. And so then I think I'm almost done copyediting. No I'm not. If I just saw that, what else is lurking in there? And no, AI is going to stop us from that. So I'm going to I'm going to feed it in the AI and see if it sees any errors. But,

01:04:17:21 - 01:04:32:00
Jason Howell
As like another point, a checkpoint. Yeah, yeah. I imagine with a, with a book of that kind of degree of, of information that it's, it's almost impossible to be guaranteed that you've caught all the details. Right.

01:04:32:03 - 01:04:33:05
Jeff Jarvis
So it's France.

01:04:33:05 - 01:04:55:28
Jason Howell
And. Yeah. Oh that sounds, that sounds challenging. Well, all of your hard work, your amazing hard work can be found at Jeff jarvis.com. Folks, you go over there, preorder hot type. And and just while you wait, why don't you get Google places magazine, the web. We we you can read all those while you wait for our type.

01:04:56:00 - 01:05:14:07
Jason Howell
And then we've got the. Why is my browser not working? There we go. I inside dot show is the web page where we have all, you know, all the things that we do, everything listed here, all of our episodes, who we are, the reviews section. Just put a little pause there for a second.

01:05:14:10 - 01:05:15:18
Jeff Jarvis
Hint hint hint.

01:05:15:19 - 01:05:37:29
Jason Howell
Hint hint hint. I'm telling you, you put in a review, it's going to appear on our website. And that is that's success. You know, you've made it with your hobby. I inside website sideways, I inside dot show and then of course Patreon.com slash AI inside show. This is where you can support us on an even deeper level. We have some amazing executive producers who do.

01:05:37:29 - 01:06:01:04
Jason Howell
So I think now we're at ten, are we doctor Du, Jeffrey Berrettini, Radio Asheville 1 or 3.7, Dante say James Bond, Eric Jason knife for Jason Brady Anthony Downs, Mark Archer and Carsten Szymanski. Carson I really hope that I'm getting your name right. Send me a DM on Patreon and let me know if I'm getting it wrong so that I can get it right every other time that we read this.

01:06:01:04 - 01:06:03:02
Jason Howell
But thank you all so much.

01:06:03:02 - 01:06:03:28
Jeff Jarvis
Thank you, thank.

01:06:03:28 - 01:06:23:04
Jason Howell
You, thank of this. It really could not do it without you. Yeah, it really does mean a lot to us. So yeah, there we are. Just a quick reminder. Obviously, this is a day early, so we don't have another show coming tomorrow. Jeff, is out, of intelligence machines for the week, so I'm filling in for him.

01:06:23:04 - 01:06:39:03
Jason Howell
So cool. You know, worlds collide. I know. Right? Really looking forward to it, though. It'll be good to return to the Twitch stream. It's been a while, so I'll see you over there. And thank you, everybody, for watching, listening. We'll see you next time on another episode of AI inside. Take everybody by.