Is OpenAI's o3 Model AGI? Is AI The New Social Media? Zuck's Revealing Testimony

Channel: Alex Kantrowitz

Published at: 2025-04-19

YouTube video id: 8bokT5-AUSw

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bokT5-AUSw

OpenAI's new model has serious people
coming out of the woodwork calling it
artificial general intelligence. What
exactly is going on? Plus, AI gains as
social media fades and Google loses a
massive antitrust trial. That's coming
up right after this. Welcome to Big
Technology Podcast Friday edition, where
we break down the news in our
traditional coolheaded and nuanced
format. We have a major week of news for
you, including a massive new model
release from OpenAI. Facebook testifying
in a court against the FTC, Google
losing two antitrust cases, and of
course, plenty more AI news to talk
about this week. We're going back to our
traditional format after doing a full
episode on tariffs and the trade war
last week. We're back talking about AI,
back in our bag, as we should say. And
joining us as always is Ran John Roy of
Margins. Ron, great to see you. Welcome
back to the show. AGI is here. How could
I miss it? Day three of AGI being part
of our lives. How has it changed your
life, Alex? So on this show, we are we
pride ourselves in digging into the real
mysteries of the tech world, the real
mysteries of the world. And I think we
have to just spend today's episode
answering the question that everyone has
on their minds, which is, did Jeff Bezos
stage the Blue Origin
landing? I don't know. Oh, I saw I'm
fiddling with that door. I'm I'm reading
and I'm watching the Tik Toks. I saw I'm
not sure. I saw one of those Tik Toks. I
saw one of those conspiracy uh I mean
the fact what I think what percentage of
the American population believe that uh
the moon landing was faked. I think it's
something just unreasonable. Whatever it
is that I'm on board with uh Blue Origin
didn't happen. Katy Perry, sorry you
didn't see space. Sorry. No, I think it
did happen. I think they actually went
to space. There's just too many people
watching it to believe they didn't. But
there was some funny business going on
with that door being open. The door
swings open and then Jeff Bezos walks
over and tries to open it with a pair of
pliers. I mean, that's weird. But look,
did you see Jeff Bezos face plant? That
was my favorite part of the entire
thing. I have to say, so for those
listening and watching, Bezos did take a
spill on his way to fake open the door.
Anyway, what a moment. Tough day for
Bezos. everything else good in his life.
But still, those uh those divots in the
ground will get even the billionaires.
Speaking of tech billionaires, I don't
know if you saw the Wall Street Journal
story on Elon Musk's many kids and the
compound that he's building. I mean,
we're not going to do gossip on this
show. I don't even know if this is
gossip, but that was some crazy stuff. I
I it is I recommend all of our listeners
go read this article from the Wall
Street Journal. find a gift link on
Twitter if you need to, but it's about
how he approaches uh baby mamas on X and
just how he raises uh his cohort of
children. And it's it's it's so over the
top that I I don't even feel comfortable
talking on about it on our nuanced look
at the technology news of the week.
Yeah, he calls it the Legion. And I
think we'll leave it there. We could
definitely turn this into uh TMZ for
tech, but instead we're here to do what
the people want, which is to talk about
AGI. But like Ron John said, go read
that Elon story. You know, even if you
admire the guy's business smarts, uh
maybe some people admire it. Maybe
honestly, maybe some people are into
that and will admire it, but we can
leave it there. I mean, would you if you
if you were the richest man in the
world, would you have a legion? I mean,
I guess you juice Tesla's stock and you
uh get up to 300 billion net worth.
Maybe Alleion is the only logical
conclusion from that. I guess so. I do
know that we're I mean, gez, we're
really going off the rails right at the
beginning here. Usually, we wait to the
end, but I I do know uh that we're just
going to see a wave of Elon Offspring
make some waves uh in the next couple
decades. There's going to be a lot of
little Elons running around there. And I
I mean, he's going to have some smart
kids. So, this is not the end of the
story. This may be just the beginning of
the Legion story. The PayPal mafia
expanded to just unimaginable
proportions.
You know, I I now I'm regretting not
spending the whole show talking about
this, but alas, we do have uh more
important stuff to cover, which is the
fact that OpenAI released this new
model, or really two new models, but a
big new model this week called 03. It's
a reasoning model, and to me, it's the
most advanced model that they've ever
released. And uh all of a sudden it
comes out and a lot of very serious and
smart people are calling it artificial
general intelligence. Like no coms about
it. This is AGI. And Tyler Cowan who is
a professor and podcaster. He writes in
the marginal revolution 03 and AGI is
April 16th AGI day. And he writes this.
I think a it's a seriously about 03. Try
asking it lots of questions and then ask
yourself just how much smarter was I
expecting AGI to be. As I've argued in
the past, AGI, however you define it, is
not much of a social event per se, it
will still take us a long time to use it
properly. I do not expect securities
prices to move significantly. Um, and I
doubt if the market cares about April
16th, per se. And he goes on to say,
"Benchmarks, benchmarks, benchmarks,
blah, blah, blah. Maybe AGI is like
porn. I know it when I see it." and I've
seen it. Um, I think we should like
we're going to get to all the others
that have called this AGI or approaching
AGI, but we should talk a little bit
about what this model does. And Ranjan,
let's just go to you right away. I'm
curious, have you gotten a chance to use
it? And if you have, what do you think
Tyler is talking about that would make
him conclude uh that it is AGI the way
he has? Okay, I will get into a specific
query that I did do actually this
morning which reminds me that it is not
the AGI we were promised. But again, 03
is bringing reasoning to, you know, like
essentially the mainstream. It's taking
what deep research was going to bring us
and bringing it to every query. The idea
is that the model pauses and essentially
thinks through the problem before simply
just going and trying to answer it and
it actually is able to reason its way
through the problem. That's actually
very exciting. Another thing I thought
was interesting was the idea of visual
reasoning. In the past when you feed an
image essentially it's broken down into
back to text and words and then that's
sent back to the model to be processed.
They claim that it now is able to
actually understand the image at the
pixel level and then be able to process
that into some kind of query. A third
thing that's big is tool calling. And we
had discussed this before about is the
better user interface that you have to
choose which model you want to use or
the model is smart enough to actually go
and choose the right tool and model like
the when you make a query it knows
should I go to 03 should I go to deep
research should I go to generate an
image or
GPT4145 whatever the latest one is and
so all of these things really indicate
that maybe there is a big step change on
this however
This morning I asked and I asked from
the deep deep research side, what are
the top 150 retailers in the US by
revenue in 2024? Seemingly
straightforward query. It returned
Walmart 23 times and Amazon 36 times in
this list. And I started kind of digging
into it and it was mixing up different
sources, mixing up different entities
within those. And that's not a PhD level
answer. I'm sorry. Like it's uh it's one
of those that you can see how the LLM
got confused, but it was this was actual
day-to-day work and it seems like pretty
straightforward and difficult and
impressive, but it got it wrong. So, so
I see the potential. They made the
announcements. A lot of people are
excited, which you're going to get into,
but it's not it's not AGI for me yet.
So I just want to tell a interesting
story. So my wife is reading this book
about artificial super intelligence and
we had this discussion of like whether
we're going to have AGI before super
intelligence or whether we were just
going to move straight into super
intelligence and when that might come
and I was just like offhand saying I
think what we have today is basically
AGI. And I know this is gonna sound
crazy because obviously I don't think it
hits the scientific benchmarks for being
artificial general intelligence but I
would say for so many use cases uh it is
that good where if you would have
presented this in front of people years
ago they would have told you oh yeah
that is AGI. Uh, and so I think that
that's what we're starting to see is
people starting to realize how far the
AI industry has come in just a couple
years and saying, "Yes, this is
artificial general intelligence." Uh,
I'll just give you one example just to
entertain this idea, then we'll knock it
down, right? Um, every time a new model
comes out, I just take our podcast
metrics from Megaphone and upload them
and say, "What can you tell me about the
show?" And what 03 was able to do was an
unbelievable analysis of the show,
picking out the topics that do well and
even realize that we do a Wednesday and
a Friday show and was able to split the
trends into two and say, well, the
Friday show performs this way and the
Wednesday show performs this way, so you
should just know what's going on uh on
that front. And I think what's amazing
is that this thing 03, and you hinted to
this or you mentioned it before, it does
this multi-step reasoning. So it could
basically come to a conclusion, go to
the web to check it, come back and check
the results it's pulled from the web,
and then say, okay, does this compute,
does this match? Now, it's not going to
be perfect in everything, right? And so
there were so many tests that like were
like put above Tyler Cowan's post about
how this is AGI just to show how how it
makes so many silly mistakes. It can't
fully interpret complex drawings. It
still has trouble saying how many Rs
there are in Strawberry like basic stuff
that a child could probably count and
it's getting it wrong. But that being
said, it is so adept at so many
different tasks that while I still
wouldn't say this is AGI because we
spend so much time in this and we kind
of know that we have higher expectations
for something that deserves that label.
I think daytoday
uh if you're like one step remove from
where we are and you come and you use
this like and I think this was what
Tyler Ken is saying there's not that big
of a difference between what you get and
what you're expecting. Okay. I think
that is that's an interesting metric
that's almost like to me superior than
like the ARC AGI benchmark or anything
like that. you get what you're expecting
and like you don't have to be a prompt
engineer to do that. I think that's
definitely fair and I'm not gonna I'm
not gonna try to downplay the moment at
all either in in terms of it is light
years beyond where we were certainly
like a year ago, year and a half ago.
The idea as you said that it can
generate something, check against it,
reach different sources, search the web,
take the deep research approach, that's
incredible. I I completely agree. It's
incredible. But again, not even a maybe
not a child, but a college student,
let's say undergrad, would have known
that that list given to me was not what
I was looking for. And I think uh right
the the term AGI, I guess it's been
given to us by OpenAI essentially. I
mean others in the community and it was
you know it's at the center of the
contract between open AAI and Microsoft
but uh like no one the fact that it's
never been defined as to what it means
it's almost silly that trying to even
you know come up with is it here or not
because obviously Ilio right now would
say we're waiting for ASI artificial
super intelligence so I don't know do do
you think how do you define AGI
I I would just say AGI is something that
can perform as well as most humans on
most tasks. But this is all but this is
a perfect example of it performed better
than a human in the sense that it went
out and searched the web and compiled
this in a matter of maybe a minute. it
actually you could see it thinking and
but uh it wasn't what I was looking for
and if id assigned that to an undergrad
or even like a freelance researcher for
like eight bucks an hour they would have
known better. So that's why I I agree
maybe that's a good dis like rubric but
then it's it certainly is not there yet.
Yeah. Look, I'm not saying that it's
there. I'm just saying that if you
squint you could see it, right? And one
thing that this has really been useful
for me for has been search. And we've
had going back probably for a year now
debates about whether AI was going to
replace search. What was the Forester
metric again? I think it was Forester.
Yeah, they 25% of search or something
was going to be replaced by AI. Yeah. I
I was very skeptical of this. In fact, I
kind of called Forester or Gartner or
whatever it was to make fun of this idea
because I thought it was lunacy. And now
for the I mean I'm following your path.
For the hardest searches that I do, I'm
using AI. And I'll just give you an
example. I'm looking for a bookkeeper.
And typically the way I would do this is
like go on Google Maps, use Google
search. There's really no good way to
find like reliable uh bookkeeping or or
services of that nature close to you.
Anyway, I just go to 03 and I say, "Find
me a bookkeeper." I gave some
specifications. It like gave me the
names of people. It summarized what they
do. It summarized the ratings they have
and it gave me the phone number. I
called the guy up. I said, "Let's talk."
He was perfect for what I'm looking for.
Cuz I explained like, "I need someone
that can handle small businesses." And
he goes, "How did you find me?" I'm
like, "Chad GPT." By the way, uh big
technology in past few weeks, our paid
subscribers, we always have a source for
where they're coming in. Multiple paid
subscribers have come in through chat
GPT, which is crazy. So, in a way, what
this is really, and I obviously you want
AGI to be uh more than just an
incredibly adept search engine. Uh but
maybe this is really good at like not so
deep research, which is pretty cool.
like what you would do with search, but
just like one level deeper. And whether
you want to label it AGI or not, I do
think it's clear to me that the
capabilities are just so much better now
than they ever were up until this point.
All right, I now have my rubric for AGI
and it's going to hold up in court and
decide the future of OpenAI
Microsoft. It's cool. It's exciting that
you found the bookkeeper and I have been
saying this a while. I I almost never
use Google search now. I really almost
never start a search on Google. AGI is
when you don't find another bookkeeper
or a human
bookkeeper. You just do it in chatpt
because there's no reason. Come on. Or
you you code your own bookkeeping
software. But I think like you feed a
bunch of uh CSVs that you downloaded
from QuickBooks and everything's just
done. That's my AGI. I don't even think
we're far away from that. I don't think
in fact I don't think we are either. I
think we're in Claude. You can now
connect. I'm sure you've done this
Gmail, Calendar, Drive, and start
speaking with Claude about the content
of your of your files or your
communication. And I mean, you could
also do that with Gemini if you have
these Google apps. And Google, of
course, is an investor in anthropic. But
are we that far away from uh Google with
its massive context window providing
that type of service or like sharing
some ideas for prompts that go into
let's say Google Sheets uh and maybe
cross-check your bank accounts and
prepare your taxes for you? I mean this
should be able to be done today. I
completely agree. I even actually while
filing taxes fed in some of my older tax
returns and understood them better than
I did when I sat with an accountant and
actually like went through them. But
it's not there. I would not trust it
today. Maybe next maybe April 15, 2026.
We're all filing our taxes on chat GPT
and into it is somehow still going to
come out on top somehow. They always do
with Turboax. There's an intu fee on
your on your chat GPT. they have a
partnership. But uh no, I mean to me
again that's it. Like you can kind of ad
hoc do that today. I agree. You could
connect Google Drive, upload a bunch of
CSVs of your expenses and it probably
will do something. Would you trust it as
of today? I'm guessing most people would
say no. No, not yet. And that's why I'm
saying okay, it's not it's not AGI,
right? I think that there are some
simple tests that you can give, but
that's what I'm saying. You have to
squint a little bit and you could see
why um you know, some people might
believe this. And by the way, it's lots
of people that have been saying it. It's
not just Tyler Cowan. I think he wanted
to get Well, actually, I have some
conspiracy theories about why he did say
that. Uh but here's here's Ethan Malik,
the Wharton professor and AI expert. Is
03 good enough to be AGI? The
counter-argument might force us to wait
until artificial super intelligence
because only then will an AI
definitively outperform all humans at
all tasks. In the meantime, we have to
have we seem to have jagged AGI, a mix
of below human and superhuman abilities.
The number of superhuman ones just keep
increasing though. I I think that's
that's a great point. And I I'll just
note that another thing that I found
this was very useful. This 03 model was
very useful to do is um usually I'm just
like dropping my drafts in uh these of
stories that I write. Uh I drop them
into things like chachi and claw to be
like did I miss anything? And this was
the first time with this model. the
model actively improved the draft by
giving me pointers of my blind spots and
suggestions for stuff I was missing. And
I just like dumped um some desperate
thoughts and I was like, I know that
there's a connection here. I'm not quite
getting there. What do you think? And it
got the connection. And I think that's
what this was built as. It was built as
something that could help you uh come up
with new discoveries. Not come up with
discoveries on its own, but help you do
it. I'm not saying my writing was a
discovery, but I could see it. I could
see how that's possible. So, that's very
interesting. What do you think about
this jagged AGI idea? Jagged AGI. I like
I I like the idea. Let the buzzwords
continue. Let the jargon continue. I'm a
I'm an investor in jagged AGI. I also do
like the idea that in a court of law,
Sam Alman saying if you squint, you'll
see AGI and nullifying the entire
Microsoft leverage over them. But I uh
it's gonna happen, man. It's going to if
you squint. Um, no. No. Okay. Again, I I
do think the last few months of
development like the pace has not slowed
down. I think there's like a bit of uh
fatigue over every new model release and
the hype overall in the industry and
people saying things are slowing down
and there was a lot of discussion six
months ago about, you know, just overall
scaling laws being reached. Actually in
a way things are getting more exciting
for me because hitting different models
and one model like talking to another
and different types of tool calling
happening that's on the product side as
well and you know I'm team product over
model any day. So I think the overall
experience is
definitely it's continuing to scale as
it has for the last few years like that
it hasn't slowed down it's only getting
better. That makes me excited. what
whether it's PhD level on at all times
and I think it's AGI as it was build for
the last three or four years. I don't
think we're there yet.
Here is OpenAI trainer John Hullman
talking about what it was like to
experience 03 for the first time. When
03 finished training and we got to try
it out, he says, "I felt for the first
time tempted to call a model AGI. Still
not perfect, but this mo this bottle
will this model will beat me, you and
99% of humans on 99% of intelligence
assessments. One can start to see the
light at the end of the tunnel. Now, I'm
going to drop my conspiracy theory and
get you to respond to it. Let's go.
What I think is happening here from
OpenAI and from some of the people that
I imagine are close to them like Tyler
Cowan is that the company is floating a
trial balloon because for year from more
than a year now it's been building up to
this mysterious release the the
longanticipated long awaited
GPT5 and they're telling us that they're
going to get their aiming under control
because now we have GPT4.5 and then the
advanced is GPT 4.1 and we have 03 and
04 mini and then 04 is coming and we've
been promised this versatile M model
that is coming that is improved and that
of course is going to be GPT5 and OpenAI
is telling us they're going to clear
this all up by summer. So my tin hat
here is that whether it's this summer or
early fall, GPT5 is going to come out.
People like Tyler Cowan who have called
the original models, these 03s AGI
already will have effectively cleared
the way for OpenAI to say we didn't call
the last model that everybody else was
calling AGI AGI. We showed restraint,
but now that GPT5 is out, we are calling
it AGI. And that is what I think this is
all about.
I'm I I'm not going to disagree with
that. I don't think I don't think it's
that tinfoil. Again, OpenAI has been the
master of kind of driving the
communications narrative. I think out of
all companies, they're Sam Alman is the
greatest product marketer, I think, in a
long time.
Um, I I guess the only question is what
benefit do you see of them being able to
at least say themselves confidently it
is AGI? There's obviously the
contractual relationship with Microsoft,
but is there anything else really? like
do you think it will actually result in
a a spike in paid chat GPT subscriptions
or enterprises paying for access or
agents and and masan spending even more
money? I don't know like yes I do. So,
you think that will unlock a a flurry of
uh revenue for them? Because here's the
thing, OpenAI, like we've talked about,
the thing they have going for them, I
mean, obviously they've led the product,
but their entire existence has been, and
this might be diminishing them a bit,
but it's not that far off, building off
others innovations and just doing the
product and the marketing a little bit
better. And you could see like in our
discord all the time people are talking
about how Gemini's latest model
outperforms OpenAI on the benchmarks.
But I just dropped a chart there. Gemini
is still not getting anywhere close to
the amount of usage as OpenAI. And I
think now I think Demis and Google will
show some restraint about using the term
AGI. Uh, but I think that it would be
really rough for OpenAI if another big
lab beat them to the punch and said that
they had open they had AGI before open
AI. I think there is value in being the
first one to do this purely from a
positioning standpoint and and that's
why I think they're going to do it.
Imagine if Google comes out this summer
and beats them to it. That actually
would be the most incredible twist of
events. I think well the date I would
the date I would watch is uh May week of
May 19th which is Google IO. All right,
Sundar, where there's definitely Sundar,
it's time. Sundar just stands up there
behind him. AGI. AGI, I like it. I
promise you, maybe not this year, but
we're going to we are going to see some
lab make that proclamation I think in
the next two years without a doubt. And
uh I'm not saying open will definitely
do it this summer, but I wouldn't be
surprised. Wouldn't be shocked. It's
currently at like 50/50 on the betting
markets, by the way. Plot twist. It's
Apple. I know it's Apple. No, it's not
going to be Apple.
Yeah, it's called Apple General
Intelligence.
Wait, the I wouldn't put at this point.
I wouldn't put that past them.
Um, well, yeah, but the thing has to
actually ship, so we'll see what happens
there. Okay, enough beating on Apple. I
just want to go to one more example of
what we saw from 03. Uh, and then we'll
move on to some of our other stories.
But Dan Shipper, who is the CEO of Every
and he's a reviewer there. He writes
this uh very nice newsletter about AI
product. He actually had uh chat
GPT03. He writes this great prompt.
Predict my future where I will be a year
from now. Use everything you know about
me. Be realistic and direct. And what 03
does is it gives it says by next year
I'm going to be AGI. No, no, I'm
kidding. Um, but it gives this like
really interesting uh look at some of
the things that are going on in Dan's
life, including where it expects the
newsletter to be, where it expects the
revenue to be, his public presence, his
his team and his leadership, and even
his personal life. And it's just clear
that Dan has been speaking with Chad GBT
a lot about like really intimate things,
including like what he's getting out of
therapy. And what what 03 does here is
it takes its sort of the most advanced
capabilities that we've ever seen with
chat GPT and the memory of all chats
that Dan has ever had with it and it
brings it together in this one cohesive
picture and that is and we're going to
talk about memory in a second and we
should actually talk about it now right
like uh last week OpenAI said when you
speak with chat GPT is now going to
remember all of your conversations and I
that just adds this level of uh depth
and insight into your life that's crazy.
And you can really see it come out in
these answers. So, I'll just read the
personal growth section from uh from
chat GPT03's response. It says,
"Personal growth, you'll be noticeably
quicker to say no. That's not on our
road map." In partner calls, weekly
therapy check-ins continue. Your shame
spiral episodes drop from a few a month
to a couple a quarter. I've also seen
other people prompting and say, "How
have I changed since I met you?" And I
think that this combination is crazy. It
is going to make so many people feel
like they've developed friendships with
these bots, companions, companionship
with these bots, and even love uh
towards these bots, which I spoke about
with Mustafa Sullivan a couple weeks
ago. And to see this in action with
better memory and better capabilities
with the 03 release is nuts. So o AGI
buzzword or whatever it is or not this
is a very big deal. What do you think
Rajan? Yeah I think it's definitely a
very big deal. I had actually done this
after I saw that you dropped this in the
document. And again, I use chat GPT
frequently, but I also use all claude,
perplexity, Gemini, everything. And it
is kind of funny because it thinks I was
helping my friend who runs pizza
restaurants in Kansas who had actually
wrote the Door Dash arbitrage piece
about a few years ago. Uh, he's starting
an ice cream shop and it thinks I'm also
thinks I am trying to start the ice
cream shop and it's telling me juggling
writing, podcasting,
uh, working a full-time job and an ice
cream shop might be too much for you.
So, it recommends that I start to work
in six week shape up cycles where one
flagship project gets the lion's share
of attention. So I think what it reminds
us is like this stuff will be really
interesting if people use it and invest
time and the more people do use invest
time into it as this is their one
platform the bigger the moat gets. So I
think that's pretty interesting because
memory I think is another big deal in
the whole competitive landscape because
up until now we've all seen this the
switching cost between consumer grade
chat apps is zero essentially it's uh
like just cancelling a subscription on
one claude and going to chat GPT vice
versa Gemini is free but I think if they
can actually make this stick it's a big
deal but I also feel others are going
can catch up on this pretty quickly as
well. So, I don't know. I don't know if
it will be that sticking mode. They have
they're the leading consumer brand. No
question, but I don't know. I I It's
going to be interesting.
Well, also for your example, what you
could do is just say, "Listen, I'm not
doing the ice cream shop." Maybe I
should. Maybe maybe you should. But this
is the thing. You you have this you
correct it. So, I also got some stuff
wrong about me. I corrected it. I shared
information and then started getting it
right. And I think yes, it that's
interesting because it takes investment
and that investment leads to lock in
because the bot that you talk to the
most is the one that is going to want to
is going to be the most useful to you
because it knows you best. And you're
right, everybody's going to do this. Uh
we also I mean when Mustafa came on, he
was basically like the headline of the
co-pilot upgrade was the fact that they
were going to have better memory. So
that is something that's going to come
across the board. But that being said, I
think memory just adds such a deeper
aspect to your interactions with these
bots that when you have that and the
better cap processing capability of
something like 03, the experience really
becomes bananas. And look, we we talk
about the problems of these bots all the
time and the problems of these
companies. Um, but I'm feeling I I don't
know. I mean, there's still a lot to
figure out, but I'm definitely feeling
much more optimistic about where this is
heading after
experiencing these feature upgrades show
up over the past week and model
upgrades. My optimism has not gone down
at all. I think even in like the we
haven't hit the trough of
disillusionment just yet. Maybe we will
more from an investment perspective, but
yeah, to me it's just been getting
better and better and better and more
exciting. And but then you on the other
hand you have why does Gemini and Gmail
not work well when it should be the
ultimate repository. I've used Gmail
since 2007. I think that should be the
ultimate memory of who I am and
everything I've done and it just doesn't
answer those questions well. So I think
like maybe that's an overload of memory
upfront and OpenAI is almost in a better
place because it's much more focused and
targeted and shorter in terms of its
scope. But I don't know. I think I I
agree we're going to get there. We'll
definitely get there, but we're not
there yet. Okay. And that brings us to
this sort of uh provocative and maybe a
little bit loony post I put on big
technology today which is um why AI is
the new social media. And I just thought
this week was a week of contrasts where
you had Mark Zuckerberg in DC trying to
testify about what Facebook uh has
become and what it's up to. And the
stats that he shared were really
interesting. So he said uh currently
only 17% of Facebook and 7% of Instagram
Instagram time are spent with friends
posts. So basically he admits that
social media has become more of a broad
discovery and entertainment space
effectively being taken over by the for
you. And we've had like four I would say
we've had four eras of the web. First is
the or maybe five. First is the web is a
disaster with lots of information. Uh
second is let's organize it. So we go to
portals like Yahoo where you can click
through links. Third era is the search
era where like now instead of going
through a portal you can just search for
what you want and you get it and it's
and it works very well thanks to
algorithms like page rank that Larry and
Sergey came up with. Then we say maybe
instead of us pulling information via
search we'll have information pushed to
us from our friends. And so we enter
this social media era where friends will
send us memes and information and news.
But of course that is imperfect and we
end up getting pushed a lot of outrage
uh a lot of you know really lowquality
news. Um we live in the memes now where
we're sharing shrimp Jesus and all this
AI crap that is filling the feeds. And I
think that AI is this is the point of
the post. AI is becoming the new social
media where instead of trying to find
information from our social feeds or
even search, we are now developing those
the this relationship with these bots
who are taking the internet, condensing
it and sharing it with us and dialoguing
with us about it. And in some ways it
really lives the original social media
dream where it is uh social, it's
useful, it's helpful, it is doesn't make
us feel bad about ourselves, it doesn't
stimulate the worst urges to get
something to spread. Uh and it is a
filter of information on the internet.
So that's why I'm calling AI the new
social media. Obviously, it's crude. It
really is like maybe the evolution from
social media. Uh, but it is this
important new era of interacting with
the web's content and I just wanted to
sort of plant a flag and get that out
there on big technology. What do you
think about that theory?
Whoa. Hold on. Oh my god. I'm in. I
think I'm in. Hold on. as you described
that so already and I read through the
post and like I liked the idea again and
it almost kind of raised the questions
around like when Mark Zuckerberg is
proudly saying in court 17% of Facebook
and only 7% of Instagram time is spent
with friends already. Yeah, social media
is dead. We've said this for a while.
The moment Tik Tok to me killed the
traditional notion of social media
because it became follower based rather
than friendbased. So you followed
accounts or or were served random
algorithmic content. It didn't it wasn't
about keeping up with your friends and
family. So that I think social media has
been dead for a while but at that point
what fills time right now you know
entertainmentbased content from accounts
that of people you don't know has been
filling that time and I agree that's
even worse than friends outraging you in
terms of like a from a qualitative
standpoint or a societal standpoint but
to me I get it because I haven't gone
all about therapeutic chat GPT or
anything like that or talking about my
day or feelings, but I have full-on
conversations. I have a random idea
popped in pop into my head. I have a
conversation back and forth. And you're
right, that's social. That's weird.
That's like it is social. It is media.
So, in a way, this I I think I'm bought
in. That could be the next generation of
social media. And I think it is
important to define and I think you made
that distinction. We're all associating
companionship and love and even sex in
that New York Times piece from a while
ago, but like just having spending time
having a conversation and engaging even
though it's an AI, you're doing that
when you're having a back and forth
about here's a topic I'm interested, let
me learn a bit more. Let's create this
app together. That's social in a weird
way. And by the way, this is happening
as two things are happening. First of
all, they're becoming much more
personable, right? So, we're seeing the
greater memory, the bigger big uh better
EQ, better personalities, uh the better
competence, and they're all connecting
to the web. So, Chad GBT is 03, like we
said before, its tool use can go to the
web, it can come back, it can sort of
analyze what it found, and then go back
to the web and go back and analyze what
it found. So it's navigating the web.
Claude for fi like finally just started
connecting with the web and we know
perplexity is connected to the web as
well and has a discover page where it
will push you information. So this idea
remember chatbt came out it was kind of
funny it sort of had a cut off and at
some point in 2021 or 2022
now it is current it is it reads the
internet. It's learning what's going on
and it is an like basically synthesizing
that and pushing it back to you. Now, of
course, there's lots of different
questions that arise in terms of who's
going to get compensated for the
material. Uh like I wrote about recently
with world history encyclopedia, but uh
this is without a doubt it's the it's
almost the internet becoming a friend
and becoming social and then pushing
media to you. Me the media side of AI is
becoming a much bigger part of the
experience.
The internet is my best friend. That's
that's where we're heading. We have a
quote in the story from a Harvard
researcher who said that. I mean, that's
Yeah, I think again the biggest and most
important part I have a feeling this
one's going to stick. I have a feeling
like there's something here that I think
we should all think about a lot more
because even as we're talking right now.
The idea that that conversation with a
chatbot is social, I just had never
really thought about it. Every story I
read about I associated with like
companionship and falling in love or
even like not having other human
interaction and needing to find it here
versus I'm actually just having a simple
interesting intellectual exchange with
this thing and that's what it is which
you we are having right now on this
podcast and you do in at dinner with
your friends or at work and now it's
just another expansion of that and it's
something that social media was the
original version of social media was
supposed to give us and certainly was
there a bit and was lost and then now
this is giving it and there's no there's
no algorithm ranking that cond there's
an LLM deciding what to return to you
but there's not like an engagementbased
algorithm that's driving that whole
thing which listeners and readers of
mine know is my biggest gripe with how
social media went and this is an
alternative in a weird
Right. And I think that's the re the
reason why social media failed was
because of how the way it made people
feel. It made people feel mad. It made
people want to fight with each other.
The people that fought and were outraged
were the ones that did best. And some
people have hit me in the replies and
been like the AI is a sickopant. Which
it
is. However, that might be exactly what
enables it to work, which is that it
doesn't uh make people angry. It
actually feels like it's helping them.
And in many cases it does help them. And
one last piece of proof I want to put
before we move on here. Guess who's
running product at OpenAI and Anthropic.
At Anthropic it is Mike Kger, the
co-founder of Instagram. Yep. At OpenAI
it's Kevin Wheel, the former head of
product at Instagram. These guys know
where the future's moving. Wow. The
heads of social media past are now
running product at Social Media Future.
I I'm in. I'm in. All in. This is it. I
mean, when you just threw in and I mean,
I know that the head the heads of
product did both anthrobic and open AI,
but I think that kind of like perfectly
brings together the entire theory in
just an incredible way. Yeah. Th this
one I have a feeling we're going to be
talking about for a while. Okay. And one
last point because I can't help myself.
Keep going. Keep going. When you look at
mainstream social media, what are they
doing? They're becoming AIs. Facebook,
of course, it is pushing AI hard with
Llama and building Llama into its
product. Uh, and you don't have to go
far, right, to see what happened with X.
It was acquired by an AI company. Now,
funny math or not, uh, what Elon Musk
said is XAI and X's futures are are
intertwined. And I think that like
initially maybe we shook that off
because okay it's like yeah well you're
trying to do financial engineering
whatever it is but on the other hand it
is absolutely correct that he probably
also sees what's happening with social
media and that it is moving in this
direction and that acquisition now makes
even more sense to me. Well it is
interesting because when we're talking
about social media you do and AI you do
have these two very distinct visions of
it. You have one as we've been
discussing a chatbot you engage with and
have a discussion with. But then the
other could be I mean and this has
obviously been Facebook has tried stuff
with this still that feed with different
content and still likes and comments. It
just happens to be generated by AI. And
I'll take the former. I like this vision
of the uh even if it's a sycopant, the
chatbot you can engage with
intellectually versus uh versus the
feed.
Even if it's jagged AGI, screw it. I'll
have a conversation and learn from it.
I'll talk to anybody. Even jagged AGI.
Even jagged AGI. Yeah, just wait till
the summer. You get the real deal. All
right, let's move to the final story of
the week. I mean, we we did talk a
little bit about the Facebook.
Obviously, Facebook is at trial uh
talking to the FTC about how it's not a
monopoly and not really a social
network. And it's funny because it's
like we don't have to spend too much
time on it. uh because it does feel like
both those entities are fighting the
last war that it's like we're going to
argue over uh social network where
people don't really share anymore and is
is it under siege from Tik Tok and AI uh
the way that it we're going to argue
over the way that it acquired uh
Instagram and WhatsApp where like
clearly there's competitive pressure and
clearly the world is evolving in a way
that does not make Facebook dominant
forever uh or an illegal monopoly but
that case is going to play out and then
speaking of illegal monopoly
Uh uh the US federal court found Google
guilty of being a a antitrust violator
twice this week where it illegally
maintained a monopoly both in publisher
ad serving and in uh ad exchanges and
that's the third those are the second
and third losses that Google has had.
This is a moment to me where we are
starting to see big tech companies which
seemed impervious to government action
which seems stronger than governments
which seem more popular which definitely
are more popular than governments
finally take it to the teeth uh from the
government and from antitrust action.
And I'm starting to think there's a real
possibility that we might see Google uh
broken up. And I'm starting to revise a
lot of my long-held beliefs that nothing
is going to happen to big tech. So
Ranjan, put it all together. I mean,
what are we seeing here?
Okay, I cannot make any predictions
about what will happen at the
intersection of our political system and
the business world given the
unpredictability of how things are
going. But I will say I was very
surprised and I mean it's interesting
the fact that Google
again if you have read into the court
case over the last uh few years the
amount of leverage which they would
exercise over advertisers and the way
products would be intermingled on the ad
exchange like and you come from the
world of advertising as well like I mean
it it's almost comically shocking but
obviously it would it just never had any
impact for so long. It's what does it's
still been so long since there's been
anything at that scale. Like could Meta
sell off Instagram or WhatsApp? It's
just you can't even imagine a world
where that would happen. Like I mean I I
can't it's so difficult. Would Google
divest Chrome or YouTube? I I can't even
imagine that. But if it is on the radar,
if it's might be coming, I mean, it it
could happen. It's still in the cards.
It certainly moved more than I ever
thought it would. But making a
prediction again in this environment is
a difficult one. I don't think we have
to predict. I mean, we can just look at
the probability. And I think the
probability that the breakup will happen
has increased. What do you think? What
does the breakup look like to you,
though? Well, it could be that Google
just has to devest its publisher ad
server. Google has to divest its ad
exchanges, maybe Chrome. Um but then we
get into really interesting territory
here and you know opponents of Google
might be like aha you know it's like uh
finally they they are hurt but we do
know that Google search for a long time
has been putting Google products more
prominently in search but they've still
sent lots of traffic to the web in part
because they had that publisher ad
server and they would make money if you
visited the web as well. Actually, I'm
starting to think Google was a pretty
good business or remains a pretty good
business. I think it, you know, but Go
ahead. No, no, no. Go. I guess but but
this is the thing like um if you make
them devest that publisher ad network,
they're going to keep you even longer on
Google pages. You're never going to
leave search. Well, okay. Now here
here's a
take especially in this environment
where maybe if they see search is
declining that it is not the future AI
overviews will already be the future
they have as much data as anyone else if
not more then maybe if there was ever a
moment to not to let certain things go
that they don't need the publisher ad
network anymore that that obviously it's
still the cash cow right now but uh or
one of the cash cows but if there was
ever a moment that it does not look as
important to their future, that would be
today versus three, four years ago, they
would have fought to that it would be
existential. Now, it could in a way be
part of a five-year strategy.
Yeah, this is interesting. It's almost
like the argument, now hear me out, this
is going to sound kind of crazy, but the
argument that you want China to be doing
as much business with the US and as much
business with Taiwan because it's in
China's interest, if that's the case, to
make sure things remain status quo
because if they don't, then you could
see bad outcomes. And with Google, the
parallel is you almost want Google to be
doing as much business through uh
publisher ad serving because that might
be the reason why the publisher uh
internet still exists however diminished
it's been. And once Google cuts off uh
then you cuts that part of the business
off then you really see the sort of
nuclear attack on the web publishing
business from the number one portal to
it.
Yeah, the web is dead. Web's dead, man.
Yeah. Said it for a while. I don't know.
That might be a bridge. I might That
might be a bridge too far. I'm still I'm
a I've thought this for a long time that
the idea that the web is like a
interconnected ecosystem of websites
that have content on it and you access
them through primarily search. That's
been gone for a while. Or you're
directed there through social. That's
been declining over time as well. where
it's just information is living in even
like Reddit is its own information
ecosystem. Email newsletters are their
own email. I mean they'll live on
Substack in a lot of cases or some other
web presence but it's their own uh
information ecosystem. So the idea that
like it's a completely disperate but
interconnected ecosystem that's been
gone for what and that and they'll make
money in a living off search ads. I
think uh or sorry off ads in general and
display ads. I think that's that's
pretty much dead. Would you would you
disagree?
Wouldn't call it dead. I mean Google's
earnings are still super impressive. So
the old system is still working. Uh that
that revenue goes up every quarter a
lot. So, um, but I I think under threat,
yes. I mean, I think that in all these
conversations about the way that Google
has improved over time, we often leave
out the fact that there's still this
sort of existential threat uh waiting at
the end of the tunnel. And maybe that's,
you know, jagged AGI or AGI this summer.
Um, and uh, we shouldn't ignore that. I
think the best possible outcome for all
publishers is to join Elon Musk's
legion, move to the compound in
Texas. Don't say anything bad about him
and take the money. It's your only
option. And and again, I agree. The web
is not dead, but the web is dead sounds
better than the web is in secular
decline. But
not as punchy a subject line.
See, this is why our advertising agency
really has legs. It's we know how to
brand things that you know it's jaggedly
true. Feels jaggedly true. If you squint
at the light at the I love that uh one
of the definitions even used like the
light at the end of the you can see the
end of the tunnel. Everyone's squinting.
Everyone's trying to see that light for
our AGI, but it's jagged right now. So,
I hope you enjoy your jagged AGI this
weekend. I I sure will. I sure will. And
we will be back next week to talk about
all the other new things that we found
from 03 and whatever other craziness
goes on in the tech and the AI world
because Lord knows uh the one thing the
one thing that's consistent is when we
come back every Friday, there's going to
be some crazy stuff that's happened and
we can't wait to speak with you about it
next week. All right, Ron John, great to
see you. Thanks for coming on the show.
All right, see you next week. See you
next week. All right, everybody. Thank
you so much for listening and we'll see
you next time on Big Technology Podcast.