0:02

This is Kota Radio, episode 571 for May 21st, 2024. Hey

0:15

friend, welcome in to Jupiter Broadcasting's weekly

0:17

talk show. Taking a pragmatic look at

0:19

the art and the business, the software

0:21

development and the world of technology. My

0:24

name is Chris and over there charging his energy

0:26

weapon, also known as a Buma. It's

0:29

our host, Mr. Dominick. Hello, Mike. Miss

0:31

already for you, API? You're

0:35

really getting ready and hunkered down over there. I

0:37

am. I feel like I

0:40

am deluged by AI

0:43

powered, incompetent robots. I

0:46

mean, it has been two weeks deep

0:49

of back to back AI announcements

0:51

from Google and OpenAI. And

0:54

Microsoft is going on right now. I think

0:56

Sam Altman's up on the Microsoft stage right

0:59

now as we record at Microsoft Build. We're

1:02

going to have to get into this. You know, I think it's not

1:04

good for the show, but I think it is what it is. We're

1:06

going to have to talk about this today. Looking

1:08

back at all of these, the Google

1:11

I.O. event seems like the sleepiest low

1:13

energy of them all that nobody's talking

1:15

about the most. It

1:17

just seems like OpenAI's event. Everybody's still talking

1:19

about it even today. Microsoft

1:21

Build, there's a bunch of hardware announcements. They're shipping

1:23

features in Windows. There's people going to be talking

1:25

about it for weeks. Google

1:28

I.O. came and went. I don't

1:30

know. I mean, you're getting Google photo search better. You know,

1:32

you're going to have Gemini and more things. I don't

1:35

know. It's not clear to me what the takeaway is even

1:37

for developers from Google I.O. It really

1:40

seems strange. I was expecting. I

1:44

shouldn't say expecting. I was a

1:46

little disappointed that it felt

1:48

like it was a show mainly for Wall Street,

1:50

right? To say we did not get, you know,

1:53

jumped by OpenAI in a dark alley and

1:55

not a whole lot for devs. Like,

1:57

yeah, I was struggling this morning.

2:00

as I was going through the dock. There's

2:03

really hand-away-vy stuff on AI implementations

2:05

on Android that you can maybe

2:07

hook into, but there's nothing

2:09

clear. Gemini is – I actually pay for their

2:11

Gemini service because I'm kind of doing it for

2:13

the show. I pay for OpenAI,

2:15

I pay for Gemini, and

2:18

I've tried some of the on-system ones like Llama. I

2:21

can't say that

2:23

it's bad. I don't

2:26

know. I almost feel like they're in

2:28

a strategy tax where it's really so

2:30

tied into Google services. I haven't

2:32

found the killer use case for Gemini yet.

2:35

I agree with your take that it was more of

2:37

a presentation for Wall Street and other businesses than it

2:39

was for developers or users. I

2:42

just wonder, okay, so watching what

2:44

Microsoft has talked about OpenAI, what

2:46

Google has talked about, I've been

2:49

reflecting on this interview I watched

2:51

with NYU professor Gary Marcus. He's

2:53

a big AI skeptic. It's

2:55

almost to a parody. In

2:57

an interview with CNBC, which I'll link in the

2:59

show notes, he makes the claim that in

3:01

the last year in change, there's been

3:04

$50 billion invested in, quote-unquote,

3:06

AI. So far, there

3:08

seems to be around $3 billion in

3:10

revenue on the books. So $50 billion

3:13

invested, $3 billion in revenue. What

3:16

doesn't seem to compute or add up to me

3:18

is we already seem to be

3:20

– before we've even really had material products

3:23

actually penetrate the market, it's

3:25

already a race to the bottom. Alibaba

3:27

just announced they're slashing their fees up to

3:29

97%. Google's going to roll out AI

3:32

answers and generation stuff in Google search for

3:35

free. OpenAI announced that the

3:37

free accounts get more good stuff. They're keeping

3:39

the subscription, but the free accounts get more

3:41

good stuff. We see the Microsoft news coming

3:43

today that we'll talk more about. It

3:46

seems like it's already a race to the bottom by the

3:48

biggest companies that can just dump billions of dollars into this.

3:51

Already, it feels like the beginning of this. I'm already not

3:53

seeing where there's room for the small guy, for

3:55

the small business, for the small developer. I don't

3:58

know. Do you feel like they're Do you feel like looking at it

4:00

where you're at now, after these last couple of

4:02

weeks and where Alice kind of fits in, do you think the

4:05

situation is better or worse for say, Alice

4:08

and you? Alice in particular,

4:10

it's worse, right? You

4:12

know, we did, we do have

4:14

a chat GPT integration. But

4:17

a big fear that I have is, I don't

4:19

know if you know this, Chris, people don't

4:21

like to pay a lot for things from

4:23

small vendors, generally, especially if they perceive it as

4:25

packaged software. So

4:29

I'm really concerned that

4:31

that basically nominal fee

4:33

I pay OpenAI for the couple

4:35

of customers that

4:37

actually use the OpenAI stuff is

4:39

going to skyrocket when they decide that they

4:41

can't keep earning money. You put

4:44

in a good stat in our chat earlier, 50 billion

4:46

spent, 3 billion made. I mean, the

4:48

numbers are not pretty at

4:51

all. If it's true, if that number is legit, yeah,

4:53

that's pretty bad. You

4:55

know, it's weird because Alice in

4:57

particular is basically a, we're

5:00

just being used a lot for report automation

5:02

and data migrations for folks who

5:04

have legacy needs, right and

5:06

proprietary systems they may have had built

5:08

years ago. So that's like a weird

5:10

niche that if we were a very

5:13

small company, you know, based

5:15

in Florida, New Jersey would not

5:17

be sustainable, right? Just wouldn't scale. Yeah.

5:19

And actually doing the YC application kind of made me

5:22

say, this is not going to be like a SaaS

5:24

product that makes sense because

5:26

nobody who signs up for it is

5:28

able to just use it as the out of

5:30

the box. We have to do like a consulting

5:32

customization. And it makes

5:35

sense, right? If you have your custom ERP system

5:37

that was written, you know, 10 years ago, well,

5:39

there is no public API for that. We

5:42

have to do the work. We have to get the

5:44

data. We have to sometimes sync the data back. I

5:46

mean, this is maybe too much specifically about Alice. I'll

5:49

put you this way. I put a lot

5:51

of energy into the open AI chat GPT

5:53

integration and I wish I had done something

5:55

else because it

5:57

did not sell. Got a lot of clicks. of

6:00

meetings. But what it turned out

6:02

in practical terms, again, the

6:04

clients for Alice are multi-generational businesses.

6:09

They're boring, right? They're not boring, not

6:11

in a bad way, but they're like

6:14

construction companies. They're produce companies.

6:17

They're multi-generational farms, things

6:19

like that. Companies who

6:21

repair jet engines using

6:23

old-fashioned ERP systems. These

6:26

are not folks who, one,

6:28

want their data to be randomly on open

6:30

AI servers. And two, they have

6:34

very specific, very bespoke needs

6:37

that is frankly why they're

6:39

reaching out to an ISV. Just

6:43

looking back at announcements that people are still talking about

6:45

and the ones that people have completely or have forgotten

6:48

about, we're still seeing

6:50

ripples of information come out of

6:52

the meta-quest Horizon OS announcement where

6:54

they're opening up the Quest devices.

6:56

And when you and I first saw that

6:59

news, we said, well, this is going to make the Quest

7:01

the obvious choice for any kind

7:03

of enterprise application that needs VR or

7:05

AR. And maybe it's not the Quest

7:07

3. Maybe it's like two or three

7:09

iterations from now. But when you open

7:11

up the platform, you allow additional app

7:13

stores and sideloading applications as a matter

7:15

of policy and

7:17

hardware choice, that just

7:19

tends to work best in the enterprise.

7:21

But then you caught this story too

7:23

that Microsoft has announced a preview of

7:26

an API that basically seems

7:29

like a way to bring Windows applications

7:31

into the Quest headset. Yeah.

7:34

Yeah. I saw this earlier today. I

7:36

just put it in the docs. Wow,

7:38

Chris, excellent eye. That's the

7:40

beauty of real-time document sharing, right?

7:44

Yeah. I

7:46

should do a little disclosure here.

7:48

I have often jumped early on

7:50

Microsoft SDKs. Looking at

7:53

you, Metro, I want my $40,000 back. And Microsoft Bot

7:55

Framework, I'm going to go back and

8:00

I just got to stop doing this. But

8:03

this time will be different somehow

8:06

because I think the power of the

8:08

Microsoft development environment, which I know we're

8:10

going to get hate mail, is really

8:12

good. I'm sorry. It just is. It's

8:15

just phenomenal. I

8:17

mean, I have to agree. I mean, look what

8:19

they've done. Look at the length they've gone to with VS Code

8:21

and GitHub alone just to try to make it so. Just

8:24

say nothing for the actual applications, right? Right,

8:27

right. I mean granted, I

8:29

feel your pain if you're supporting like an

8:31

ancient ASP app. I get you. I will

8:34

buy you a beer, right? Or some

8:37

chamomile tea, whichever you need. The

8:39

reality of their modern tooling is

8:41

I think undeniable unless you're just

8:44

a partisan. This

8:46

– so they were kind of shady at build,

8:48

right? They didn't – they're

8:50

calling it the volumetric API. Volumetric

8:53

API. I'm sorry, volumetric API. It

8:56

looks – because I had the HoloLens

8:58

– I didn't – I never bothered to put the

9:00

down payment on the device, but I

9:02

had the HoloLens preview dev kit because I kind

9:04

of shilled out and was like, hey, did you

9:06

put it in your broadcasting? It

9:10

looks awfully familiar from

9:12

what they showed in the demo. Like did

9:14

they basically take what I thought was a

9:16

truly impressive device, the HoloLens, but too expensive,

9:19

and port that to the Quest which I don't

9:22

know, right? Like everybody else in tech, I'm kind of

9:24

looking for my next thing. I don't

9:28

think there's a lot of room for

9:31

the little guys in AI. I think

9:33

your assessment there was accurate. In

9:36

fact, even your good friends at The Verge are

9:38

basically – like Google's whole presentation was don't even

9:41

try it. We're going to drown

9:43

you in the cradle. And

9:45

Sam's also said something similar in

9:48

an interview. He said something like don't compete with OpenAI

9:50

because we're going to bury you. Right. I

9:52

wouldn't even like – like I thought

9:54

about putting OpenAI Alice on

9:56

the OpenAI chat GPT store and I'm like why?

10:01

Seriously, why? I

10:05

can't express how disappointed I was when

10:07

I made that integration and basically I

10:09

threw some marketing money at it and

10:13

the responses were just a bunch of looky-loos

10:16

and even the few

10:18

folks who did become customers. I

10:22

ended up just selling them the classic stuff that we do,

10:25

not the newfangled AI.

10:27

It costs, every interaction with the rate of

10:30

PI costs you money. You

10:32

have caps and it's got to be careful about rate limiting. It's really

10:34

kind of a pain in the butt. With

10:39

this meta – I'm not super

10:41

sold on this. I'm just kind of

10:43

looking at the possibilities here and

10:45

thinking with this Horizon OS announcement

10:48

and as somebody who owns a

10:51

couple of Quest 2s for the kids and I myself have

10:53

the Quest Right.

10:55

I can tell you there's something there. There really

10:57

is truly especially when you do the pass-through mode.

11:01

Before I bought the device, I

11:04

thought the killer feature would be cool VR rooms

11:06

where I could pretend like I'm somewhere else in

11:08

a giant room. That

11:10

is neat sometimes like when I'm taking

11:12

a meeting. I'll

11:15

take a meeting from a space station just because that's funny. The

11:19

way I prefer to use the headset is in pass-through mode because

11:21

I can see the kids, I can see the dog, I can

11:23

see the wife and I can interact

11:25

with people. It's cool

11:27

as hell to have like giant screens

11:30

in my physical space. It's actually

11:32

really a neat use. If

11:35

Microsoft gets on board with that, I just

11:38

think the Vision Pro is so, so,

11:41

so relegated to

11:43

high-end content consumption. Microsoft says

11:45

they're looking for developers that

11:48

produce or provide plug-ins for 3D Windows

11:50

desktop applications or customers that work with

11:52

3D applications on the Windows

11:54

desktop applications who are interested in extending those

11:56

applications into 3D content with mixed reality which

11:58

is what I'm thinking. talking about the AR stuff.

12:01

They've got, they've done the work here, like you were

12:03

saying, with the HoloLens. They just got to bring the

12:06

best of that and modernize it a bit and bring

12:08

it over to whatever, you

12:10

know, whatever the horizon platform is. Yeah,

12:12

like frying some, you know, I

12:15

forgot where they are in Washington. Redmond!

12:17

Redmond, Redmond, Washington bacon here. It seems

12:21

super likely that this volumetric API

12:23

is just a version of the

12:25

HoloLens APIs because of how long

12:27

it's been. It's been years and,

12:30

you know, Moore's Law, right? The quest can be

12:32

cheap. I'm actually, I don't

12:34

know if we talked about this yet,

12:36

but they're creating an Xbox bundle of

12:38

the quest that comes with

12:40

a special controller paired and blah blah blah.

12:43

It's a quest 3. I think I'm just gonna get

12:45

that when it comes out and

12:48

use my quest 2 as a dev machine. I'm gonna give

12:50

this a shot. I mean, I now, I

12:52

just signed up for the preview and I didn't get

12:55

like any special access. The way we'll

12:57

be harassing a couple people I know at Microsoft

12:59

right after the show because

13:02

I, you know, $3,500 is a horse

13:07

pill, right? But this seems like a baby

13:09

aspirin. I think companies will buy these and

13:12

I think they'll buy them. It'll

13:14

take a little while but this is an opportunity to be

13:16

early and, you know,

13:19

my trick, right, when I was 19 years old

13:21

was be early. You know, everybody

13:23

thought iOS was a joke. So

13:28

maybe I'm wrong. It's pretty this way. It's easy

13:30

to gamble $500 than it is to gamble

13:34

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15:47

so Microsoft has unveiled

15:49

co-pilot plus PCs with

15:52

quote generative AI capabilities baked in

15:55

they've also announced partnerships with

15:57

AMD Intel Qualcomm Acer Asus

16:00

Dell HP and Lenovo who

16:02

will also be producing either parts

16:04

or PCs called Co-pilot plus PCs

16:07

and I guess you can think of Co-pilot plus as sort

16:09

of a minimum quality

16:11

branding. Co-pilot plus

16:13

PCs require at least 40 tops of

16:16

NPE performance at least 16 gigs of RAM and at least 256

16:18

gigs of storage. I'm sure Dell

16:21

and HP are so happy about that.

16:24

Yeah they're good they're trying to be

16:26

like I guess the the Surface version

16:28

Microsoft's version starts at $9.99. Okay. 16

16:32

gigs of RAM isn't really very much for an AI

16:34

PC. No, you're real. Make that like 32. Make it

16:36

at least maybe and maybe more likely 96 if you

16:38

can. And you've got

16:41

all the weight of Windows. Yeah.

16:44

Now also we've got a Snapdragon X

16:46

version. Yeah. Which is claiming to be 58% faster

16:48

than an M3 MacBook claiming 22 hours of video

16:56

playback 15 hours of web browsing

16:58

using this Snapdragon X Elite Co-pilot

17:01

PC. They

17:03

say they got a new Rosetta or like kind

17:06

of like a Rosetta style update thing where it'll

17:08

run some x86 apps at near native speed. Visual

17:11

Studio? I don't know. I don't know.

17:13

I was catching it on the stream.

17:16

It's the only one anyone listening to

17:18

this really cares about. Yeah I don't

17:20

know. We'll have to see with the

17:22

with the Visual Studio and how any

17:24

of that actual compatibility works. But they're

17:26

pushing hard. They say they built a

17:28

new compiler for Windows ARM, a new

17:30

kernel, a new scheduler along with that

17:32

x86 translation layer. And you

17:35

know they're coming right at the MacBook Air M3. Right

17:37

at it. Right straight between the... And well they should.

17:40

Yeah they should. Seriously the MacBook Air

17:44

is just it's expensive but if

17:46

you think about it it's not especially for

17:48

like your general business person

17:50

computer. I yeah

17:54

it's stupidly good. I have done a lot of

17:56

flying in the last three months

17:59

and I don't... I definitely saw Windows PCs or laptops,

18:01

but man, it's just the MacBooks have taken

18:04

over everywhere, especially when people are out working

18:06

in the airport. So

18:08

many MacBooks, so many iPhones, so

18:11

many AirPods. You

18:13

know, all these people that are dressed up on their business

18:16

suits in first class, almost all exclusively are on MacBooks. There's

18:18

a few that are still on the Windows PCs for sure,

18:20

but that's just not how it

18:22

was even just a few years ago. I forgot

18:24

to mention to you, I had my HP Dev

18:27

One in Newark Airport. Right, right, right, buddy. Son

18:30

of a bitch, someone walked right up to me. It

18:33

was early o'clock in the morning, so I don't know

18:35

why this dude was a, you know, chipper. But

18:38

he's like, is that Papa Wes? And

18:42

I said, get out. I

18:44

said, you gotta be kidding me. This is a,

18:46

I thought maybe it was like a joke, like

18:48

a random listener, like whatever. And

18:50

he was just telling me that he bought

18:52

one. He, I'm sorry, he has

18:54

a Lemur Pro, and he's

18:57

a Apple convert.

19:00

They're there, I'm just saying. Your people are out there,

19:02

they're in the airport. Did I have time to listen

19:04

to the show? I did, actually, I was a complete

19:06

whore. Good for you, okay, good. You know

19:09

what, he's gotta be a wise man because he was

19:11

taking the red eye. There are never delays on the

19:13

red eye. True. Okay,

19:16

so, you know, with all this new co-pilot

19:18

plus horsepower, all the tops you can do

19:20

with that, because now they all have MPUs

19:22

built into them, there's

19:24

new features, including

19:26

a sketch along feature that's rolling out

19:29

in Windows. Summarize

19:31

this document type stuff right there in

19:33

the prompt for your documents on Windows

19:35

PC, and the new

19:37

controversial feature that everybody's talking about right

19:40

now, a new feature called

19:42

Windows Recall, and I'll let Sache describe it to

19:44

us. How do we introduce

19:46

memory, right? Photographic memory into what

19:48

you do on the PC,

19:50

and now we have it, so it's called Recall.

19:52

It's not keyword search, right? It's

19:55

semantic search over all your history, and

19:57

it's not just about any document. recreate

20:00

moments from the past essentially. Here's

20:02

how it works. Windows constantly

20:04

takes screenshots of what's on your

20:06

screen, then uses a generative

20:08

AI model right on the device, along

20:10

with the NPU, to process

20:13

all that data and make it searchable,

20:15

even photos. I got to try it

20:17

out. I searched brown leather

20:20

bag. This is Joanna Stern. It came

20:22

up in visual search. There's no

20:24

place on this page that it says

20:26

brown leather bag. It just knows because

20:28

it sees this brown leather bag. There

20:30

could be this reaction from some people

20:32

that this is pretty creepy. Microsoft is

20:35

taking screenshots of everything I do. Yeah,

20:37

I mean, that's why that you can only

20:39

do it on the edge. So this is

20:42

like, you have to put two things together.

20:44

This is my computer. This

20:46

is my recall. And

20:48

it's all being done locally. I just find it fascinating

20:50

that this is what they went to as

20:53

soon as they had the local capabilities because this

20:55

isn't anything new. When

20:57

you go to a restaurant and they've got those ketchup

20:59

bottles now that you can't see through, you

21:02

immediately start suspecting that they're just draining other

21:04

ketchup bottles all into that ketchup bottle and

21:06

claiming it's new ketchup. That's

21:08

what's happening with this image recognition. We've

21:10

had image classification for years now, and

21:12

anybody that uses Google Photos knows it's

21:15

been getting really good. They're just doing

21:17

it with screenshots now. And where does

21:19

Microsoft go as soon as they get

21:21

the capability of classifying images on device?

21:23

Let's go to recording everything you do

21:25

on your computer. Ah. I

21:29

mean, does anybody really want this? Lawyers

21:31

would love this, I think. Lawyers

21:34

would love to have this. It's weird that

21:36

you, we psychically connected there, Chris. I was

21:38

like, this sounds like a nightmare

21:40

to me. Really, dude?

21:42

I mean, could you imagine in discovery if

21:44

you could go back and play the computer

21:46

back in time? This also reminds me of

21:48

a feature that Apple had, the Time Machine

21:50

feature, it'd go into

21:52

this crazy galaxy animation and you'd zip

21:55

through time, like a time traveler to

21:57

recover a file. Microsoft's just also rehashing

21:59

that. Again, it's just

22:01

like they're bottling old

22:03

wine into a new bottle here and they're telling

22:05

us it's new wine and they're taking old ketchup

22:07

and putting it into an opaque bottle. I'll tell

22:10

you it's a new ketchup. Yeah, so they learned

22:12

from their cousins that Apple, right? That's what Apple

22:14

does. Here's features other people have released that we

22:16

smoothed out some of the edges. And

22:19

the reason why I played the whole clip there is

22:21

Sache does say we can only do this because it's

22:23

on device. What do you think about that? Does that

22:25

make it okay that it's all local? I think he

22:27

had to say that. I think if he didn't say

22:29

that, all the tech press, which by the way, they're

22:32

growing out of business at a rate that's

22:34

faster than what is it, lemurs going off

22:36

a cliff. But

22:38

all the remaining tech press would be hammering

22:40

them for privacy. And you

22:42

know that Apple is going to come out in white

22:44

robes on like

22:46

a pope, right? Yeah, it's all

22:48

on device. Although

22:51

I hear spicy, saucy rumors that

22:53

Apple is going to just buy their way

22:55

into this, get a deal

22:57

with good old open AI. Oh

22:59

sure. Oh, I'm sure they'll have to find it. Google's fighting to

23:01

– well, I mean look how much

23:03

everything they do with Siri is basically punted off device

23:05

too. Well, first

23:08

of all, Siri can't play a frickin'

23:11

song in my car, so I feel

23:13

like this is – I don't

23:15

know. My fear here –

23:19

so I'm going to try this volumetric API stuff.

23:21

I think if they give me access, I'll

23:24

do a Skunkworks project. I'm

23:27

super scared that this is going to be another adventure

23:29

where I lose tens of thousands of dollars because

23:32

it feels that way, doesn't it? I

23:35

mean I guess the upshot is that Meta is more in the

23:37

driver's seat for this one than – more

23:40

in the driver's seat than Microsoft is and Meta's

23:42

really bet the whole farm on this. Yeah,

23:46

I mean you could even – you eventually could

23:48

bail on the volumetric API and just do something

23:50

directly on device, I suppose. Yeah,

23:53

I'm curious. Okay, so because the Meta

23:55

headsets are powered by Android, so is

23:57

this building off of Xamarin slash Maui?

24:00

I mean that's a possibility, but it didn't

24:02

seem like that from what we get, but it's

24:05

so early They're only you

24:07

know if you could get in the developer preview

24:09

you'd answer that kind of question That's for sure

24:11

well because now he's gone nowhere fast right yeah

24:13

You take the hollow lens stuff you take a

24:15

little Maui bring it together now It's something brand

24:17

new for the a IVR metaverse era New

24:20

stuff bottled in the old stuff bottled in the

24:22

new bottles Really the

24:24

theme isn't it hmm Man,

24:27

I don't know I I

24:29

out of all of this I do think those VR headsets

24:31

or at least have some potential having used them Let's

24:34

talk about I don't really want really get into it

24:36

very much, but since our last

24:38

episode It seems like there's been some sort of house

24:41

cleaning happening in open AI Key

24:43

people that have been there for like sometimes

24:45

since the very beginning have left one

24:48

of those individuals Spoke to the press

24:50

Daniel could a Joe I think that's how you say

24:52

his name He reported that he lost

24:54

85% of his family's net

24:56

worth for not signing the non disparage agreement

24:58

It turns out that open AI had a

25:00

non disparage agreement Or if

25:02

you spoke out against the company they could claw

25:05

back all of your investment Vox

25:07

covered that and reported on it and

25:10

then Sam came out and said It

25:12

was an accident to put a clause that could cancel

25:14

equity if they said something I don't like my bad.

25:16

He says my bad and they're gonna take that out

25:19

Yeah, but if the journalists hadn't blown the whistle on

25:21

it, it would still be in there I

25:23

just happened to accidentally get in there Pretty

25:26

big clause about you say something

25:28

bad about us at any point

25:30

indefinitely no expiration And

25:32

we get to claw back your equity just

25:34

hypothetically imagine if we had this for the

25:36

YouTube and reddit comments Like

25:40

we get we get to find them forget ads

25:42

we just find them every time they troll us

25:44

You know people left citing disagreements with open AI

25:46

leadership saying it's not on the

25:48

right trajectory Safety what

25:50

that wasn't being taken seriously. This is kind of

25:52

you come at the king. You better not miss

25:55

right? You do you knew this was gonna happen

25:57

you They

25:59

tried to do a coup, right? The Iliya tried to do

26:01

a coup, a bunch of the rest of them. He

26:03

was going to get rid of

26:05

them. That's what I was thinking, there had to be

26:08

some housecleaning. He had some sort of snarky tweets.

26:10

And honestly, I think

26:13

if folks were being fair, I mean

26:16

not that I want to be super fair to Mr. Altman,

26:18

but you know,

26:20

if somebody tried to do a coup on

26:22

one of us, I'm sure we would get

26:24

rid of them. I mean I don't see

26:26

a world where like I'm sitting here like

26:28

patience on a monument forgiving people. I would

26:30

be like, okay, I'll wait 90 days, right?

26:32

I think I probably agree with you.

26:34

It's just some of

26:36

the weirdness around some of these people's departures and then

26:39

this disparagement clause and then pretending like you didn't know

26:41

it was there, I just don't buy that. But the

26:43

thing that I think was more revealing than

26:45

any of that was this whole thing

26:48

that went down with Scarlett Johansson. I mean, we

26:50

talked about it last week that the voice sounded

26:52

a lot like Scar Joe. It was the Black

26:54

Widow. And while

26:56

Scar Joe found out now, ironically,

26:58

people have taken Scar Joe's letter about this

27:00

and played it back in an AI that

27:02

sounds a lot like her to explain what's

27:04

going on. And I just thought that

27:06

was pretty funny. Last September, I received an

27:09

offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire

27:11

me to voice the current chat GPT 4.0

27:13

system. He told me that

27:15

he felt that by my voicing the

27:17

system, I could bridge the gap between

27:20

tech companies and creatives and help consumers

27:22

to feel comfortable with the seismic shift

27:24

concerning humans and AI. He

27:26

said he felt that my voice would be comforting to people.

27:28

Isn't that weird? It does sound a lot like

27:30

her, doesn't it? Yeah. And that's

27:32

not even necessarily the Sky voice. They did pull

27:34

it down after she released

27:37

this letter. I guess supposedly he

27:39

approached her last September after if they

27:41

could use her voice. She

27:44

said no. Then I guess they

27:46

more recently tried to contact her and

27:48

she had not gotten back to them in time. And

27:50

then this announcement came out. Now she's

27:52

talking about legal fights

27:55

and supporting regulation.

27:58

And the reality is... is that I think

28:00

it was her voice and Sam Altman's on

28:02

record just really kind of having a thing

28:04

for the whole movie. The number of things

28:06

that I think her got right that

28:09

were not obvious at the time, like

28:11

the whole interaction model with how humans are

28:13

going to use an AI, this idea that

28:15

it is going to be this like conversational

28:17

language interface, that was incredibly

28:20

prophetic and certainly more than

28:22

a little bit inspired us. I mean,

28:24

it sounds like

28:26

he wanted to use Scar-Jo's voice regardless

28:28

of what she said. And now

28:31

it's going to really flare up this

28:33

whole fight between the creatives and the

28:35

AI industry and copy protection and trademark

28:37

and really just put their foot in it.

28:40

This is a little bold, right? Yeah,

28:43

he wanted a hit. And then he

28:45

claims that the voice, this is in a

28:48

statement from Sam, he says, the voice of Sky is

28:50

not Scarlett Johansson. Never intended to even

28:52

resemble hers. No, and has nothing to do

28:54

with that film, her, right? Which by the

28:56

way, I don't know if Mr. Altman has

28:58

seen the entire film. Kind

29:01

of ends bad. Yeah. And

29:03

then he says, but out of respect, we've

29:05

paused using Sky's voice on our products. I can

29:07

translate that for you. On

29:10

the advice of our council, we've paused these. Yeah.

29:13

Yeah. Yeah. Well,

29:16

remember, again, Sam, not

29:19

the Ashok's Richard Hendrix boy

29:21

that he might be portrayed

29:23

as, used to run Y Combinator,

29:26

very entrenched in the Valley, already a

29:28

very rich man before he started this.

29:31

And the guy behind World Coin, which wants to scan

29:33

your eyeballs. Yeah, I thought that was done though. Yeah,

29:36

it's only done in some areas, but they still kind

29:38

of, it's just, which is an evil thing. Anyways,

29:42

I bring, I point all this out because to

29:44

me, it seems like the tech industry has pinned

29:46

their hopes on Sam

29:48

Altman and OpenAI, and

29:50

then it kind of trickles down from there. And what Microsoft's

29:53

come up with, it's

29:55

interesting-ish, but I don't,

29:57

I don't, I'm not going to use the Microsoft Sketch

29:59

tool. to have it sketch

30:01

along with me and you know there the

30:04

funny thing about their capture

30:06

to utility their their recall thing is

30:09

that it's gonna be riddled

30:11

with screenshots of people's private and personal information it's

30:13

they say in there that if you use edge

30:15

in private mode they won't capture that and

30:18

that if you're watching DRM content they won't capture

30:20

that but that would they

30:22

will capture everything else and we capture everything in

30:25

Firefox and Chrome and if you know it's just

30:28

it's bad overall for user security because you know

30:31

if nothing else you're gonna have people

30:33

sitting down at people's Windows computers that aren't properly

30:36

secured and they're just gonna go through what everybody's

30:38

been doing on their computers or

30:40

or somebody gets hacked and then it's like

30:43

the only thing of value that I really see

30:45

that they're incorporating is like the summarize features but

30:48

even that it sometimes misses important context

30:50

when it summarizes and

30:52

none of them are really solving for hallucination before

30:54

they're building these things in like this they're building

30:56

this in at the operating system level at the

30:58

application level at the service level and

31:01

they're not solving for hallucinations they're

31:03

better than they used to be and they're better than

31:05

the smaller self-hosted stuff they

31:08

still get it wrong sometimes and

31:10

they're just rolling it out it's

31:12

wild and I'm just and in some of it's

31:15

you know some of it's like okay you're doing image recognition

31:17

okay we've been doing that for a little bit all

31:20

right you've got really really good text prediction so

31:22

you can you know statistically guess what the next

31:25

word should be and then produce a pretty accurate

31:27

summary sometimes but not always

31:30

if these are semi-useful features and I use them

31:32

on the daily I don't know

31:34

if they're worth 50 billion and I don't know

31:36

if they're worth all of this investment in hardware

31:38

and software and it's you know I just got

31:40

back from red hat summit and

31:42

red hat summit was the same thing all

31:44

about AI all about AI at the enterprise

31:46

level I feel like ever since the mobile

31:49

app explosion and kind of

31:51

the you know the leveling out of that they've

31:53

been searching for the new hotness we've been talking

31:55

about this for almost two years though I think

31:57

it goes further back dude the tech industry starts

32:00

after 1971 when we start managing

32:02

the dollar more, when

32:04

the Federal Reserve starts keeping

32:11

an eye on the stock market, and then you see

32:13

tech really take off around

32:15

the.com boom, and you saw

32:18

this crazy investment that totally exploded,

32:20

and since then it has been one cycle

32:22

after another because it's all a creation of

32:24

Wall Street. When you think about real end

32:26

users, a lot of the stuff is just

32:28

thrust upon them. All these people

32:30

have iPhones because they have to have a phone. People

32:33

are using Windows computers for the most part are using Windows computers

32:35

because they have to. It's not this

32:37

utopia that they painted out to be. No,

32:40

I don't think it is. I also don't think

32:42

that... I don't

32:44

know how to put this correctly, but we'll take

32:46

a swing. When

32:48

you have just a few big,

32:51

glorious Soviet style companies

32:53

that control everything, you actually

32:55

don't get the new, hot innovation. For

33:00

example, I'm going to go back to my favorite hobby

33:02

horse, the launch of the iPhone. If

33:04

you had... In fact, I was

33:07

studying ActionScript before that year. Do

33:09

we have to explain what Action... I think we do, don't we? Because,

33:13

yeah. Stay a while and listen. Gather

33:16

around. So, there used to

33:18

be this company called Adobe that, believe it

33:20

or not, was actually a big force in

33:22

software development at the time. They

33:25

had this product called Flash that

33:28

they had bought from a company called Macromedia. Yes,

33:31

I know you don't know what that is, kids. Well,

33:34

they have this programming language called ActionScript. How

33:37

would you describe it, Chris? I

33:39

guess it's like if you knew Flash,

33:42

this was sort of like a scripting

33:44

language that could execute things using the

33:46

Flash runtime. Right. It was

33:48

almost like... I would say the closest modern

33:50

comparison is TypeScript. It

33:52

was meant to be like a nicer JavaScript with classes

33:54

and things like that. And they

33:56

have this platform called Flash, but they have this

33:58

other platform... called Adobe Air.

34:01

I like how you're laughing.

34:07

This reminds me now a little bit of like, we

34:10

have Flutter, which is

34:12

not the equivalent, I'm not trying, but it's,

34:14

yeah. So at

34:16

the time, if you

34:19

were up in, let's say, Manhattan, working

34:21

like I was, or trying to start out,

34:24

I was basically doing Java applets for folks, which

34:27

was even then like an ancient technology. Every

34:30

wise agency owner or like older person you

34:32

met that knew what they were doing would

34:34

say, you gotta get into Adobe Air,

34:36

man. All desktop apps are gonna be Adobe Air,

34:38

all applications, they can run on the browser. Very,

34:42

technically it wasn't like Electron, but

34:44

fundamentally the idea, the practical end use

34:46

was like it's basically Electron. Except

34:49

it very importantly was not HTML5

34:51

and JavaScript, it was ActionScript running

34:54

on the Flash platform, which Adobe Air was like

34:56

the desktop rep version of that. Well

35:00

then a little company called Apple, which was

35:02

like right back then, their big thing

35:04

was the iPod. And it was, I

35:07

had a click wheel iPod, and I had that thing

35:09

for years, because it was a tank, you

35:11

could drop it. I mean that thing did not

35:13

break. Yeah, but they were firmly a consumer, a

35:16

somewhat, fairly successful, although

35:19

success would be redefined after the iPhone, but

35:21

at the time, a seemingly successful consumer electronics

35:23

product company. Yeah, right, and at this time,

35:25

I'm running like Ubuntu 904 or like 810,

35:30

I don't remember which one. Everything was

35:32

brown, right, it was the UPS operating

35:34

system. Literally, I went

35:36

to Barnes and Noble, there's like rows of,

35:39

I don't think younger folks will

35:42

understand how just preeminent Flash was,

35:44

right? Seriously, the

35:46

computer's like, oh. You

35:50

have that on the soundboard? Yeah,

35:52

I got the Ubuntu. That's

35:54

amazing. The

35:57

African operating system that's really from Britain. So

36:00

yeah, I'm studying ActionScript and then just

36:02

by happen chance, I end up getting

36:04

into iPhone development. But

36:06

all that air momentum, all that

36:09

ActionScript momentum ended overnight. Steve

36:12

Jobs came out and said, yeah, there's no flash on the iPhone. That's

36:15

it. We had to really kind of re-figure out how to deliver

36:17

video on the web. I remember YouTube was

36:19

a flash platform. You remember Barry that? Yeah,

36:21

everything. You couldn't open the videos on the

36:24

iPhone browser anymore. It

36:26

was a wild time. And then

36:28

the Android products, some of the Android vendors would lean

36:31

in on the fact they supported flash. Oh yeah,

36:33

Air built in. Like, it had the Adobe logo on

36:35

the bottom. I haven't seen it advertised yet. Oh

36:39

man, those were the days. But

36:42

my point being is that was an

36:44

inflection point that if you asked all the smart

36:46

people in the industry,

36:48

no one would have predicted. It

36:52

was crazy to take the bet. Yeah, I agree.

36:55

In fact, people laughed at it quite literally. I

36:57

got laughed out of a room. I tried to

36:59

get a job. I won't say the name, although

37:02

they've subsequently changed their name. But at a big

37:04

digital agency in New York as a developer, because

37:06

they had hired me multiple times as

37:08

a kid and they were paying me decent rates, not

37:11

because they wanted to, but because two

37:13

of their biggest clients demanded an iPhone

37:15

app. And they didn't want

37:18

to risk another vendor coming in and being able

37:20

to snake the larger contract, which you'll love this.

37:23

Their real bread and butter was selling them SEO, which

37:25

also was going to be killed by the

37:27

AI stuff. So

37:31

I tried to say, well, just hire me.

37:33

I'll be your iPhone developer. Because

37:36

at the time, iOS apps were

37:38

pretty simple. Can

37:41

you make a table view with a list of ... and then you

37:43

click on a thing and you go to a detailed page? They

37:46

didn't believe it. They were so adamant that this

37:49

was a fad. I

37:51

remember the lady that I reported to

37:53

as a contractor had a very nice

37:55

big sister conversation with me, like, you

37:57

need to get out of this. Oh,

37:59

yeah. because the iPhone thing is going

38:02

nowhere. Oh, yeah. And she's like,

38:04

I'm never giving up my Blackberry.

38:06

I had similar experiences trying to

38:08

encourage clients and places I

38:10

worked to incorporate Linux. Like,

38:13

you know, for database jobs or file server jobs

38:15

or print server jobs or proxy server jobs or,

38:17

you know, these types of things

38:20

where Linux could just snap right in. I definitely think

38:22

there's a period in my career where I didn't get

38:24

as far as I could have because I was the

38:26

Linux guy in everybody's eyes. And

38:28

the idea was that it was a fad

38:31

that the adults in the room, like IBM and

38:34

SCO and others, were going to come in and

38:36

just sort of wipe Linux out.

38:39

Then, of course, then they started all the SCO

38:41

fail. IBM became a

38:43

Linux company. You know, it's funny how it just

38:46

went the opposite direction, but they were so convinced.

38:48

So it was the Microsoft reps. And

38:51

I was the kid saying

38:54

that I think this Linux stuff, I think we should implement this.

38:56

It's just going to solve some problems, save us some money. It's

38:59

funny how that kind of stuff works. You got to be at the

39:01

right age. You can't be too old, can't be too young. Can't be

39:03

too old, right. It's harder for me. I'm

39:05

really thinking of losing another $40,000 on

39:08

this volumetric API. But,

39:10

you know, it's harder for me to take those kind of risks. Yeah,

39:13

yeah. And also,

39:15

you know, it's like you have more

39:17

of an established view and

39:19

things that have worked that haven't worked. And

39:21

so I think there's something to being young

39:23

and malleable and

39:25

recognizing something that's kind

39:28

of a game changer that people that have been around

39:30

a bit longer can't seem to see as easily. I

39:32

don't know a good way to say this, but when

39:34

you're young and you're like a bachelor or a single

39:36

gal, you don't really have

39:38

any responsibilities, you can take crappy deals

39:41

to build up. Yeah. But

39:43

when you're older, like it would be hard for me to

39:46

take a, you know, break even deal on

39:48

the quest right now just to get in

39:50

there. Because I have,

39:52

you know, other projects

39:54

or other, you know, clients I could

39:56

do work for that are profitable.

40:00

And I've got, you know, blended family, we've got

40:03

three kids between us. It's

40:05

tough. We're back in the day. I was

40:08

just happy if somebody bought me lunch. Ask

40:10

not what your podcast can boost

40:13

for you, but what you

40:15

can boost for your podcast. I was going to

40:17

say Crash Master got you lunch. 25,000 sets. Oh,

40:20

hell yeah, he did. Great show again. He

40:22

says I had a new Pixel 8 set up, and

40:24

I forgot to get my Podverse boost name. Podverse on

40:27

Android is now slowly getting better, by the way. Here's

40:29

helping survive the ad winner. Thank you very

40:32

much, Crash Master. We appreciate that. You

40:34

know, Mr. Dominic, when I was in El Salvador, I

40:36

bought breakfast with the boost. Did you really? It was

40:38

a row of ducks. Oh. It

40:41

was just a row of ducks at 2,222 sets. I got an

40:44

orange juice and a muffin. There you

40:46

go. It's very exciting.

40:49

Very exciting. adversary17 comes

40:51

in with 10,000 SAS. Hey, yo. Oh,

40:55

and speaking to your ISP problem, the

40:57

ISP problem is really annoying.

41:00

Up by me, I really only have a

41:03

single option of Comcast. Same here. Oh.

41:07

AT&T has service, but it's 5 megabits DSL.

41:09

Woof. Yeah, that's

41:11

just not usable. We're waiting on residential

41:14

fiber to be installed. It's been a promise since 2014.

41:18

I will say just this past winter in

41:20

December, they did bore fiber through my neighborhood

41:22

and my backyard. The distribution box is actually

41:24

in my backyard. There hasn't

41:26

been anyone to hook it up since. I'm still waiting.

41:29

Yeah, that's my situation too here at the studio. So

41:32

the studio is a townhouse, and

41:34

it's in a housing community that's

41:37

like three blocks. And

41:39

the furthest block away from me, so

41:41

the other side of the housing community,

41:43

they have brought fiber into those houses.

41:47

And that was about a year or two ago, and they

41:49

haven't taken it any further. Wow. And

41:51

I'm paying like, I think, I

41:53

want to say it's more than $350 a month for business

41:55

Comcast, 300 megabytes down. I

42:00

think 30 megabits up 300 megabits

42:02

down 300 make 30. I don't I don't want to

42:04

remind you what I have This

42:08

ISP stuff in the states is so bad. You know every time

42:10

I talk about this. I always hear from

42:13

Listener that lives in like a country that

42:15

seems to have not managed to been completely

42:18

locked down by a monopoly some Starcraft

42:20

pro from South Korea who's like yeah $15.

42:22

I have three gigs or three Megs up

42:24

or three rather three gigs up three gigs

42:26

down Oh

42:30

Yeah, we didn't have a lot of

42:32

boosts. We had three boosters. We stacked 36,000 sats I

42:36

think this is the audience's way of saying take the summer

42:38

off Right

42:40

that our last episode was really bad could have been

42:42

that could be that could have been

42:45

that but I you know I mean they saying

42:47

guys you've earned it. You know we take

42:49

the summer off We come

42:51

back in September. They've missed us

42:54

right. That's what they're saying with their I mean 30 three boots great We

42:58

did have some people pick up memberships, but not a lot in

43:00

the last couple of weeks Memberships

43:02

are option to or you could boost each

43:04

production We do love those messages And

43:07

if you got a little of value or entertainment or

43:09

I made you think about something from listening consider signing us a

43:11

boost and tell Us about it you can get

43:13

a new podcast app at new podcast apps Fountain

43:16

has made it really easy with strike integration

43:19

You also can boost from the fountain FM

43:21

website just using something like the cash app

43:23

or strike and you don't have to switch podcast apps either

43:26

way, we appreciate it and thank you very much for boosting in and

43:29

Thanks to the three boosters. You know what you get round

43:32

of applause It's

43:38

pretty great. It's pretty great. Mr.

43:40

Dominic before we get out here Is there anywhere you'd

43:42

like to send the good folks? Yeah, if I'd be

43:44

on Twitter at Jim Nucco and if you need some

43:46

automation or data migration stuff go to Alice dot death

43:48

I Made

43:52

you jingle do you like I love it? Yeah,

43:55

you couldn't find me on the Twitter. I suppose. I

43:57

don't know Chris, oh yes over

43:59

there. I'm also Also at chrisles.com.

44:02

I want to say hey, hey, hey, hey,

44:04

why don't you consider joining us next Tuesday? I think

44:06

we're going to be live next Tuesday, right? Regular

44:09

week? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Unless

44:12

we take the summer off. But

44:14

anyways, we'd love to have you join us live. You

44:16

can do it. You can. Yep,

44:19

you sure can. Coded.show slash live. We

44:21

do it Tuesdays at noon Pacific 3pm

44:23

Eastern. Come hang out. Help

44:26

us title this thing. Join us in the chat room. You

44:28

know. Tell us when we're wrong in real time. That kind

44:30

of stuff. It's always kind of fun.

44:33

Here's a show of nice energy too. That's Tuesdays. Coded.show

44:35

slash live. I'd love to have you there. Links

44:39

to what we talked about today. And there's some

44:41

good ones over there. That's Coded.show slash 571. Wow.

44:46

Sneaking up on that 600. Sneaking

44:48

up on it. Will they make it? Who

44:51

knows? Definitely not if they take a summer break. It

44:53

can take forever. We know that. Alright everybody, thanks so

44:55

much for joining us on this week's episode. We'll see

44:57

you right back here next week. Probably.

45:02

It could be summer break.