The Platform Delusion — With Columbia Business Professor Jonathan Knee

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) Ranjan's visit to India and his use of Perplexity to gain cultural understanding and context 2) AI news' reliability 3) How social media drives the college protest 4) The need to elevate the reasonable voice 5) Elon Musk email Alex with details about X's AI news play 6) Could X's AI news plan work? 7) X warming to news? 8) AI monetization challenges 9) Risking the trough of disillusionment in AI 10) Apple earnings and the iPhone sales decline 11) A weird choose your own adventure with Claude 12) WSJ reporter turns ChatGPT into her boyfriend 13) Can relationships with AI be meaninful? ---- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack? Here’s 40% off for the first year: https://tinyurl.com/bigtechnology Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected]

Alan Cowen is the CEO and founder Hume AI. Cowen joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss how his company is building emotional intelligence into AI systems. In this conversation, we examine why AI needs to learn how to read emotion, not just the literal text, and examine at how Hume does that with voice and facial expressions. In the first half, we discuss the theory of reading emotions and expressions and in the second half we discuss how it's applied. Tune in for a wide ranging conversation that touches on the study of emotion, using AI to speak with — and understand — animals, teaching bots to be far more emotionally intelligent, and how emotionally intelligent AI will change customer service, products, and even staple services today. --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack? Here’s 40% off for the first year: https://tinyurl.com/bigtechnology Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected]

Deirdre Bosa is the anchor of CNBC's TechCheck. She joins the show for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) Whether LLMs are running out of resources 2) The costly business of AI 3) Meta's stock drop after Zuck talks costs 4) Meta's roller coaster 5) Microsoft's AI results 6) The virtues of Claude 7) Google's impressive earnings report and dividend 8) Sundar's comeback 9) TikTok's 'ban' goes into action 10) Is TikTok already dead? ---- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack? Here’s 40% off for the first year: https://tinyurl.com/bigtechnology Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected]

M.G. Siegler is a venture partner at GV, formerly google ventures, and the author of Spyglass. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss what Apple may have cooking for its AI-themed WWDC event in June. We discuss what Apple may do on the consumer front, including how much of iOS it's willing to change in service of AI features. And then we dig into its potential AI play for developers, including on-device processing and its own foundational model. We also talk about its interest in robotics. Tune in for a deep dive into Apple's AI options as it gears up for big announcements in the coming months. ---- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Want a discount for Big Technology Premium? Here’s 40% off for the first year: https://tinyurl.com/bigtechnology Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected]

Alex Heath from The Verge is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) Taylor Swift's new album 2) Meta's new Llama 3 release 3) Does conversational AI work in a social media products? 4) Will the value of generative AI be realized in foundational models or products? 5) Zuck's new icon status 6) Bearded Zuck 7) The risks of open sourcing massive AI models 8) Sundar Pichai writes a stern letter to Google employees 9) Google fires 28 employees involved in office takeover protest 10) Is a new Google culture taking hold? 11) Should product reviewers be kinder when products suck. ---- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack? Here’s 40% off for the first year: https://tinyurl.com/bigtechnology Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected]

Kara Swisher is the author of Burn Book and host of the Pivot and On With Kara Swisher. Swisher joins Big Technology to discuss the latest tech news and share her opinion of the nature of tech leaders. We discuss Marc Andreessen, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Tim Cook, Andy Jassy, Satya Nadella, Sam Altman, and Mark Cuban. Then we examine the nature of a great leader's personality, how much luck vs. skill plays a role in success, the impact of having lots of money. And plenty more, including how journalism and media move forward today. Enjoy! --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Want a discount for Big Technology Premium? Here’s 40% off for the first year: https://tinyurl.com/bigtechnology Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected]

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) The Solar Eclipse! 2) AI Music generation software Suno 3) Google flipping of its AI narrative 4) Ranjan's reflections from Google Cloud Next 5) Is Google's AI enterprise bet the right strategy 6) Microsoft hedging its OpenAI bet 7) Implications of Mustafa Suleyman's remit within Microsoft 8) OpenAI fires leakers 9) Eliezer Yudkowsky refuses interview and his reps won't pick up the phone 10) AI model training running out of data 11) Prospects of synthetic data for AI training 12) The Humane AI pin flops 13) Can Sam Altman and Jony Ive build an AI device 14) Cloning ourselves with AI. ---- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack? Here’s 40% off for the first year: https://tinyurl.com/bigtechnology Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected]

Jack Clark is the co-founder of Anthropic and author of Import AI. He joins Big Technology Podcast for a mega episode on Anthropic and the future of AI. We cover: 1) What Anthropic and other LLM providers are building towards 2) What AI agents will look like 3) What type of traning is neccesary to get to the next level 4) What AI 'general intelligence' 5) AI memory 6) Anthropic's partnerships with Google and Amazon 7) The broader AI business case 8) The AI chips battle 9) Why Clark and others from OpenAI founded Anthropic 10) Is Anthropic an effective altruism front organization? 11) The risk that AI kills us 12) The risk that AI takes our jobs 13) What regulation would help keep AI safe? 14) Is AI regulation just a front for keeping the small guy down 15) LLMs' ability to persuade --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Want a discount for Big Technology Premium? Here’s 40% off for the first year: https://tinyurl.com/bigtechnology Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected]

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news, with special guest Zeke Faux of Bloomberg News and Number Go Up fame. We cover 1) Why crypto is thriving after poster boy SBF was convicted and sentenced 2) The latest rise of memcoins including dogwifhat and NFTs like CryptoDickbutts 3) Is this evidence of a deeper societal problem or just gambling? 4) The resilience of crypto, including Tether 5) Zeke's reporting on pig butchering scams 6) The rise of Nudes In Bio scams on Twitter 7) Sports betting's deepening crisis 8) Louisiana bans prop bets on college players 9) Jon Stewart's position against AI 10) Is a broader societal backlash against AI coming. --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Want a discount for Big Technology Premium? Here’s 40% off for the first year: https://tinyurl.com/bigtechnology Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected]

Marissa Mayer is the CEO and co-founder of Sunshine, the former CEO of Yahoo, and a longtime Google executive. She joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss why she's betting on consumer tech, building a new array of products including Sunshine Contacts and the newly released Shine, a photo sharing app. Mayer discusses how AI impacts building for consumers today, and whether independent tech stands a chance against big tech. We also discuss the state of OpenAI, Google's competitive position, the lessons from Mayer's Tumblr acquisition, and what motivated her to found a company. Tune in for a fun, in-depth conversation with one of tech's leading executives. --- You can subscribe to Big Technology Premium for 25% off at https://bit.ly/bigtechnology Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected]