Apple’s Anthropic Flirtation, Can Meta Build Superintelligence?, AI Browser Wars — With M.G. Siegler

Channel: Alex Kantrowitz

Published at: 2025-07-09

YouTube video id: Qr4T2n3q4iM

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr4T2n3q4iM

Apple is thinking about handing Siri's
brain to Anthropic. Does Meta have what
it takes to build super intelligence?
And will you soon be using an AI
browser? That's coming up right after
this. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast
where we're kicking off a new monthly
segment or really monthly episode with
the great MG Seagler of Spy Glass who's
a regular guest with us here. But I
thought, you know what? Let's amp it up.
We'll spend the first Monday of every
month speaking with MG about the latest
in big tech and AI and spend a lot of
time speaking about the great reporting
and writing that he does within Spy
Glass. So MG, really happy to have you
here. Very glad to kick this off.
Yeah, thanks for uh asking me to do it,
Alex, and I'm excited to uh to chat with
you on a regular basis.
Yes, and I I'm definitely stoked about
this. So um to kick it off, let's pick
up our Apple discussion. And I I think
just having this regular cadence is
great because we can sort of check in on
these companies and say, "Hey, how how
have they been doing since our last
conversation?" Of course, the last time
we spoke was the day after WWDC,
basically no AI. We said, "Okay, they're
going to have to make some dramatic
moves, maybe grasp for a perplexity, do
some uh acquisition, or potentially even
uh rewrite Siri itself." And it looks
like Apple is starting to consider this
seriously with some news that came out
over the past week or so where they are
considering taking either OpenAI or
Anthropic's Clawbot and putting it in uh
basically the bottomizing Siri and and
changing the brain around uh and
Anthropic seems to be the one that is
the leader at least in the clubhouse. So
what do you think about this potential
move from Apple and what's the
significance of it?
I think it's long overdue. Um, you know,
I I've been writing about this for a
while now. And, um, at one point, I
think it was around, you remember when,
um, several months ago, uh, maybe around
the the first part of the year, there
was a whole meme going around about how,
oh, it was around the time of the Super
Bowl, because it was a whole meme around
how, you know, Siri couldn't, uh,
correctly know who had won previous
Super Bowls, something as rudimentary as
that from like a a knowledge graph
perspective, and they would get all
sorts of stuff wrong. thought the Chiefs
had won like 50 of them or something
like that. And so
it seemed like right after that point I
had written sort of what I thought was a
little bit more provocative of a piece
uh with you know the the old Betterages
uh headline law of the question mark in
it of being like should Apple replace
Siri with basically an LLM with with
with chat GBT and then after that that
Super Bowl thing came out it's like I
was pushed over the edge. It's like
they've got to replace Siri with
something else, whether it be Chetchi BT
or Claude or Google Gemini or one of the
other um products because this is just
really tablestake stuff that they
should, you know, they've been working
on Siri for 15 plus years. Um, you know,
to their credit, as as we've long talked
about, they were first mover uh in that
and I think that hurt them in many ways.
But the fact that we're in 2025 or you
know last year 2024 and they couldn't
get something as simple as that right
while all these other competitive
products have no problems doing those
things. Um and again they're trying to
do it in-house. they're trying to do
their own systems and stuff, but all of
this stuff is out there. And the fact
that they already had the relationship
with OpenAI per last year's uh WWDC in
place to do some of the offloading of um
you know, the the wider uh knowledge
Siri uh stuff uh you know, reaching out
to the web, like why couldn't they just
have slotted that in? Obviously, it's
easier said than done, but still to this
to this reporting now, they've been
thinking about doing it and obviously
they've been testing it um and doing
this like bake off internally to see
which of the uh products might be
better. I did think that it was super
interesting that they wound up at least
per this report with uh with Claude
rather than chatbt.
Yeah, that was surprising to me and I
definitely want to get into the
different decisions that they're making
and why Anthropic is the lead here and
what it means for Anthropic. These are
all really interesting parts of the
stories uh parts of the story. And I
should also note the betterage law of
headlines says if you put a question
mark in the headline typically the
answer is no. But when you asked should
they labotize Siri your answer was I
think so.
Yeah. Yeah. And um you know again we'll
see like I the reporting on it if I have
it right from from Mark German who else
um you know basically indicates that
they wouldn't do this until next year um
you know a 2026 thing. Does that mean
that they wait until sort of WWDC 2026
to announce it as part of iOS I'm going
to bungle it now iOS 27? Yeah, cuz it's
the future year, right? So, it's not uh
Right. So, would they announce it as iOS
27 or do they try to get it out ahead of
time as a dot release on iOS 26 uh
something um a you know ahead of that?
Again, it presumably they could they
could just slowly, you know, behind the
scenes just start giving um more of the
workload over to one of these LLMs that
they already have plugged in. As as
noted, you know, they have chatbt in
there right now. Do they slot in Claude?
Do they slot in Gemini and then start to
offload that work without making a big
deal about it or do they make a big deal
about it? And I could see an argument
both ways of of wanting to do that. Now,
I think you and I are both in favor of
this move and we can make the case for
it. We have on the show numerous times.
Uh maybe we will come back to that in a
moment, but I think let's just make the
case against because I saw that you sort
of grappled with whether this is
actually the right move in your post.
And the argument that Apple shouldn't do
something like this is look, large
language models are going to commoditize
at some point. You don't want to rely so
much on a third-party, a proprietary
thirdparty's technology. At the very
least, you can develop this either
either inhouse or use open-source
technology. And that importantly gives
you way more control. And what Apple
wants in every single one of its product
experiences is the control. So, is that
the argument not to do this? And do you
think that I mean I sort of have this
feeling that Apple will eventually kind
of fall back on that like yeah we'll
just try to control the experience and
do it ourselves. Um so what would be the
the counterpoint to that?
Yeah and a lot of that was sort of even
thinking back to prel last year's WWDC
leading up to what they would eventually
announce was the partnership with
OpenAI. There had been the rumors that
they were potentially going to do
something with them and and what might
that look like with regard to Siri. And
definitely one of the things, you know,
that that jumps to mind when you first
hear that is user privacy, right? And
and Apple's, you know, big proponent of
of user privacy and not wanting to send
um their own user data over to third
parties unnecessarily. And so they
obviously have sort of an opt-in
mechanism to do that right now. But if
they were to actually outsource this in
a major way, would presumably they would
still have some sort of opt-in to begin
with, but would they do it on, you know,
the ongoing basis like saying hopefully
not on every query that you know you
would do that, but do they sort of
prompt users like once a month or or
more often or less often than that um in
order to ensure that they know what
they're sending? And you know, I think
that that's the the one argument, the
major argument on Apple's side on top of
the other stuff that you're, you know,
talking about where Apple just wants to
control that user experience regardless
of sort of the data and user privacy
aspect. They want to make sure also that
the thing's not going to hallucinate,
right? I think this was the big fear
leading up to, again, last WWDC, the LLM
products were not as um, you know, uh,
trustworthy as they maybe are now. I
mean, in many cases, they're still not
for certain types of queries, right? But
obviously Apple's going to worry about
that if um if uh uh you know Gemini
tells you to eat rocks or put rocks in
the pizza or whatever. Um Apple's not
going to want that as a part of their
their experience. And so do they do
something that's more like image
playground which has obviously been very
structured and locked down, right? Like
they only let you use up until recently
up until maybe the new changes that
they're they're rolling out in uh the
new uh OS 26 um layers. they basically
only allowed you to do very specific
types of um scenes and and using you
know very guardrailed um versions and so
do they do something like that but again
that's probably not going to make for a
good product experience uh you know for
a user perspective if they really try to
lock it down that much.
Yeah, exactly. as we outline sort of the
Apple strategy here and why they may not
want to do something like this or why
they've dragged their feet uh to do
this, it it just seems to me like just
all the arguments you can make on the
stay closed and don't do a partnership
or try to, you know, ride it out. Um
they just don't hold water because this
stuff is moving so quickly. I'll just
give you one example. I'm on my phone
all the time talking with chat GPT. It's
like this past weekend, I took it from
like deep within the apps that I have on
like the, you know, maybe third or
fourth screen and I put it into the doc
screen because whenever I have a
question, you know, this thing connects
to the web. I'm like always talking with
chat GBT. It's kind of crazy how often I
am speaking with these things and this
format of voice uh is just the thing I I
believe that's driving a lot of the
growth within AI today. And if you wait
for um let's say a Samsung or some other
an Android to deeply integrate with a
competitor and provide this experience
while you're just standing still and you
don't have this integrated into your
operating system. I think you could
really end up losing phone sales because
of it.
Yeah, I totally agree. And I'm one step
further than you. Not only is it in my
doc, I use the action button to trigger
chat GBT. Um really so I have it to do
that. Yeah. From my iPhone. Yeah.
Um you can do it via shortcuts and and
it works very well. like they have one
that's like they have different
granularity options. You could do it
just to open up the app to chat with it.
You can even do it so as an overlay um
screen so you can chat without having to
leave another app. It's it's pretty well
done. And you could do trigger right
into voice. You could trigger right into
voice transcription. Um so yeah, I use
it all the time as well. Um, certainly
I'm not going to use Siri all the time,
but if it was baked in, you know, like I
think then it's an interesting question
of uh, you know, what what the
differences would be because I don't I
don't know about you, but I still sort
of do these own uh, you know, internal
bakeoffs of my own, right? When I'm when
I'm doing certain types of queries,
right? I'll do I'll use Chat GBT and
I'll Gemini open um, and you know,
sometimes Claude for certain things,
coding of course specifically and and
things like that. And so I do think that
Apple runs a real risk uh without doing
something here because to your point,
they're just not moving fast enough to
sort of catch up with the current
state-of-the-art. And you and I have
talked about this before, right? Beyond
just even the the product integrations,
like one of the reasons that I would
worry about Apple going forward is they
don't have the right internal mentality
about doing this stuff. And you can see
it in the in the sort of products that
they've shipped to date, specifically
obviously with Siri, where they're
clearly just moving too slowly and don't
have the right product cadence in order
to do that. And so offloading this will
help them in that they would be using a
third party to do that. I think in the
best state and again this is something
that I that I argued for in the original
piece before this was rumored to be
happening but it's basically like look
just outsource it for an indefinite
amount of time while you work on your
own stuff behind the scenes. Take the
pressure off the team that's working on
it internally. Um again we don't know
the timetable of what that would mean.
Does it take a year? Does it take longer
than that? Um but again if you've fully
outsourced it to something like chat GBT
or Claude then you have the breathing
room to be able to do that. And then
behind the scenes, it's almost the
inverse of what we were talking about
before. I would just start to slowly
roll out um the actual Siri version of
Siri, the Apple made version of Siri
again with certain types of queries that
they feel confident that they can answer
now and do a good job with. Obviously,
they keep the timers and they keep the,
you know, the sort of lowhanging fruit
stuff that's um that's sort of simple
right now baked into the system, but I
mean for world queries and things if
they're building it behind the scenes
and they can eventually sort of roll in
roll back to uh you know Siri um as they
uh you know build it behind the scenes
with this integration.
By the way, it's kind of crazy for me to
hear how ingrained AI voice is in your
life. I mean, I'll I'll give you kind of
an example what's happened with me. I've
kind of pingponged from Siri back to
OpenAI. So using chat GPT, I'm like
typing all these things and I'm asking
like it's become my search. Uh and then
you know I'm expecting AI to be able to
do this stuff for me. So when I like
need to know the answer to something
like I'll just yell, "Hey Siri, what's
the answer?" And then it it tends to get
that right I don't know 10 20% of the
time. And then I was like well this is
an experience I want to have. Um but
obviously Siri's not holding it up to
me. So that's where OpenAI got the
promotion and the more and the higher
prominence for me and I'm just like wow
like this is something that I'm just
going to use all the time. I'm curious
what what type of things are you
speaking with chat about uh that you've
given it such a prominent place in your
phone. Honestly, it's almost I mean it's
it's most of the Google queries that I
used to be doing, right? Like I mean
Google now I predominantly use when I'm
on my desktop if I'm doing research for
a post or if I'm trying to look up
things to link to. Um then I will use
sort of traditional Google search. But
for pretty much everything else. Um, and
yeah, like you, I would use Siri for
things like, you know, we're say we're
traveling and we're walking around a
city. I don't want to know the
population like of a place, right? I
would use Siri for that. Like silly
silly things like that. Um, but sort of
fun, especially with kids, like, you
know, they like those those little fun
things. Um but OpenAI and Chetch have
gotten so good at beyond just that uh
you know very simple example of giving
you like my do my older daughter is
obsessed right now with like the Lond
London Underground system and like
knowing all the different tube lines and
like when they came about and so she's
like constantly like thirsting for
information about these and obviously I
know you know the highle names of them
but I can't go deep on it. So,
previously, right, we would have done
like a Google search about that probably
on your phone, like while you're
waiting, you know, for a tube to come on
a certain line, but now you can just do
you can just chat with chat GBT about
it. And it's really an incredible
experience like being able to go back
and forth and and sort of follow answer
asking follow-up questions and and yeah,
that's like one example of something
that just has totally changed.
Yeah, it's so good. And one of the
things that's really nice about chatbt
is when you're speaking with it in the
voice interface, there's almost no
latency. maybe a little latency if it
has to go search the web for something,
but otherwise it's spitting these
answers back so quickly. And they have a
bunch of different voices that you can
pick from. And I felt sometimes like
when I'm switching the voice, I feel
like I'm murdering that old. I feel kind
of bad for it cuz it just goes to show
you you develop this rapport with your
old friend is gone. Yeah. That and that
actually speaks to how uh my you know my
older daughter and I started using it
when they you know the cute like
gimmicky thing when they rolled out the
Santa voice, right? It was just like it
was such a fun thing to do during the
holidays, right? It's like hey uh Maisie
like come come listen to this and and
you know it's like ho ho ho uh hello
there Maisie how are you? You tell you
can tell you know your daughter's name
even though they know you're not talking
to it directly and um
yeah it's all sorts of uh clever clever
user interaction.
See it's one of the more underrated
releases from shipmiss. Was that
exactly 12 days of shipm?
Let's talk about the decision between
OpenAI and Anthropic because this to me
is almost as interesting as the news
that they're actually thinking about
this. So the report from German like we
mentioned is that they are thinking
about Anthropic uh over OpenAI. Um let's
just talk about the bakeoff there. Why
do you think that is? Because uh if you
just put product to product, OpenAI's
voice mode is mature uh and much better
than Anthropics. Anthropic just released
the clawed voice mode. So, what do you
think is going on behind the scenes
there?
I I sort of wonder when you and I last
spoke, we spoke about um you know, the
list of companies that Apple could
potentially acquire, right, in the space
and and the one that I had sort of at
the top um you know, we we talked about
perplexity. Um but the one above that
even for me was uh anthropic even though
I don't think it's possible for them to
do that for all sorts of reasons, namely
the price at this point. But I do just
feel like overall from everything you
hear externally the uh mentality that
that Anthropic that team has and
obviously they spun out right from from
OpenAI famously um you know some of the
some of the team spun out and and
started Anthropic in that way. Um just
the mentality is more in line with what
I think Apple would want um from from an
AI perspective. And so part of me
wonders if it's not that. That said, I
don't think that they would if it was
much worse, I don't think that they
would they would pick that over uh
chatbt. So obviously they're using it
and they do think it's better. I mean
there's been the reports as well um that
they've been using it for Xcode right
internally and that that was going to be
the thing that they they outsour
anthropic was going to be the tool that
they used on the AI side to outsource um
vibe coding to. uh and you know there's
there's some work it seems like that's
underway now within Xcode that they'll
be rolling out along those lines. Um but
at WWC they also on the flip side of
that they talked about using uh open AI
more on that side rather than
anthropics. So there's all sorts of
weird I don't maybe Apple is concerned
about going too far deep with one
partner and becoming beholden to them,
right? Um, and they worry that if they
go too far down the Open AI rabbit hole,
that yeah, they could either get, you
know, screwed one way or another, be it,
um, because they feel that they have to
use them all the time going forward and
and they would rather sort of have these
entities play off one another. Um, and
again, like I would anticipate that in
in a final state, if they did do a
partnership, they would probably ideally
want to use a few of them. And that was
obviously the rumor with with Google as
well integrating Gemini. Um, but if if
they had to pick one, that is surprising
that they would go with Claude ahead of
Chat GBT. So again, I'm just trying to
pingpong why they might uh have gone
with them or the rumor has it.
I think they probably if they've met
with both leadership teams, I think they
probably are a company that would
absolutely go for Daario's safety uh
branding. like it's the sand safety
company with the privacy company versus
open AAI which is kind of like the chaos
product company even though the
product's working better but the the um
the terms of the deal to me are also
fascinating. So uh you you wrote about
this also uh that that Anthropic is
asking for a multi-billion dollar annual
fee that increases sharply every year.
Now Apple's biggest acquisition in
history was $3 billion. So it's not
exactly a company that is sort of ready
to spend 2 billion a year or more uh on
a integration partner. So what do you
think's happening in that negotiation?
Yeah, I mean that that was maybe the
weirdest thing about that entire report
was, you know, the notion that both
Anthropic might even just be asking for
that because they have to know that
Apple, you know, will be super reluctant
to do anything for the reasons you're
exactly talking about, right? just they
historically don't spend money even
though they have all the money to spend.
They don't spend money certainly on
acquisitions but if this this could be
really larger than their largest
acquisition which is wild. Um, I mean,
from the flip side, I think Anthropic
probably, you know, assuming this is
accurate, they're they're looking at it
like, I mean, uh, if we really are the
main, um, focal point of Siri going
forward, that is going to absolutely
blow up our servers to an extent we
haven't seen, at least on the sort of
userfacing consumer side to date. And uh
you know we've see what happens or you
know we hear reports about what happens
when um sort of these viral integrations
happen on the chatbt side and how that
brings down their servers blows up the
the cost and everything. And so does
Ananthropic really want to be in that
boat um you know without any sort of
life vest uh you know in the in the form
of payments. That was always one of the
most surprising things to me about the
Apple and Chat GBT deal was the
reporting that it was no money
exchanging hands, right? Um because it
felt like too there was a real uh
possibility that if one of those things
um you know went viral that it was the
weird situation where Apple would be
causing such an influx of usage of chat
GBT which at the time at least and and
presumably still mostly is running on
Microsoft servers. And so basically
Apple would be, you know, causing these
huge increases in cost to OpenAI and
Microsoft um by way of their deal. And
if they didn't have any I was always
trying to like think through there must
be a way that they're going to
eventually pay them. And I do think that
that's sort of what led down that uh you
know at the time rumored and then uh
rumored to be off um potential
investment that Apple was going to do in
OpenAI. To me that made all the sense in
the world because that was a a de facto
way for them to pay for you know that
integration basically they would just be
investing billions of dollars into into
open AI potentially and obviously that
didn't happen but I almost wonder if
something similar isn't at play here
with anthropic where look they might say
we're not going to give you whatever $2
billion a year say um to use Claude but
you know you guys always need more money
you're taking investment we'll we'll
happily invest uh you know in the
company knowing that their one thing
that Anthropic seemingly wants is uh
diversified investors, right? Because
they don't just want to have uh Amazon
owning so much and they don't just want
to have Google owning so much. Both of
them own quite a bit right now, but if
they could diversify that even further
with Apple, I think that they might be
interested in that. Another question of
if Amazon and Google would be interested
in that, but still I I could see it
maybe going down that path. But
otherwise, it's pretty shocking that
they would ask for that um from Apple.
I I think you're totally right about
this. And if you are a client of
Anthropic, whether you're using Claude
off the shelf or whether you're using
the API, one thing you know to be true
is there are often lag times and often
if you're trying to tag tag into the
API, it can be down. And I think a lot
of people are saying, you know what,
this is server capacity. So now imagine
you plug that company in with Apple and
then all of a sudden the product is good
and demand goes through the roof. It
just effectively, you know, destroys
Anthropic's ability to deliver
its products. So, can I ask you this
like what do you think it says about
Anthropic that this is the biggest
opportunity, biggest potential business
opportunity of its lifetime to be like
the de facto voice of AI on the iPhone,
sort of surpassing that experience that
we're both talking about with Chad GPT,
but they just can't do it. I mean,
assuming we're right about this, but
they just can't do it because of
servers. Yeah, I mean and and right. So
I thought I think about that as well too
because basically Apple again assuming
that the reporting is is accurate here.
Apple is handing them the golden ticket,
right? Like they for since the since the
dawn of these LLMs, you know, basically
ChatGBT has had the crown and has been
able to sort of keep going and and
expanding uh you know, their lead. You
know, obviously Google and Gemini are
giving them a run for their money
because they're putting it in baking it
directly into search and and Android and
have incredible scale in Gemini or
sorry, in Chrome to some extent right
now. And so they're they're leveraging
those those uh strengths that they have
in order to do that. But still, I think
we would all agree that that chat GBT
has been sort of the leader in the
clubhouse uh you know, at least when it
become when it goes to sort of consumerf
facing versions of this stuff. And
basically Apple if they were to give
this to um Anthropic.
I mean would they shoot ahead of Chat
GBT in terms of actual usage? I don't I
don't know if that's the case. Um I do
think that they would shoot ahead of
them in like simple queries like we're
talking about you know like what's the
weather and and that type of stuff
assuming that Apple outsourced that as a
part of that deal. Um, but you know,
we're talking about they would be in the
hands of billions of of consumers
overnight doing these types of queries.
And so to your question of like like
what's the reluctance to do that or why
are they so reticent to do that? I do
wonder if part of it is I think recently
they gave some some quotes in in
different interviews um talking about
how they're sort of okay with seeding
the you know the chatbot market right to
uh to chatbt and it feels like that's
not the path that they want to go down
anymore at least the main primary focus
they're they want to do coding and they
want to like focus on their strengths so
it's almost like if they already feel
like they made that decision internally
and now Apple's potentially handing them
again this golden ticket to to sort of
shoot back into the forefront of
consumer. Maybe there's some internal
reluctance to sort of go down that path
a little bit.
Yeah. And it just sort of goes to like
where you can make money in AI today.
And I think there's like
two different areas. There's the product
side where you have chat GPT and then
you have the API side and anthropic is
is doing quite well there. I don't know
would you call this like a product or an
API play because you're going to give a
version of claw to Apple? Well, I guess
it would still be a product play, but
I'm curious like what you think about
the state of the AI business today
because obviously we have like a lot of
applications that are out there that are
doing well. Uh, but the API business to
me still seems like a bit of a question
mark even though we've seen anthropic
post that like they went from like 1
billion uh annual recurring revenue I
think to four in like just a couple
months and it seems like they are mostly
API. So, what what do you think is the
state of play right now?
Yeah, I mean that's still it feels like
a pretty risky business, right? because
it's so unlike what OpenAI has done with
chat GBT where they have a brand now and
like a known entity the APIs like those
are relatively not necessarily easy but
they're easier to just swap in and out
different you know different tools and
technologies as they become more readily
available and then yeah the cost will
get sort of driven down over time you
know as that happens is there's more
competition in the market so it does
feel like that's a bit yeah more
vulnerable of a state to be in. And and
I mean, even look at the the vibe coding
space that they're in, right? It's like
um they if I have it right, they are
predominantly powering cursor right now,
right? And and some of the and the one
um as well that uh OpenAI is buying uh
which they famously are now cutting them
off, Windsurf um from the newest uh
versions of the models. And uh the
question becomes how much does cursor uh
you know the company start to build
their own stuff and obviously they're
doing some of that internally. Um but
you know that's a real risk point of
course for for Anthropic. Um, and so it
becomes like a point where do they
really have to more rely on building,
you know, claude code, making sure that
that's its own product and that's the
product side again versus sort of going
down the the full-on API path. Um, but
it's still like so much of the stuff is
moving so fast still and it feels like,
you know, we weren't even talking about
quote unquote vibe coding tools a year
ago and now, you know, maybe we were a
little bit, but now that's all that
anyone seemingly wants to talk about.
certainly on the business side and the
fundraising side. And so um there will
be something else that that comes up in
the next six months. Uh some other layer
of AI that everyone wants to talk about
is the is the new thing from the the
model perspective.
Yeah. And this is a good moment for me
to plug uh the vibe coding episode we
have coming up. I'm Jad Msad, the CEO of
Replet is going to be on in a couple
weeks. So folks stay tuned to that. And
now MG, let me give my galaxy brain idea
about where all this anthropic chatter
is leading to or where it might be
coming from. I'd probably say there's
like a 10 or 20% chance that this is why
we're hearing so much about um Anthropic
being like the de facto new brain of
Siri and that is that maybe Apple is in
negotiations with Perplexity and they're
just trying to drive down the price
saying well we could just easily bring
in these anthropic models so therefore
you know you're not worth the 30 billion
to us but maybe we could do 20 billion.
Is that crazy?
Uh it's not crazy. uh we you know there
have been now other reports and and you
and I again last episode talked quite a
bit about um you know perplexity as an
option for Apple and now there's
reporting along the lines that they're
at least talking about it internally
right like not necessarily that they're
negotiating with the company but to your
exact point maybe they're loosely
negotiating with them or maybe they're
negotiating in public with them uh in
order to to get some sort of deal done
um because it does from the product side
uh and given what they need not only as
we talked about with AI, but also on the
search side if and when the, you know,
the Google search deal that Apple has
changes at the very least. Um, it just
it slots in there in in many ways
Perplexity does that I think could be
really compelling. Um, but not going to
be cheap, would definitely be more than
any Beats acquisition. Uh, and and you
know, Perplexity just one of the things,
you know, we had talked about is it
going to be would that company and and
the founder be a fit inside of Apple?
And I think that that's one debate, but
they're also just like I think that
they've done really good job on on
certain sides of the product, but
they're also just like they're doing a
lot. Uh maybe maybe too much you could
argue, you know, like in terms of they
want to buy Chrome. They just they want
to buy Tik Tok. They're they're jumping
at sort of everything that that is out
there.
They're they just want to be in the
they're launching a uh a web browser as
I think we'll talk about in a little
bit. But um they're just doing a ton and
uh I I'd be a little worried like
they've raised a a lot but not a lot
compared to some of their peers, right?
I know they're not necessarily building,
you know, a foundation model themselves,
though they're augmenting others, right?
Um but you know, they don't have
necessarily unlimited runway, I would
imagine, to do everything that they're
trying to do. And so from their side as
they're talking to these big companies,
we talked last time, they it sounds
like, you know, they're zering in, if
they haven't already, on the Sam on a
Samsung deal to integrate with those
products and and does that help or hurt,
you know, sort of the negotiations with
with wouldbe Apple, but they're just
they're doing a lot right now. And uh so
I like your idea that uh Apple is
potentially throwing stuff out there to
try to get a better price on if they're
if they're actually thinking about going
down that path. I'm just saying if I was
negotiating with Perplexity, the first
thing I would do would be to call up
some reporters and be like, you know, we
might integrate with anthropic all
across the board. I think that would
help my negotiating position. So, we've
spoken about uh the different ways that
you can do business in AI. You can do
the product side, you can do the API
business, and I I think it kind of
leaves out one part of it, which is that
you could just build AGI and that will
be like this new form of value creation
that we still haven't found our wrapped
our head around, wrapped our heads
around, or even uh maybe not AGI, maybe
you want to build super intelligence.
And it seems like with uh the scale
hypothesis starting to level off, uh I
heard recently on a podcast that the
trend is the trend until the bend at the
end. And we might be at the bend at the
end with scaling. Um you got to
basically create better algorithms. And
on the show on Friday, Ranjan and I were
talking about how Meta is making this
very interesting play to try to write
better algorithms um with this super
intelligence team that Mark Zuckerberg
is assembling. And you look at some of
the names on this team uh and they
really are I think some of the stars at
uh largely OpenAI but also some other
research houses as well including
anthropic and deep mind. You have
someone who uh is the co-creator of the
O series models at OpenAI which is the
reasoning stuff. Someone who's the
co-creator of GPT40 voice mode which we
just talked about is so impressive.
Another co-creator of GPT40's
image generation site. I could go on. Uh
but MG, you don't think that this is
going to work for Zuckerberg. So I'd
love to hear your perspective on whether
it's the right bet and whether you think
and why you think this isn't going to
pan out.
Yeah. I mean, so look, this is obvious
that's obviously a little bit of a first
of all, no one knows, of course, this is
like
day one of them starting this this uh
this new team um as they announced, you
know, last week. Um, and I think it's a
little bit of a contrarian statement to
say that right now that it that it might
not work, but I also don't think it's
crazy. Like I,
you know, I hate to sort of pull on this
the sports analogies, right? But it is
like they're putting together a super
team and I feel like super teams in in
the sports world, you know, often don't
pan out at least the way that was
expected. There are a couple maybe
counter examples of it, but for the most
part, there's a reason why like teams as
that are gelled and have worked together
for a long time and on sports as well,
right, tend to perform better than
people uh who are thrown together um you
know in uh in in sort of peacemeal
fashion even with all the talents in the
world um to do something like this. And
you know, I do I I think at least
directionally agree with the very
conflicted point of course that he's
making, but Sam Alman is making about
the you know, mercenary um versus
missionary point. I think it's a it's a
fair thing to bring up um the notion
that look rightly or wrongly and whether
you believe it's actually going to
happen like OpenAI has been on this
mission to try to do AGI which is I
guess morphed into super intelligence
and and you know
yeah no one's talking about AGI anymore
fluid and and Microsoft has muddled that
all with that with their deal and all
that sort of stuff but regardless they
you know OpenAI has always been marching
towards this general goal Right.
Zuckerberg has been saying for a, you
know, he was saying not even that long
ago, 18 months ago maybe, when they were
sort of doing, you know, some of the
initial work on Llama that he didn't
believe in sort of the AI god, right?
And um that he didn't believe that there
would be sort of one one uh AI to rule
them all and that um you know, a lot of
those companies were were going down the
wrong paths. And you know, it feels like
now he's changing his tune and trying to
to ramp up this team in order to to race
OpenAI and Google to that goal of
getting to again super intelligence um
AGI and super intelligence. And so why I
don't think it'll work, I think if I
were to place a bet on it, I just feel
like a of course they're starting out
behind, but b throwing people together
uh to try to work towards that goal. It
depends on where you actually believe we
are in the cycle. If you believe it's
still really early days, that could
work, right? Like that we need new
models now and we need new some new sort
of uh technologies that are even
different maybe than LLMs, you know,
that that bring about sort of the next
wave of breakthroughs with the broader
AI space. Um, and then you could sort of
make the case that this is the right
time to be doing it. If yesterday was
the best time, today's the the second
best time, right? Um, but if you believe
that we're farther along that path and
hearing others talk about it, you know,
some people think that we're I know you
talked about it with Demis Hassabus and
and and others before, how close we are
actually to AGI andor super
intelligence. Um, and if we're only a
couple years away, do I think that Meta
can win that race? Not if we're a couple
years away, I don't think so. If we're
longer term and this is the early
innings, then I think they're fine in a
fine position. I would also just say
lastly, I know that I'm being
long-winded on this, but I also just
think the the history of Meta
is complicated, right? Dating back to
Facebook with regard to launching new
initiatives. And I do think that they
have a very uh uh a big problem with
focus um when it comes to new things
coming out, right? Even just look at the
fact that they renamed the company Meta.
reorient they've reoriented around the
metaverse and now it feels like I mean
they're never going to say that they're
going to abandon the metaverse. they'll
they'll instead say that look this is
all a part of working towards the same
thing right like they'll use the the
talking point that we need um you know
augmented glasses to be the the conduit
for AI and AI is going to power those
and and they're not wrong about that
necessarily but we're not working
towards the same metaverse that that we
were with the you know with the Zuck
avatar in in the Eiffel Tower his little
cartoon avatar thing we're not there
anymore and we're not going to go down
that path anymore it feels like so I
just worry about focus with meta that
this is this is the thing right now. Um,
and you know, I do think that spending
tens of billions of dollars will will
force them to to sort of focus on this
and I do think that they they will, but
I'm just not sold that they will remain
as focused on this as as uh some sort of
like an open AI would where it's
existential for them. By the way, just
on the technology side, and you note
about you note this in your story, um it
looks like raw scale, at least coming
from these newcomers who thought they
could build up massive data centers and
then take the lead in AI. It's not
working. You said Elon Musk was able to
throw capital at the AI problem to get
Grock up to scale fast. Meta was already
at scale. This, ironically, is a people
problem. Now I think believers in the
scale hypothesis will be like look like
the ingredients are not lined up
correctly. You don't just you know big
build bigger data centers. You need data
centers larger models and good data to
be able to continue to see the gains
with scale. Uh but it is pretty
interesting that these companies are
like seemingly uniformly maybe outside
of anthropics saying you know what uh
scale is important but it's going to
take other breakthroughs and that's why
you see this talent war happening right
now.
Yeah. Yeah. And I right I think that
that situation is interesting because
when when Elon went down the path with
building Colossus, right, the the his AI
giant massive data center thing,
basically he made the bet that they
could jump ahead of the line in terms of
compute and and scaling compute and get
there. And they were able to do that,
you know, incredibly, right? like they
were able to build basically a a data
center with capac with enough capacity
to pump out a model um you know in the
form of Grock that was at least
competitive with the you know with the
state-of-the-art uh at the time even
though they were starting so much later
than all the others who had done it to
date and Zuckerberg is is basically sort
of making an opposite end of the
spectrum bet in terms of people right
but in some ways that's because they
already made that bet with Llama right
like that they would uh be able to also
to scale up a model that was
competitive. Now, there have been a ton
of problems, as we all know, with Llama
4, it seems like, is being reported, and
that's why they're sort of now moving
down this new road to be able to do
that. But, it's interesting that people
are like trying to figure out these like
hacks to get back into the right to jump
in into contention again. and and the
people thing
again if if there's something new that
is going to come about uh I do think
that it's compelling the team that Meta
is hiring but if it's not and we're
already on the path to where we're going
I think it's problematic for them.
Yeah. And by the way Elon also I think
it actually hasn't been as big of a
story as it should be u that Elon has
lost control of Grock. I don't know if
you've been following this, but I've
seen basically Yeah.
Yeah. Grock basically established this
like liberal posture. It's talking about
how it's using sourcing from Media
Matters and Rolling Stone uh to document
uh misinformation from Cat Turd, which
is one of Elon's favorite accounts. And
Elon goes like, "Shame on you, Grock."
He also said there was going to be a
full rewriting. Uh, I think they they
rewrote it uh or or may have released an
update because now it seems like Grock
is like a step further uh as in terms of
like being like I don't know Holocaust
denier than you'd even want it to be
even if you wanted to be you know quote
unquote like an edge lord. Um, and and
it just goes to show just like people
talk about alignment in AI and you build
up these big data centers and you want
to try to align it with your values and
Elon who like say what you want about
him, one of the most successful tech
entrepreneurs of our time if not the uh
completely lost control of his AI. It's
crazy.
Yeah. And I mean it sort of speaks to
the unknowns of where this is all going,
right? like so Elon, you know, pours as
much money as as he possibly can towards
building ramping up and building these
this new model, thinking he can get back
into the into the AI race. Um, and then
there's just these all these sort of
second order effects of what actually
happens when when you yeah just roll out
something that you don't have full uh
control over. And so what happens Yeah.
when Meta's team, you know, is is fully
ramped and sort of working on new
projects and what if it's, you know,
what if whatever they end up building
is, you know, in some ways sort of going
off the rails and and, you know, does
Zuckerberg feel the need to to sort of
start from scratch again? Do they like
this is going to go this could go
infinite different ways right now? And
that's why it's so hard to sort of try
to extrapolate out like what this race
actually looks like in even 6 months
from now.
Totally. Yeah, it's crazy. By the way,
speaking of Elon uh creating things that
he can't control, let's just speak for a
minute about his new third party in the
US, the America Party. Uh after being
very close to Trump, he's now, it seems
like, in the process of launching a
third party. Uh Trump responded to it
today. This is from the Guardian. Uh
Trump says Musk is off the rails and
calls his new political party
ridiculous. He says, "I am saddened to
watch Elon Musk go completely off the
rails, essentially becoming a train
wreck train wreck over the past 5
weeks." Uh he even wants to start a
third political party despite the fact
that they never succeed uh in the United
States. Um let me take Elon's side here
for a second just on the third party. Um
we do have government in the United
States that doesn't reflect the will of
the people often. We just know this
policy polls totally divorced uh from
each other often times. Um I I think
that the campaigns that have been
successful over the past I don't know 20
years or more have all been about the
fact that the government is not working.
uh if Elon creates a third party and
says I'm going to try to be competitive
in some uh you know battleground states
and try to hold some influence like
let's say he wins a Senate seat and that
becomes the deciding vote and something
like this big beautiful bill which even
the Republican senators were saying was
a mess some of them like Marowski from
Alaska you know as she's talking about
voting for it so this bill's terrible
and I hope it gets revised it wasn't
revised um I don't know maybe that does
some good is Obviously, that's probably
a little too optimistic, but what do you
think,
MG? I mean, I'm I'm with you at the
highest level. Like, you know, I don't
disagree with the notion that the
two-party system, you know, could
probably
use more diversification from uh from
just a two-party system. Um, and how you
go about doing that. Obviously many
people have tried you know from Ross
Perau been to some level of success to
to you know many others Ralph Nater and
stuff but um how the the I guess the
issue is that obviously Elon doing this
so soon after being so closely aligned
with President Trump is you know just
beyond self- serving and that's not to
say I in some ways like I don't know
enough about the the history of you know
third party political systems to know
that that's not always the case, right?
That there's someone who's like uh you
know obviously in some ways
disenfranchised by whatever uh part
political party they were a part of
before and so they break off into a
splinter unit. The thing that I guess
would be the the take on my take on this
would just be like I'm not so sure how
much success uh even someone as wealthy
with the resources of Elon Musk will
have when he when he's not pouring those
resources behind Donald Trump. I think
like I just think he's uh I don't know
that he's necessarily underestimating
him, but I think he's downplaying the
importance of the Trump part of
everything that he did. Oh yeah. Uh, and
I feel like if he tries to do it with
sort of a, you know, a no-name, he tried
in in Wisconsin, right, with with, uh,
with with backing someone, that didn't
work out for him. And so, um, I feel
like it might play out that way. On the
other hand, like again, he could be
looking at his old friend Peter Teal and
seeing what he did with uh the certain
certain person who is now the vice
president of the United States uh and
you know figuring out a way to get
someone like that placed into a uh
position of of future power and and
maybe there is a way to do that. you
know, Teal tried, of course, with with
others with Blake Masters and and you
know, some other folks that that didn't
work out. And so, um, will Elon, to our
point earlier about, you know, uh, Meta
sort of remaining focused, will Elon
remain focused long enough on these
political aspirations? Does he hate
Trump that much, you know, a year down
the road doesn't matter anymore? And
once once Trump is sort of the lame duck
hopefully, you know, leaving office
because of term limits, uh, then, you
know, does he does he just sort of move
on from worrying about this stuff as
much?
Yeah, I think one of the things that you
bring up, and this is the point that
he's one of the least popular political
actors in the country right now. Uh, you
know, so it's going to be hard for him
to sort of shift the politics in the
country. Seems like he had one play to
make, he made it, and it didn't work
according to his plan. I wonder,
actually, we spoke about this a bit on
threads. I wonder how much of his um
support for Trump was to sort of rig
government policy in favor of his
companies. Now, um we we kind of went
back and forth about this that it could
have just been, if you want to be as
cynical as possible, he was backing
Trump to get Trump to revoke the EV
credits for his competitors, which could
put a company like Rivian out of
business. Uh but on the other hand, it
seems like losing that 7 I think it's
700 and uh $7,500
credit um for Tesla buyers is going to
smart uh pretty pretty bad at least in
the short term.
Yeah. You know, as we sort of went back
and forth about my my general view on
that is um I do think like and this is
an original thought. I think many people
sort of thought this at the time that
when he was uh you know okay at the very
least with losing that credit that it
was sort of a pull up the drawbridge
thing where you know Tesla's in the
cemented as the leader in EVs therefore
um not having that credit is much more
detrimental to the Rivians of the world
and some of the other um newcomers and
even VWs and all these player you know
uh legacy players who are trying to to
enter the space but I think that if
that's the case. What he majorly uh mis
made the mistake with was not
recognizing the potential that Tesla
itself could fall as a result of his
both his affiliation, you know, with the
with the administration um and also just
like the chi, you know, the the ever
oncoming Chinese uh EV revolution and
sort of all these other plays which have
really hurt Tesla in the market. And so
the fact that Tesla is no longer
necessarily, you know, the deacto leader
that can afford to have uh that that
credit go away is a real miscalculation
perhaps on his part um that he might not
have been able to to sort of play out in
his in his head at the time. It does
feel like he, you know, from everything
you've seen and read and even the
actions, right? like he seems like he's
fairly freaked out by the reaction of
the the general public to Tesla, you
know, from the obviously all the
protests and everything, but even just
the sales now, just the fact that like
he's firing the the head of sales in
Europe and and sort of making all these
things, it feels like there was a real
miscalculation there at at various
points.
Definitely. By the way, Tesla down today
7% at least as the time of that we are
recording this and down 22 uh close to
23% on the year. So, not a good stretch
for Elon.
What's the 7% today? Is it just Trump's
tweets or something more specific?
Probably. Yep. Yeah, this is it. Tesla
shares drop 8% after Elon Musk says he
is launching a political party. This is
according to CNBC. So, that's probably
the cause of the drop. Um, yeah, not a
good not a good year for Elon or Tesla.
All right, let's let's close with this.
Um, you have been using AI browsers. So,
can you tell us a little bit about what
an AI browser is and why you believe in
that?
Yeah. So, I'm speaking to you now
through DIA, which is the brow the AI
first browser by a company called the
browser company, which if you've heard
of them before, it's because um uh they
had previously made Arc um which was a
sort of a mildly popular um third-party
browser that was sort of a power user
browser. It did things like had put tabs
on the side of the window so you could
have more of them sort of squeezed in.
um and you know did a did a whole bunch
of other things trying to reconstitute
the way people actually use browsers. It
was very like again power user centric a
lot of uh keyboard shortcuts and things
of that nature. Um to the point where
many people including myself loved it
and was was sad to hear that they were
sort of pivoting their focus the company
was on this new fangled browser called
DIA. Um, but I decided to give it a go
like because they were obviously the
writing was on the wall for ARC. It's
still live, but it's probably, you know,
not going to be developed uh for future
features anymore. And so I decided to
give this DIA browser a go. And um I
will say I really like it now. I was
skeptical at first. It's hard to learn,
you know, new a new browser to change
sort of UI elements to change your
workflows. But the main thing, it sounds
simple, but it's it's actually rather
profound. I've found when you use it on
a daily basis. Basically, it has a uh a
chatbot built into the browser framework
itself. So on by default the left hand
uh sorry the right hand side of the
window
there is a chat window that's natively
integrated into the browser window. So
anything that you're you know scrolling
and looking at on on the internet you
can basically ask the the chat browser
about it. and it's using um its own sort
of um flavors of different other uh
LLMs. So, I think that they integrate,
they don't they don't tell you, by the
way. They obfuscate what they're
actually using. Um not to be like um uh
sketchy or weird about it. They just
don't want the user to have to focus on
that, right? Like it shouldn't matter
what the what the LLM is that's powering
it. So, I think that they use um you
know, some from OpenAI. I think they use
maybe some from Enthropic and and some
others and sort of they they bake all
those and roll them together to sort of
pick on their end which is the best one
to use for any given query. And so
again, it sounds like it's a simple
thing because well, why can't you just
use the browser version of ChatGBT? You
know, have a tab open. Um but again,
it's able to do things like one of the
cool things that they tout is the
ability to sort of search all of your
open tabs at once. um to be able to sort
of do some data analysis or um or sort
of query different things about
different stories that you're reading at
the at the same time. And so the way you
would do that right now in you know in a
browser um uh tab if you were using say
chatbt you could paste in all the links
and sort of get that going. But in your
in a in a more seamless workflow this
basically is just right there on the
side
sorry able to integrate uh natively
within there. And the thing the last
thing I would say is that I I sort of
compare it in in writing it up to the
integration that Google's doing with
Gemini right into Chrome. So there's a
beta version of Chrome that's live if
you download the beta version uh right
now where basically uh Gemini is baked
into the web browser which is sort of
incredible given everything Google's
going through from an anti- trust
perspective you know and including that
the the DOJ wants them you know to spin
out Chrome that the fact that they're
baking Gemini in sort of is maybe making
some of the government's case for it of
how uh you know Chrome is problematic
going forward uh in the age of AI but I
would say that integration is not good.
It's it's like very slow. It's also in
the upper um right hand corner, but it's
not it doesn't feel native. It just
feels like sort of a popover um type
situation. It just feels like an
extension, honestly. And obviously,
there are many of those right now that
you can use um within within Chrome and
other browsers. But again, it's one of
those things that you sort of have to
use it and live with it for a bit,
meaning DIA. Um what it actually uh is
can be useful for. and and I'm using I
would say that I'm querying uh various
web pages a lot more than I was uh
without it.
Yeah, that's cool. I love the idea that
you can basically reference all the tabs
in the browser to be able to like find
out what's you know if you're if you
have a bunch of tabs open and you I
guess you could say like what's the
commonality between these stories? Um
it's like a it sounds like a perfect use
case for I imagine people like us who
have like a gazillion tabs open and
never close any of them. I computer
after Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead.
The only other thing I would say on that
because that reminds me because Yeah.
You talk about like people like us and I
think that's honestly the thing that the
browser company uh and I should say I'm
not affiliated with them at all. I know
the founder a bit. I I met him way back
in the day and I was an investor in his
first company way before. He worked at
he went on to work at Meta. He worked at
the White House for a long time. Uh the
great guy Josh Miller. Um but I'm not
affiliated with them in any way right
now. So, just to make that clear, but
because I sound sort of like a
spokesperson for this thing, but I I
have no I have no uh no skin in this
game. But I do think that the one thing
that they're trying to do with DIA
that's that's the exact opposite of what
we talked about earlier that they had
done with Arc. It's not meant to be a
browser or at least hopefully not um at
scale a browser for you and I doing sort
of these like you know power user news
junky uh you know workflows. They
instead want this to be as simple as
possible it feels like. And so in many
ways it just feels the same as using
Chrome only with uh again a chatbot sort
of baked into it natively. And so
someone who is say they rolled this out
at first with students for example. So
students with their college uh email
could could download it before the
general public could. And I think what
they were going for there is, you know,
similar strategy to to others who have
rolled out social products and things
like that back in the day, but they
wanted young people to know like how
they were actually using uh AI in their
in their own workflows. So not again not
power users, but just regular users and
and what they would find useful about
this. So all that is to say that it's
just a super simple web browser. It
seems like it's almost like lacking a
lot of the the bells and whistles that
you might expect of Chrome and and some
of the other more robust browsers now.
And I think that that's the feature that
they're going for that they just want it
to be simple for people to use.
Love it. Well, I'm definitely going to
check it out after this and uh I'm
excited to explore it and and I mean
deep in my AI use even more
and I should say our friends uh that we
often talk about Perplexity are coming
out with their own right. They have
their own browser called Comet which
I've not tried so I can't compare the
two. people seem to like it, but the
people who seem to like it, at least we
were talking about it online, seem
awfully uh conflicted about uh I I
there's something going on that they're
uh they love it a little bit too much
for uh for my uh comic
spider sense. Uh they're getting off
something that or they're
they're just enthusiasts about it. Yeah,
whatever. But
we'll see. We'll see. Should launch soon
in beta.
All right. The website is
spyglass.org.org.
Uh really recommend you go check it out.
Obviously uh we love having MG on and
can't wait to do this again in August.
MG, thanks so much for coming on.
Thanks, Alex. Talk to you soon.
Speak to you then. All right, everybody.
Thank you so much for listening. I'm
going to switch it up. We had Ed Zitron
planned to come on uh this Wednesday.
That episode's still going to run. We've
recorded it, but instead we're going to
run an episode with Ryan Peterson, the
CEO of Flexport about how international
trade has changed since the tariffs as
the deadlines for these 90-day pauses
come up. That's coming Wednesday. And
then of course we'll be back on Friday
with Ranjan Roy to break down the week's
news. So, thank you again for listening
and we'll see you next time on Big
Technology