Countdown to GPT-5, OpenAI’s Stargate Sputters, AI Math Wars

Channel: Alex Kantrowitz

Published at: 2025-07-28

YouTube video id: SPB-EiVUIB4

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPB-EiVUIB4

GPT5 may indeed be coming soon and some
good reviews are starting to arrive.
OpenAI's Stargate program is off to a
rocky start. AI labs go to war over math
and big tech earnings start to pour in.
That's coming up on a Big Technology
Podcast Friday edition right after this.
Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday
edition where we break down the news in
our traditional coolheaded and nuanced
format. We're joined today by a special
guest to help us break down the week's
news. Steven Morris is the San Francisco
bureau chief at the Financial Times and
is here to speak with us about
everything OpenAI GPT5 and we might even
cover some Tesla earnings. Stephen, it's
great to see you again. Welcome to the
show.
>> Great to be here, Alex. Thank you. So,
let's talk about these rumblings because
I don't think it's worth hesitating
before we dive right into them that
GPT5, OpenAI's latest, greatest,
biggest, most hotly anticipated, most
delayed model uh is seemingly on its
way. The Verge says OpenAI prepares to
launch GPT5 in August. The story reads,
"Earlier this year, Microsoft engineers
were preparing server capacity for
OpenAI's next generation GPT5 model
arriving as soon as late May after some
additional testing and delays. Sources
say that OpenAI plans to release Open
release GPT5 as early as next month. Sam
Alman, the CEO of OpenAI says uh that
they are going to be releasing GPT5 soon
and talked about some of its
capabilities with the Ovon uh and said
some crazy things about it which we'll
get into in a moment. But first on the
timing, Stephen, is it is it time for us
to believe OpenAI and the rumors that
this thing is actually going to come? I
almost felt silly putting it as the lead
story in today's show.
>> No, I think I think you were the right
if that was the right call. This very
much has consumed uh Silicon Valley and
San Francisco recently with speculation
about will we actually see it this time?
Like you said, we've had so many false
starts, so many false reports, but Sam
Alman is out there telling everyone it's
coming next month. You know,
traditionally, as you know, August is a
sleepy time for journalism, but uh
definitely not this year. Um what we're
a little thinner on is the details about
what exactly this is. What does it look
like? And will it be kind of the leap
forward that I really do think OpenAI
needs it to be? There is a lot going on
with this company at the moment. You
know, everything from negotiations on
restructuring with Microsoft, building
these vast global Stargate network of
data centers, you know, new devices with
Johnny IV. But I think what underpins
all of this, the 300 billion valuation,
the hype, is the fact that it has one of
the best, if not the best models. And we
really have that necessary hasn't
necessarily been true for a while. So
this is Sam and the rest of the
researchers chance to really come out
and shine.
>> You're saying it hasn't necessarily been
true that Open AAI has the best model
for a while. That's that's certainly if
you look at benchmarks and if you talk
to people around the sector that's
definitely the perception for a while
there wasn't really you know a
legitimate competitor but you talk to
people now and including you know its
most vital stakeholder Microsoft they're
locked in these negotiations about open
AI transforming itself to a to a
for-profit entity
um and these are very tense but you know
when you speak to people over there you
know they don't necess necessarily think
that it's clear that OpenAI is out in
the lead that it has like the most
persuasive definitive model anymore and
you're starting to see it offer other
things off its platform like Elon Musk's
Grock from XAI and I think if GPT is the
slam dunk that certainly Sam Alman is
telling everyone it's going to be that
will kind of put you know that those
kind of doubters and those questions to
rest
>> right yeah GPT5 being that slam dunk
yeah I'm looking at LM Arena right now
uh number one model it's actually a tie
between Gemini 2.5 Pro and OpenAI's 03.
OpenAI takes the next couple spots with
spots with chat GPT40 latest and 4.5
preview. Hm. Wonder what that might be.
Uh and then Grock and Kimmy K2 are hot
on its tail. So there's definitely a lot
of competition at the top. But you know,
I almost would say that Chat GPT or
OpenAI has put more pressure on itself
than its competitors have. You know,
there's been this, the way that this
company speaks, there's been this long
anticipation that its next big number
release that the GPT5 release uh would
be something really special, would
potentially even be artificial general
intelligence, although I guess like um
that might be more the hype than the
company itself. But just the way that it
talks about the way that it's u that
these models are going to um work, it's
it's pretty wild. Here's here's Sam
Altman on Theo Von, which my uh
speculation is that um they booked this
because they thought this would be GPT5
week and then they just had to like talk
about what it might be because they
haven't released yet. Here's what Sam
Alman says. This morning I was testing
our new model. I got emailed a question
that I didn't quite understand and I put
it in the model GPT5 and it answered it
perfectly and I kind of sat back in my
chair. I was just like, "Oh man, here's
the moment." And I got over it quickly.
and I got busy on to the next thing, but
it was like I felt useless relative to
the AI and this thing that I should have
been able to do and it's really hard,
but the AI just did it like that. It was
a weird feeling. Almond also said that
uh GPT5 was able to code up a project
for him in like 5 minutes that would
have taken much longer otherwise. Are
they overhyping this? Are they putting
too much pressure on themselves?
>> I don't think Sam Olman has underhyped
anything in his life. So I about that.
But if what people are saying and what
they're uh you know what they're saying
and speculating about is true, what
we're going to see is a much larger
model that marries all of the you know
innovations and capabilities from
reasoning um to deep research,
multimodal capacities, reading text,
seeing videos and audio and then
wrapping that together into a very
speedy and you know cost-effective
package. It really could be you know a a
leap forward. I mean what he has said
about the models is that you know you
shouldn't have to pick which one you use
yourself for variety of different tasks.
I mean the famous question asking it how
many Rs there are in strawberry. You
know models have struggled with this
very basic thing whereas they're
extremely good at complicated math
problems or coding. So if if the you ask
it that question and the model doesn't
accidentally go off and spend five
minutes doing a very expensive token
consuming deep research project but just
knows itself that's a huge timesaver for
consumers in particular ones that are
less sophisticated that are just using
this as a chatbot but then also I think
what openai has been feeling you know in
its competition with Gemini and
anthropics claude is that it is
perceived to have slipped behind a
little bit on coding you know that is
the most tangible and financially
rewarding real world application of
these things so far. And I think what
we're going to see is open open AI
really strike back in that and say,
"Look, we can compete with Gemini. We
can compete with Claude and your
business should buy our enterprise
product, not just the consumer chatbot,
which is like really captured the public
imagination, but big companies um taking
out big hefty multi-year contracts
giving it sort of a lot more visibility
into the future and its revenue. And
that is if the coding aspect lands right
with this, I think that could be quite
transform transformational for its
business model.
>> That's a perfect lead in because the
information does have some news on that.
So uh they say GPT5 shines in coding uh
tasks. This is I think a brand new story
here on Friday.
>> Uh the information writes GPT5 is almost
here and we're hearing good things. The
early reaction from at least one person
who's used the unreleased version was
extremely positive. But I'm just going
to pause here. I always when I read this
one person who said it was really great,
I'm always like that's Sam Alman. Uh but
anyway,
they say GPT5 showed improved
performance in a number of domains,
including the hard sciences, completing
tasks for users on their browsers and
creative writing uh compared to previous
generations of models. But the most
notable improvement comes in software
engineering, an increasingly lucrative
application of LLMs. Uh, GPT5 is not
only better at academic and competitive
programming problems, but also at more
practical programming tasks that real
life engineers might handle, like making
changes in large complicated code bases
full of old old code. Uh, the nuance has
been something that OpenAI's models have
struggled with in the past and one and
is one reason why rival Anthropic has
been able to keep its lead with many app
developer customers. But as we've
reported the system still the
information open AAI is more than aware
of this issue and has been working in
recent months to improve the coding
capabilities of its models. I mean what
are the implications that if OpenAI is
let's say able to equal or pull ahead
with anthropic which we know is the
state-of-the-art encoding uh with this
new model.
>> Well they've pursued very different you
know you know subscription and revenue
models so far. Open AI has, you know,
it's almost the verb like to Google. You
you chat or you GPT the question if
especially if you're a young student.
Whereas Anthropic is clawed doesn't just
just doesn't have the same brand
recognition, but it has relentlessly
gone after what they call enterprise
customers like big businesses. Offers
them access to their technology through
APIs and has longer, bigger, and more
visible contracts. OpenAI has long been
jealous of this. It wants in on the
game. Uh it's also competing with
Microsoft. you know, it's its own
partner in offering these services
through, you know, the Azure platform,
but increasingly Google and Gemini,
which which trumps its its coding chops.
So, if OpenAI is able to prove that its
models are at least as good, if not much
better, then it can start to take back
some of this and it really does change
the the competitive landscape because I
think GPT is the, you know, undisputed
winner of like the consumer chatbot wars
so far. What it hasn't proved is that it
can make the transition to the business
and governmental world in the same way
that some of its competitors have. And
maybe they were forced to go down that
route because OpenAI was just sucking
all of the oxygen out of the room on the
app store.
Exactly. And and it's um it's
interesting that you mentioned that
OpenAI is trying to do this. It's sort
of like a friendmy partnership with
Microsoft at this point. I mean, of
course, Microsoft is going after those
enterprise use cases. is they're
probably coming up against Amazon
reselling Anthropic. Amazon's invested 8
billion uh in Anthropic. And you know,
the two companies really have to play
together if they're going to get this
much better with their next model to
really be able to make that enterprise
play. And that's that's really an open
question. And there was an interesting
story uh aspect of the Verge story,
which is does OpenAI declare uh AGI with
this new model? does it say it's reached
like human level intelligence or
artificial general intelligence and um
sort of begin what might be a break from
Microsoft. So this is from the verge
story. The declaration of AGI is
particularly important to open AAI
because achieving it will force
Microsoft to relinquish its rights to
open AAI revenue and its future AI
models. Microsoft and OpenAI have been
negotiating their part partnership
recently as OpenAI needs Microsoft's
approval to convert part of its business
to a for-profit company. It's unlikely
that GPT5 will meet the AGI threshold
that's reportedly been linked to
OpenAI's profits. Um, this is according
to information the companies have
defined artificial general intelligence
as a system generating 100 billion in
profits. So, let me throw this to you.
Do you think they're going to declare
AGI with GPT5? even if they do, what
happens to that partnership with
Microsoft?
>> Uh, I hate to make bold predictions, uh,
especially in tech because you can often
be spectacularly wrong, but I do not
think they're going to say GPT5
is anything approaching AGI, however you
choose to define it. There's also a lot
of nuance in its relationship with
Microsoft. Just for anyone that's not
familiar, OpenAI has for a while been
trying to restructure its company from
sort of a pure nonprofit pursu uh
pursuing AI for the benefit of all
humanity to create sort of a more uh an
arm beneath this entity that can
actually uh raise a lot more money in
particular debt from like more
traditional investors which it argues is
necessary for it to be able to build
these data centers and invest in people
and processing power to compete.
Microsoft essentially has the keys to
unlock that because of its early
investment in 2019 which it has then
increased tenfold and one of the key
clauses in this agreement is this AGI
clause once open AI hits AGI whatever
that is. Microsoft has essentially shut
out the deal with the the idea being
that you shouldn't hand over the most
powerful technology ever known to man to
a for for-profit company like Microsoft
because they can't be trusted with it.
Back in 2019, this probably sounded like
a good idea because who knew when we
were going to hit artificial journey
>> my how times have changed
>> or super intelligence and now you know
you have Musk and Alman out there saying
that they can feel the AGI on almost a
daily basis. However, Microsoft is a big
ugly competitive tech company that's
been around for 50 years and they're not
just going to let Sam Alman say I feel
like AGI has been reached. you know
firstly the board will have to you the
board of open AI will have to um form a
subcommittee of which Microsoft will
have a say to decide how to define it
and whether they've reached it and
secondly there's there's a financial um
aspect this has to be able to generate I
think and I may be wrong on this more
than 100 billion kind of in revenue a
year um
>> no profit profit a year
>> well profit exactly which you know
obviously um is not really being made by
any AI companies at the moment so
there's a lot
It's not like this you know by saying it
feels like AGI Microsoft are immediately
excluded. Uh their lawyers and their
executive chief executive Sachin Nadella
are much savvier than that. What I think
we are seeing though is is you know is a
path to a complete fracture in the
relationship between these two
companies. You said they were
friendmies. The Financial Times has done
a lot of reporting on this. I'm not even
sure about the FR start to that
relationship at the moment. they seem to
be in almost outright war uh briefing
against each other and really uh trying
to well they're basically trying to
secure the best deal for themselves and
their shareholders right but there is an
element as you said of mutually assured
destruction here micro open AI is
Microsoft's only real play in in AI at
the moment they've created their own
team internally led by Mustafa Sullyman
the co-founder of um DeepMind along with
with with Dennis Hassabis who's still at
Google um they really haven't had much
success building their own models and a
lot of what they're offering customers,
their big millions of enterprise
customers off their Azure platform is is
their own spin on OpenAI's underlying
technology and OpenAI for its part
relies almost entirely on Microsoft's
Azure cloud computing network to train
and run its models. It's a great
distribution um method and also is one
of his biggest financiers entitled to a
huge share of its its revenues. So these
two are sort of tied together. They both
jumped out of a plane and it kind of
remains to be seen who's the first to to
blink and pull the parachute um and how
far down the road they get that. We
wrote a story a few weeks ago that
Microsoft is, you know, willing to just
walk away if it doesn't get what it
needs from these restructurings and that
includes the language around AGI.
So, it's interesting you bring up uh
Mustafa because I had him on actually we
spoke on YouTube and for uh big
technologies newsletter and he was
describing this new medical diagnostic
orchestrator that Microsoft had built
and he said look as the models get
commoditized uh it's going to be the
orchestration that makes the most uh
value and it's like uh okay so if you
think like um it it sort of indicates a
uh lack of faith and OpenAI to continue
to have that lead um if you believe that
the models are going to get
commoditized. But look, Stephen, I'm
going to take the opposite side of of
yours on the AGI question. I think there
is a decent chance, I'm not saying it's
for sure going to happen. I think
there's a decent chance that they are
going to say uh it's it's AGI that GPT5
is AGI and and by they I mean open AI
and then just see what the f happens
because first of all I think Sam likes
chaos. Uh second of all just the way
that he's speaking about these this
thing is um is is if this isn't
something he would call AGI then I don't
know what it is. again. He says, "I sat
back in my chair and I was like, oh man,
it was a here it is moment." Well, I
would ask what is it in a here it is
moment. Um, I think they had this with
03. I don't know if you remember, but
Tyler Cowan uh he said 03 was AGI and my
conspiratoryminded
self said maybe somebody whispered in
his ear that he should just call it AGI.
uh and sort of like clear the way for
then someone like Sam Alman to say GPT5
is AGI and they were restrained and
waiting because you had a leading
academic who said okay well the previous
model fits that fits that pattern. I
don't know am I crazy?
>> No I mean you're not crazy. I mean, you
know, this is the race to get there and
and the the kind of, you know, the
scientific and monetary rewards if you
do make it are just astronomical and
these things are coming along very
quickly. It's just AGI. There's no
agreed definition. Even if you talk to
Sam and we do at the FT, he says, I
don't even really know what that means
anymore. Uh, but there's also a legal
definition as well. You know, he is the
chief executive of a company worth 300
billion. And when you say things, you
know, they can often end up in court. I
mean, they said Open AI said a lot of
things about what the company was and
its mission, which is now being used
against it by Elon Musk as he kind of
runs interference around the outsides of
this restructuring. You know, uh, for
people that don't know, he sued um,
OpenAI, saying it's abandoned its
nonprofit mission. Elon Musk was, of
course, one of the co-founders and one
of the biggest financiers at the start.
And at the moment, it looks like the
Delaware District Attorney and
California District Attorney have agreed
with him and have said, "Actually, yeah,
they they don't look a lot like a
nonprofit anymore." Um, if it like if he
comes out and says, "I think this is
AGI. This is how I'm defining it. Uh,
and this is how we're going to prove it.
Like this model is better than, you
know, most humans at almost all tasks
that we we give it." Maybe you could
make an argument for that.
And AGI is a word of particular
importance to open AAI as we explained
at length before because of the
restructuring. But a lot of people now
are talking about super intelligence
like you mentioned Mustafa before and
Demis. They're talking about building
systems that are capable of being far
better than the best human at, you know,
a a huge variety of tasks and can't just
kind of regurgitate and piece together
the sum of human knowledge that they've
harvested harvested from the internet,
but can actually come up with new
things, you know, new ways of building
rockets, new new ways of generating
power. Uh, and I think that's kind of
did you not feel recently that that's
where the goalpost has been shifted? ASI
from AGI.
>> Yeah, it's definitely the new jargon
term. Um, which has even made it easier
for a company like OpenAI to say, "Hey,
you know what? We're going to call this
AGI." And here's another quote from the
Theo Von podcast where Sam says, "GPT5
is the smartest thing. GPT5 is smarter
than us in almost every way, you know,
and yet we're here."
>> Dude, this is this is it. It's coming. I
I've I I mean I am again I'm not stating
this uh conclusively. I'm leaving myself
open to be wrong. I'll admit I'm wrong
if this is what happens. Um but if he
doesn't come out straight up and say
this is AGI, then there's going to be
lots of winks to it. I I think that
you're going to see a title wave of
commentary calling it that when this
comes out. I think it's a smarter tactic
to let other experts in the field,
scientists, rivals, Trump say it for you
and then you kind of move on from that
basis and say, "Hey, look, you know,
it's a subjective term. You know, this
is how we let's take it to our board and
see if they agree."
>> Wouldn't it be funny if Trump just came
out and truth social and said this is
AGI and Sam is like, "Well, see, look,
the president's saying it."
>> I mean, I wouldn't put it past any of
them. Sam has obviously
managed to get um very close to Donald
Trump um much to the uh much to the
sugarin of Elon Musk who initially held
his role as the first buddy. But you
know we've seen Alman in you know in the
wide you know in the oval office just
days after the inauguration announcing
this huge Stargate project you know um
he's appearing at the president's
fundraisers you know he's very very good
with politicians.
>> Exactly. All right. So, in order to keep
improving the models, these companies
are going to have to build larger and
larger data centers. And at the heart of
it is this $500 billion push to uh
create a massive data center project
with Oracle and SoftBank on on behalf of
OpenAI. It's called Stargate. Uh but
there is some news now that Stargate is
hitting some speed bumps and we're going
to cover that right after this. And
we're back here on Big Technology
Podcast with Stephen Morris. He's the
San Francisco bureau chief at the
Financial Times. Great having you on,
Stephen. Let's talk a little bit about
Stargate. So, this is from the Wall
Street Journal. The 500 billion dollar
effort unveiled at the White House to
supercharge the US's artificial
intelligence ambitions has struggled to
get off the ground and has sharply
scaled back its near-term plans. Six
months after Japanese billionaire
Masayoshi stun s stood shouldertosh
shoulder with Sam Alman and President
Trump to announce the Stargate project,
the newly formed company charged with
making it happen, has yet to complete a
single deal for a data center. Uh Sun
and Altman's OpenAI, which jointly leads
Stargate, have been at odds over crucial
terms of the partnership, including
where to build the sites, according to
people familiar with the with the
matter. While the company's pledged at a
Jan at the January announcement to
invest $100 billion immediately, the
project is now setting a more modest
goal of building a small data center by
the end of this year likely in Ohio. But
I think that small data center is like
still a gigawatt data center. So small
in the scale of what they promised, but
still fairly large. Uh what do you think
is happening here? I'm really struggling
to figure it out. So, I remember when I
first heard about Stargate. I was in
Davos, you the big, you know, the big
conference of the great and the good um
over in a small mountain town in
Switzerland. Uh, and this announcement
blindsided everyone. I actually just
recently met with the CFO of OpenAI a
few hours before and she gave nothing
away and everyone looked at these
astronomical numbers like half a
trillion dollars, you know, hundred
billion initially, you know, power on a
scale like almost unimaginable. And
since then, we at the Financial Times
have been trying to work out where this
money is coming from, where it's going
to be deployed. Uh and just as you can
see in the Wall Street Journal article
which is which you we've been writing
along the lines of as well it's it's not
clear that this is going well at all. Um
they haven't identified very many sites.
The money hasn't fully come in from the
huge Japanese investor Soft Bank.
Uh and you know I guess in any
conglomerate that's at the frontier of
artificial intelligence with multiple
different you know agendas it's very
hard to get everyone on the same page
like where do you even build these
things? is that the power infrastructure
there. Uh this is all complicated by the
tense re re uh restructuring
negotiations as well. But what is very
clear is that there hasn't been 100
billion immediately deployed as they
promised at that infamous White House.
Uh and they're now changing the
definition of it. Um, Stargate of course
is a reference to the I forget when it
came out, the the film that, you know,
enabled people to time travel and and
OpenAI called it Stargate because that
was the biggest human infrastructure
project ever in that fantasy book and
that's what they want this to be, but
they haven't actually managed to get it
off the ground yet. And that must be
somewhat concerning for both the company
but also its investors because you have
very very big competitors out there like
Meta, Microsoft, Google who have who are
snapping up land, you know, power
contracts. They have deep government
relations both on the state and federal
level in the US and around the world.
And you're trying to beat these guys at
their own game and they're not going to
be particularly happy about it.
So, I do want to um wink at something
that we're going to have on the show
next week. I mean, one of the
interesting things that you're starting
to hear, and I'm curious if you've heard
this, Stephen, around AI research um
labs is that scaling is back in vogue.
There was like a period of time where
these labs were like, "Yeah, we're
making these models bigger. We're adding
more compute, but we're getting
diminishing returns." Uh, I think maybe
with the advent of what Grock is doing
and what Mark Zuckerberg is pushing, um,
we're starting to there's starting to be
a wave of AI researchers believing in
this sort of bitter lesson which is just
that you don't really need new methods,
you just need more compute and that's
how important uh, this project is. I'm
curious, have you have you heard
anything like that?
>> Absolutely. We remember the other thing
that happened that week in January when
I was in Davos was Deepseek's release
which was built on the top of other open
source products and they basically said
you can be innovative and you don't have
to brute force this with millions of
GPUs all linked together on these vast
expensive training runs cuz remember one
of these training runs goes wrong it's
like a billion down the drain you know
and you can't necessarily afford to do
that too many times right that's why
Mark Zuckerberg instead of spending
billions on training runs gone decided
to spend it on talent.
>> Yeah. Well, I this extensively in your
previous editions, but I was chatting to
somebody at Google the other day and
they were like, "Look at who's moving."
It's not necessarily the most innovative
researchers coming up with like new ways
to do this. It's the people that know
how to manage these training runs to
make sure that they're successful, you
know. Uh, and that's part of the reason
why Google bought back a car a company
called Character because the the founder
of that, Noah, was able to marshall
their training runs of Gemini much more
effectively. meaning that they're faster
to market and waste less money. But just
to go back to that brute force thing
like the more chips, more chips, more
capacity, better model, that is
definitely coming back again. You
wouldn't have Meta trying to build a
data center the size of Manhattan. You
wouldn't have Anthropic talking about,
you know, loosening its uh loosening its
policies, shall we say, and taking money
from the Middle East. And you wouldn't
have Open AI trying to break away from
Microsoft and build its own gargantuan
data center structure around the world
if size in this didn't still matter.
Remember, it's not just the training of
these models. You got to run them
afterwards. You can't afford to have
them get slow or get slow or or um or
fail and go down because your customers
won't be happy.
>> And meanwhile, if you think about what's
happening with Stargate again, because
if this is the key, then Stargate is
crucial. Uh this is from Safarat, the
CEO of Oracle. Stargate isn't formed
yet. What? This Wall Street Journal
story. Ultman has used the Stargate name
on projects that aren't being financed
by the partnership between OpenAI and
SoftBank. OpenAI refers to a data center
in Abalene, Texas, and another it agreed
to in March to use in Denton, Texas as
part of Stargate, even though they are
being done without SoftBank. And
SoftBank, I'm pretty sure, owns this
Stargate name. It's all very confusing.
Meanwhile, OpenAI comes out with some
news. Uh it's going to expand its Oracle
data center and it's going to develop an
additional 4.5 gigabytes gawatts of the
Stargate data center. Um it announced on
Tuesday, the day after the Wall Street
Journal story and it looks like it's
going to attempt to build 10 gawatts of
new compute through Stargate. I think
that was already sort of baked in, but
they're sort of signaling through the
press that you know what uh there are no
speed bumps. Who who do you believe?
>> Uh well, I don't think there I don't I
think there are definitely huge speed
bumps like that they're having to go
over. That's not to say that they won't
make it, but they are finding this more
challenging and more difficult than they
had. Part of the reason they're able to
claim Stargate is off the ground is
because they changed the definition of
it. Previously, it had to involve
OpenAI, Oracle, the data center
provider, Soft Bank, the financia, and
MGX, which is a huge new sovereign
wealth, well, sovereign wealth linked
fund in the Middle East that was going
to provide a lot of money. Now, OpenAI
said any data center that we rent
because remember, they don't build it
themselves, that's Stargate, which is
obviously not what they said in January.
So they're kind of but you remember um
Saffraat's chief executive of Oracle.
This is a publicly listed company with
shareholders. If they're asked a
question by an analyst on a call, they
can't lie cuz they'll be sued. So if
Stargate doesn't exist, she has to say
Stargate is not formed yet because
otherwise she'll open herself personally
but also the company up to all kinds of
lawsuits. So you see kind of uh you know
the difference, you know, between being
a private Silicon Valley tech company
and a listed one. uh you often get
closer to the truth when someone is not
put on the stand, but when somebody is
asked something, you know, material
information in a public context, you
can't just say, "Oh, well, but we're
doing all this other stuff and we're
just going to kind of change the
definition." You're like, "No, it
doesn't exist yet." Which is somewhat
concerning,
>> right?
>> I mean, part of this is if you look at
look at what they're doing at OpenAI, I
mean, this is a company that kind of
exploded into the public imagination in
2022,
you often lose track of the ambition.
You know, they're trying to build a
device that they won't talk about with
Johnny IV that's not a phone and it's
not a a headset or glasses. They're
building their own data centers. You
know, they're building variety of
models, consumer apps, a browser. They
want to get into shopping. They want to
get into agentic commerce online. You
know, they they have huge lobbying
apparatus, you know, in in Washington
and around the world to try and
influence policy. Um, and I don't even
know how Sam Alman arranges his day to
try and keep all of this in his head.
Um, but it does feel to me, and if you
speak to people that, you know, are
close to him and advise him, you know,
maybe they're doing too much too soon. I
mean, I know tech is all like move fast
and break stuff or, you know, your
established monopolistic rivals like
Google and Microsoft and Meta will come
in and sweep the board, but it does kind
of feel like Open AI, you know, is
trying to keep a lot of balls in the air
at the moment.
>> Ansam has a new baby and Sam has found
the time to uh go on comedy podcast. The
joke I made in our Discord today was
like people like, "How's he going on
Theo?" It's like well AGI is doing his
work so he can spend the time doing
things he loves like comedy podcast but
but a company that uh will call
something Stargate when Stargate is not
formed yet I think they might call uh
AGI or their model AGI when uh maybe it
doesn't meet the technical definition
either but um you know as these projects
get built up we're going to start to see
this massive tax on the grid and there
was some great reporting in the FT this
week about what AI is doing to energy
cost? Here's the headline. AI uh demand
drives up electricity supply cost in the
largest US market to record high. Uh the
cost of providing electricity in
America's largest power market will hit
a record high due to soaring demand from
artificial intelligence data centers and
delays in building new power plants,
raising energy prices for consumers. All
right, this is going to get a bit wonky.
I'll just read this paragraph and turn
it over to you, Stephen. grid operator
PJM, which covers 13 states in
Washington DC, said Tuesday it produced
an energy supplies for $329.17
cents per megawatt day, a 22% increase
compared with the previous year. The
organization will pay power producers
16.1 billion to meet its energy needs
from June 2, 2026 to May 2027, a 10%
increase uh compared with the previous
year. It expects a 1 to 5% rise uh for
customers and their energy bills
depending depending on how utility
utilities and states passed on costs. Uh
wow. So this is this is uh now really
starting to hit the size where it's
having a real impact on energy bills. Uh
doubledigit pricing increases. Um,
energy, it seems to me, the ability to
produce it and deliver it efficiently is
going to be a major major source of
competitive advantage for whichever
country figures it out. Absolutely.
That's why you're seeing um companies
like Microsoft and Google uh bring old
nuclear power plants online and talk and
strike deals with like these mini fusion
reactor companies of which Sam Alman
used to be a major owner of one as well.
There is just quite simply not enough
power that exists in the United States
or around the world or anywhere really
apart from China to to drive these data
center ambitions. It just doesn't exist.
And this is all linked to top level
government policy. Donald Trump made a
speech earlier this week about you know
throwing the weight of the US federal
government behind AI infrastructure.
But just a few weeks before he kind of
gutted the American renewable energy
industry, in particular solar and wind
by taking away various federal credits.
This for to a large part is how China is
going to power it's the future of data
centers and AI with solar energy. Um in
the US we're actually seeing it take a
bit of a step back. Um there's only so
many gas turbines Elon Musk can put at
his data center in Memphis to power the
thing. what he really needs is a
hydroelectric dam or a vast field of um
solar panels or offshore wind, which is
why he's become so agitated with Donald
Trump and the big beautiful bill. Not
only did it almost destroy Tesla's
business model overnight, um it also
kind of gutted the ability of the US to
compete with China on renewable energy,
at least in terms of the investment and
deployment. So, it doesn't surprise me
at all that consumers are being hit in
the pocket due to the increase in demand
for data center power. And it's a real
open question about how the hell you're
going to power all of this stuff. In
particular, you know, in in states that
are really bidding for this for these to
have these data centers built to create
jobs and revenue like Ohio and
Pennsylvania and Arizona and Texas.
>> Isn't it all just going to end up being
nuclear power? I mean, that's where I
see it going.
It takes a long time to build a nuclear
power station and get it online safely.
And while a lot of people might be pro-
nuclear power, I'm not sure how many
people are pro living next to nuclear
power. So you've got kind of the nimi
not in my backyard um coming in. I mean,
we've, you know, you've had nuclear
disasters in very advanced companies
with with good sex track safety records
like Japan very recently, and I think
memories are still strong of that. But I
do think there's a big place for the
next generation of nuclear power in
playing this because I mean, you know,
the coal and oil and gas just won't last
forever.
>> It's so funny you mentioned NIMBI
because I'm reading this Reuters report
about the president, President Trump's
uh plan to expedite AI development and
um lift some export controls and make
sure that the data centers can work. And
this pray the president's going full
abundance. This is from the story. The
plan calls for fast-tracking uh the
construction of data centers by loosen
loosening environmental regulations and
utilizing federal land to expedite the
development of the projects including
any power supplies. Uh it looks like I
mean it's uh I'm conflicted about this.
I'll be honest. I mean I've heard from
AI lab leaders who are happy about the
fact that they're going to have the
energy to be able to produce this. Um,
on the other hand, I'm not excited about
federal land being used, uh, and, uh,
being used to do this. That's, you know,
I mean, call me an idealist, but that's
the people's land. And, um, the idea
that you're going to fast track and, you
know, potentially move. I mean, it's
true, the abundance guys, the
Republicans, they all have a point that
like it's too hard to build in the US.
Uh but if you like sort of disregard the
Clean Water Act, maybe that's too strong
of a word, but if you blow past it, um I
am concerned of what the consequences
are going to be there.
>> Yeah. To return to the ethos of drill,
baby drill, isn't it? You know, just get
these products, build, you know, get
these new sources online, build as much
as possible. I guess the argument for
people that believe in im abundance and
we're just super intelligence is just
around the corner is these technologies
will help humanity find ways to capture
carbon from the atmosphere or build
build and use things more efficiently.
Uh and that as we you know you we become
more accustomed to running these data
centers you you can use them more
efficiently over time. But certainly the
mass appropriation of of federal land,
opening up, you disregarding any
environmental rules, um doesn't seem um
not as an American or a voter, but
doesn't seem like the best public policy
to me. Ilas Discover, one of the former
chief scientists of Open AI, now the guy
who's running safe super intelligence.
Um, he's had this vision that like the
world is going to be wallpapered with
data centers as the scaling laws
continue to show results. And I look at
some of these pictures of these data
centers and I'm just like, oh my
goodness. Uh, this is the vision being
lived out.
>> Yeah. Well, was that the ability to
build a data center? You know, Elon Musk
has shown you can do it in months, not
years. Uh he's also shown a willingness
to disregard local planning laws and
environmental laws uh which Memphis
seems only too keen to help him do in
order to make sure that he builds there
and not anywhere else. But it's it's a
race and you look at uh you know
countries you know jurisdictions where
it's harder to build like from my
personal experience the UK and the EU.
If you take 10 years to build something,
you know, Elon Musk is building in three
months, China is building in six, and
Microsoft is building in one, there is
going to be a little bit of a gap,
especially if you want your sovereign AI
and you want your, you know, your
citizens data stored stored and
processed locally. It is a the concern
in the other direction is that Europe
will just fall so far behind these other
countries. It won't have a mean an AI
industry that's meaningful in any sense,
>> which may already case. Yeah,
unfortunately it does seem like it's
trending that way.
>> So, I do want to talk about this bake
off between Google and OpenAI on the
International Math Olympiad. There's
kind of this funny story where like both
of these companies said that they had
achieved gold gold medals in the
International Math Olympiad competition,
but like OpenAI didn't officially uh uh
participate. So, it announced first and
then Google officially participated. It
announced second, but it has like the
actual uh gold medal status because it
was part of the competition. This is
from the New York Times. This was the
first time a machine uh which solved
five of six problems at the 2025
competition reached this level of
success. They're talking about the
Google machine. The news is another sign
that leading companies are continuing to
improve their AI systems in areas like
math, science, and computer coding. And
I just want to make sure I get this
right. This is a large language model.
This is a chatbot uh with a reasoning
system that is getting gold on the
international uh math olympiad, not a
purpose-built AI system that is used for
solving these math problems. So the idea
that you could have a chatbot go into
the math math Olympiad and win gold once
and perhaps twice for the first time.
Uh, I think, you know, we we talk often
about how benchmarks are are unreliable
and all that stuff. Uh, but I think this
is a pretty good indication that this
stuff continues to make progress.
>> Yeah, I mean, it's a spectacular
achievement. Um, it's quite funny after,
you know, I moved here just over 18
months ago. Um, so I'm getting to know
how Silicon Valley works and how the
sausage are made and who competes with
who, who who hates whom. And OpenAI and
Google have a longunning battle. um
trying to release products uh a few days
ahead of each other to kind of show the
other up. I mean it happens frequently
around Google's IO event which was a few
months ago and so Google had followed
all the right procedures. Deepmind it it
entered its model. it was in controlled
circumstances and you know I obviously
was pretty confident it was going to win
a gold medal and it was going to be good
PR and then you have open AAI like using
the same system not officially entering
not subjecting itself to the same type
of controls and scrutiny and front
running Google's announcement by 3 days
uh and again like kind of soaking up all
of the good media uh as a result of that
now this little sort of
behind-the-scenes competitive doesn't
take away from the achievement that
either either of these have
And yeah, maybe they run GPT5 through
the mass Olympia. It'll do even better.
>> Yeah, maybe they could go six or six at
this time and and enter officially. But
I just thought it was worth bringing up
because it does show that um all these
things that we thought it's crazy,
right? This is a predict the next word
engine with like a little bit of new
techniques applied to allow it to reason
and go step by step and it's winning the
gold in the math Olympiad. It's totally
crazy. And you think about the
applications uh that it could be um it
could be put into or used for with this
type of math skill. uh we're at this
point where companies are all trying to
figure out like is there a enterprise
use case for AI and I think if it's able
to do abstract math it's able to get
these problems right you could start to
see it having a real impact in
industries like finance and maybe even
like the sciences
>> absolutely well you mentioned uh Mustafa
Sullyman's uh AI diagnostic tool I mean
we both interviewed him about that a few
weeks ago and what they did is they they
took the various models cuz they used
OpenAI actually performed best but they
had you know a few others from Google
and Anthropic too. What they they did is
they almost created like a team of
doctors from reasoning models that would
talk to each other and question each
other and make them go back to the
source material. And what they were able
to do is take the most complicated sort
of doc like house level, you know, the
TV show house level weird medical a
ailments that affect one person every 6
years and they were able to diagnose
them, you know, at a rate like four
times more successfully and much faster
and much cheaper with fewer tests than
human doctors. So we're starting to see
very real real world use cases from this
you know across the sciences across
across mathematics and I I used to be
the banking editor for the FT in London
covering you know financial services
they are extremely interested in this
technology and like what it could do uh
in terms of turbocharging their returns
and if we're going to you look at the
dystopian side a little bit more how
they could cut their headcount and
increase their margins. So I want to
talk very briefly about a very
interesting part of this diagnostic
orchestrator. So it actually did improve
performance. I'm sure you caught this.
It improved performance um by 4x over
doctors who didn't have like access to
Google and um and I guess their
colleagues. But when you looked at the
fine print, this orchestration system um
helped performed not Forex better than
traditional LLMs, but like a few
percentage points better than
traditional LLMs and actually not that
much better than reasoning systems. And
it was like on one hand cool aka AI is
able to do this much better than doctors
but on the other hand I think another if
you wanted to take a contrarian look at
what was going on. It's it was that the
very basic level of AI is itself three
times better than um than your average
doctor uh who's given some constraints
which is crazy. Yeah, I felt it was a
bit unfair to test doctors who weren't
allowed to talk to their colleagues,
refer to medical, search online, you
know, it you're kind of okay, you beat a
human with a lot of the, you know, the
most impressive, you know, bits about,
you know, modern medicine, i.e., you
know, the the the diagnostic process and
putting in their colleagues. But you
know what? Microsoft uh Microsoft um you
are not going to you are not going to
like put out a product that doesn't have
impressive results, are they?
No, I don't think so. All right, let's
let's breeze through a couple of these
earnings reports. We do have the San
Francisco bureau chief of the Financial
Times here, so I feel like we should
make use of your expertise as um we're
starting to see some big tech earnings
come in. So, I'll give you one question
each on Alphabet and Tesla and then I
want to get to this memo that Sonia
Andella wrote about layoffs at Microsoft
and then we'll get out of here. So,
first of all, Alphabet, it's amazing.
Despite the rise of generative AI, this
company is continuing to crush. We will
have, by the way, their head of search
and information and knowledge coming on
the show in a couple weeks. So, folks,
stay tuned for that. But here's the
numbers uh from your story. Google's
core search and advertising business
grew 12%. Uh beating expectations for a
9% rise. So even as as generative AI
continues to take share, you would
imagine in search, uh everything's going
up and Google's figuring it out. And not
only are they uh growing, they are
growing double digits and they're
beating expectations. What is happening
there? It's very impressive.
>> Well, I think the reports of the demise
of Google uh have been greatly
exaggerated. uh they had a bit of a
wobble in 2023 and 2024, but they do
seem to be very much back in the game. I
mean, their growth is impressive every
quarter. It's doubledigit growth on you
tens of billions of revenue. I mean, for
most other companies in this world,
these numbers can only be dreamed of.
But what they are showing is that the
way that they've integrated AI into
search, whether it's the overviews, the
bullet points at the top of your results
or the AI mode which you can click on
and then it just behaves like GPT,
Gemini or or Claude, it's actually
boosting engagement. People are
searching more um which you know the
more people search the more ads that
that Google can actually show and the
more money they can earn from that. So
that's really what we're suing what
we're seeing. Google's argument has long
been, yeah, we're going to lose some
traffic to to GPT, but the pie overall
is going to grow. So maybe we don't have
91% of global search queries anymore.
Maybe we have 84%. But if the actual
overall pie of queries increases,
there's actually still more lucrative to
them. Now, whilst the results are very
impressive, there's a huge, you know,
there are huge clouds on the horizon for
Google. But we're waiting for the
results of the the search antitrust
remedies. Uh which could see Google have
to do several important things. It could
have to sell its Chrome browser, which
I'm using right now, to a rival. We
could see a hated rival like Perplexity
or Open AAI buy that and have one of the
best distribution methods for their AI
technology in the world. They're going
to have to share more data with rivals.
They're going to lose the right to be uh
Apple's exclusive search engine provider
on on Safari across its devices.
um and they and they could see their
business hamstrung in a variety of ways.
So whilst the results are very good for
Google, they come with a a big asterisk
on the fact that you know even the Trump
antitrust administrators are still going
after them and want to see them broken
up. So I wouldn't say that's why we saw
the shares not jump 10% but just a
couple of percent cuz everyone's waiting
to see how this antitrust stuff lands on
them.
>> I'll just make one snarky comment. Uh it
it's perhaps easier to make money when
you just ingest the entire web and the
entire experience happens on your
platform versus having to send people to
the pesky websites with the information.
>> Exactly.
>> Okay, let's talk about Tesla. Um Tesla
had a very bad earnings report. We knew
this was going to happen. Um, but the
news that I think the FT picked up on
and was to me the right thing to look at
was the outlook. And the outlook is bad.
Um, because this big beautiful bill has
cut off EV credits and you would get a
$7,500 credit to buy EVs in the US. Not
only that, the biggest source of um
profit for Tesla has been u these
regulatory credits. So because they
produce EVs, companies with mandates to
produce EVs that don't meet those
standards are able to buy credits from
Tesla and effectively, you know, wink
wink, meet the standards. Uh and Tesla
and that that is if if not going away,
it is uh vastly diminished. They say
this is your story, the revenue from the
credits almost haved uh to 439 million
in the quarter from the year before.
Last year, the company made 2.8 billion
from these sales. And these, of course,
are straight profit. So, dark times
ahead for Tesla.
>> Very dark times. I mean, Tesla
was worth 1.54 trillion on the 17th of
December. It's now worth around 900. So,
we're talking about, you know, more than
half a trillion of market cap wiped out.
It rose to a peak because people were
optimistic Musk's relationship with
Trump would allow Tesla well allow Musk
to help shape policy maybe soften
Trump's opposition to electric vehicles.
Uh I don't know about you, we had a
sweep stake in the office how long it
would take Trump and Musk to fall out. I
was vastly over optimistic at 6 months.
A few of my colleagues said 2, three,
four. It ended up being four and a half.
And now we are really seeing the
hit the fan with regards to, you know,
Trump, the Republicans, and renewable
energy and electric vehicles. They do
not like them. They listen to the other
lobbies far more than them. And it's
hard to actually imagine a worse set of
policies for Tesla coming out of the big
beautiful bill than what emerged. As you
said, tax credits gone. It Tesla would
have actually made a loss in the first
quarter if it had not been for selling
regulatory credits. And what Trump
administration has done is they haven't
got rid of these emission trading
systems. They've just said if you don't
abide by them, these emission standards,
the fine for non-compliance is zero. So
if you're if the fine is zero, why would
you bother complying? So Tesla, the
market is essentially going to dry up
whilst the system technically still
stays in place. So it's quite a cunning
way of attacking it without actually
having to go to Congress and change the
rules. And Musk sounded def I don't
know. He's bounced back from a lot
before, but he sounded different on the
Tesla earnings call. They were there was
a lack of energy. He was very resigned.
He said, "We're going to have some rough
quarters ahead." And even when he's
talking about building millions of
humanoid AI powered robots or unleashing
a fleet of billions of robo taxis around
the world, his heart clearly wasn't in
it. This is, you know, and I know Tesla
and Musk himself has a lot of fans. to
read to my right story which might
suggest this isn't the greatest company
in the world. They get like a torrent of
online abuse from the Tesla out there
but um
>> as you deserve
>> as I deserve. Um especially you know
Tesla boomer or whatever she's called.
Um but we were right to point out that
there were there were these you know
just like Google there are these big
clouds on the horizon. It's just this
seems more existential to Tesla cuz
remember the way you get to armies of
humanoid robots and robo taxis is by
actually making money. And you make
money by selling cars and selling
credits. Musk has alienated a lot of his
traditional, you know, uh, client base
in Europe and and and America and around
the world by championing these
right-wing causes and appearing on
chainsaws hacking the federal appearing
with chainsaws at Doge hacking the
federal government apart. So, it'll be
really interesting to see what they do.
I mean the board has a big decision to
make about Musk and his leadership of
Tesla. I mean the company it it is him.
You invest in it on optimism that he
will position this company best from the
future. But there's no denying that
through his politics um and his fallout
with Trump, he's become a bit of a
liability to the company.
That is true, but I just couldn't see
them going in any other direction.
Especially because Elon has proven time
and again that when his back is against
the wall, he finds a way to figure it
out. Although his back is really against
the wall on this one. We reported that
far from looking for a new CEO, uh the
board is actually looking at giving him
a new pay package cuz you remember most
most of his pay got cancelled by a
Delaware court. um leaving him with only
13% of uh the company in as opposed to
about 20. And he said something quite
interesting um uh on the earnings call
when he was asked by an analyst, do you
feel comfortable developing AI and these
robots with only 13% control? And he
said that's a major concern for me. I've
got so little control I can easily be
ousted by activist shareholders after
built built having built this army of
humanoid robots. my Tesla over my
control over Tesla should be enough to
ensure that it goes in a good direction
but not so much control that I can't be
thrown out if I go crazy were his words.
Now obviously going crazy has been a
great strategy for Musk in the past
doing things you know successfully that
others said were impossible but that's
actually that's a warning to the board.
He's like, "Give me more shares. Give me
more control. Or maybe I leave and focus
my whole attention on X and X AI and
SpaceX and and then where does that
leave Tesla?"
>> Yeah. I would be in a in a terrible
place. I would I would imagine because
the valuation is is not based off of the
car business. It's based off of
everything that might come next. All
right. Let's end with this story which I
found interesting. Satya Satya Nadella
felt it important to write Microsoft
employees about the layoffs, the morale,
the culture and the fact that this
company is worth three oh almost 4
trillion 3.84 trillion uh and and is
laying people off which is like truly um
I'll just say it's crazy. Here it is
from GeekWire in a companywide memo.
Nadella acknowledged that uh what he
called the uncertainty and seeping in
congruence in congruence of Microsoft
situation even with its recent job cuts
he wrote is thriving by every objective
measure with strong performance rapid
cap rapid capital investments and
relatively unchanged overall headcount
due to ongoing hiring. Um, Nadella
pointed out that some of the talent and
expertise in our industry and at
Microsoft is being recognized and
rewarded at levels never seen before.
And yet, at the same time, we've
undergone layoffs. And here is to me uh
the most interesting paragraph. This is
the enigma of success in an industry
that has no franchise value. Progress
isn't linear. It's dynamic, sometimes
dissonant, and always demanding. But
it's also a new opportunity for us to
shape, lead through, and have greater
impact than ever before. And yet, as I
read Sid Yandela's words, I honestly
cannot tell you why he felt the need to
lay off uh 10,000 plus people in the
recent months. What is happening here?
>> Well, Nadella is, you know, a very savvy
man. And I mean he what he what he did
at Microsoft was essentially take it out
of its various failed consumer
enterprises and really refocus it on
enterprises i.e corporations and
businesses and data centers Azure and
that's worked out extremely well for him
but he has cut his way to success for
out of the consumer business giving him
the capacity uh to invest in the other
side. What they're seeing now is that
it's they're going to be spending a lot
more money. They like all the other you
know um tech companies are spending tens
if not you know soon to be more than a
hundred billion on infrastructure every
year. They also have shareholders to
appease who want dividends who want to
see the share price continue to go up
and you got to make the sums add up. So
you you have to take some of it out. So
he's gambling that there are some nonAI
native people in the company who who can
be replaced either by AI systems
themselves or you can bring in cheaper
younger people that are better able to
infuse this technology through the
company and and shake it out of its own
ways. I do think headcount at Microsoft
has actually stayed like roughly level.
So whilst you've had a lot of these
layoffs, they've clearly been hiring a
lot of people as well. I think Mustafa
Sullyman now has six or seven thousand
people reporting to him and just this
week I reported that they poached
another 23 from DeepMind. You know,
these people, as you well know, do not
come cheap, right? You know, the top at
the top end, they're getting one, 200,
300 million. At the bottom end, they're
still incredibly well compensated. And
it has to come from somewhere. But by
sending a memo and saying it's weighing
heavily, that tells you another story
about morale inside the company. You
know, if you're doing, you know, 13,000
people is a lot. you know, especially
in, you know, you know, in a in a
smallish place like Seattle, you know,
to send something like this to try and
put a more human face on it tells you
that people in Microsoft are not happy.
>> Absolutely. And I think a lot of people
are pointing to a couple things. First,
people, it seems like the games division
of Microsoft has taken a massive hit,
probably uh disproportionate. I guess if
you're going to invest somewhere, uh I
would invest in AI over games. Uh
second, there's this like thing that
keeps popping up in my mentions that
it's not Microsoft
um you know cutting staff. It's
basically reallocating its budgets and
offshoring. Um
do you what do you think about the
offshoring idea that they're basically
just hiring the same people uh just in
countries with lowerc cost labor?
>> Absolutely that's happening. I mean you
would there I can't remember I read a
stat the other day I may be wrong that
there have been 70 or 75,000
layoffs in US tech recently and those
jobs haven't disappeared some of them
have been replaced by AI but a lot of
them have moved to lowerc cost
jurisdictions abroad there's also been a
very big trend at big tech companies to
prefer contractors over full-time staff
contractors don't get free massages they
don't necessarily get the same levels of
health care uh and whilst compared to
Europe where I'm
There are basically no employee
protections out here in the states.
There are more if you're a full-time
employee like you're owed redundancy.
Whereas if you're a contractor working
for Tech Mahindra or someone like that,
you know, based remotely or out in India
or or or Malaysia, you are far far less
of a burden on the company if ever
there's a slowdown and they need to cut
costs. And you're also, you know, far
more flexible in terms of moving, you
know, onto different pro projects. So, I
feel I feel bad for all the people that
have lost their jobs on Microsoft, but
we should emphasize it's not just them.
This is part of a broader trend across,
you know, the technology and wider
industries. Uh, and I think we should be
bracing for even more of this as we
start to see people trust AI to do jobs
that humans were relied on for, you
know, for for long periods of the past.
>> Yeah, I I think you're right, folks. Be
careful those massages. Uh, they come
with a a hidden cost that you may not be
fully appreciating at the time. though
enjoy them. Enjoy the massage. Don't uh
don't feel bad as it's happening. Uh
because gosh, that's a very nice perk.
So, uh Steven Morris, thank you for
joining us. Where can people find your
work and that of your team? You can find
us. Yeah. Uh I think one of the FT is
one of the most expensive newspap
newspaper subscriptions in the world,
but we're definitely worth it. Find us
on our website, mainly on our app, uh
and occasionally posting on social media
as well.
>> All right. Well, thank you, Stephen, for
joining. Uh, thank you everybody for
listening and watching. We will be back
on Wednesday with uh, I think what's
going to be the best interview of the
year here on Big Technology Podcast. So,
we hope you stay tuned and we'll see you
next time on Big Technology Podcast.