Meta’s Muse Revival, Frontier AI Under Threat, The Rise Of Dopamine Sites

24:46Big Technology Podcast:and Alexander Wang, the head of Meta's AI Lab wrote, weird that this is the graphic that the partnerships team told me we were going with and it is a picture of the Muselaboo-boo leaning over a box box and flirtatiously showing its butt to the camera and I can't believe I have to do this but this is an important segment. Keep going, keep going. This is butthole discourse and reporting on butthole discourse is why people come to the big technology podcast. Okay. And so I, in my naive sense, tweeted this and said, why are they sexualizing Labubu? And I think I have an answer. What is your answer?

25:31What's the theory here?

25:33Big Technology Podcast:This is my real investigative reporting moment here on Big Technology Podcast. Think about what's been going on in all the other AI labs. How they've told you AI is going to take your job. AI is going to kill you. AI is an imminent threat. AI will escape. If you're coming out and trying to position yourself against those labs, what would you want to do? You'd want to have the marketing as far away from that as possible. And nothing could be farther away from AI may kill you than the Muse Labubu mascot leaning over an Enterprise AI logo with heart emojis showing its butt to the camera. And I think this is what's going on.

26:20Big Technology Podcast:They are intentionally going as silly and as absurd as they can to show you that they're not going to participate in the end of the world discourse. And there's nothing to fear here. And I think it might actually be effective sort of anti-consensus marketing. Okay. Okay. See, I agree overall. And I do think like even the usage of that character. And I had actually before Alexander Wang started going off like that, I had said something about the character feels unsettling almost because it's too cute. And like you just feel something's going to be off and certainly things are off. But, okay, I like this idea, and I do think overall that is the idea of distract and move away from human extinction into just kind of absurd and cute.

27:13My thing is, so to Meta's credit, one of the more, and even the way Instinct speaks to you, the way Mew speaks to you, they've really nailed the voice. like it's like not clawed I mean clawed the last couple of models just speaks to you like it's like some obnoxious PhD professor I don't know like what is the most like obnoxious type of personality you can actually listen to and that's the way it speaks to you versus I mean muse it's literally like oh yeah hey quick heads up your flight just got a notification it might uh like it's literally someone just kind of chatting with you but to their credit to I actually was like oh how long for me to drive from my house to the airport.

27:57And it actually was like, I don't, hey, I don't have your address. That's okay though. Maybe do you want to just give me your cross streets and that'll help. Like they know people are, they've built this around people being a little bit leery of giving Facebook your data, your life. And I've connected my Gmail to Muse. I've not connected any kind of credit card instinct. I've given credit card info. I'm still like trying to decide what my comfort level is overall on in this. But what I don't get is they have to build trust. The more you give to these systems, the better they will perform, the more valuable they will be.

28:37If they like, how old is Alexander Wayne? 25, six, something like that. Like if you have a 25-year-old multi-billionaire hyper-sexualizing a little la boo-boo and then you're looking at it and you're some kind of normie, which probably they're just not even seeing that, I guess. But if that becomes more of a story, this is the person you are going to give your life away to and trust to have AI go do stuff for you. I think that's a bad play. I don't think that's – if that's the distraction from human extinction, just keep it cute, the Tamagotchi, Muse charm, Zuckerberg. That stuff's good, but like this is a little creepy and like, I don't know.

29:26You don't think it's a little – does it build trust?

29:31Big Technology Podcast:I'm not saying it's going to work. I'm not saying it's necessarily smart, but I am saying that when you're talking about – you said like, all right, you're talking about the end of the world. You're not talking about failing businesses. I think when you're looking at these absurd memes that Wang is tweeting, and by the way, he's 29, you're not looking at, you're not thinking about the existential threat that AI can lead to. It's sort of the, it is the opposite of that. So I think that is the strategy. I don't know if it's going to work. But I certainly think that in the back of their minds, they're thinking, you know, the more absurd we can be, the more we're sort of poking at this end of the world narrative.

30:14Big Technology Podcast:And anti-marketing against it. No, no. The more we're talking about this, even kind of that argument, I am asking that to kind of try to take a bit of control over this. And I hate traditional corporate PR communications type things. But, like, again, going back to just you are asking for the trust of people. if people the average person who is not kind of like a shit poster 20-something male on x is going to start hearing about or seeing this kind of stuff it's still i i have to imagine that would make people much more uncomfortable because just thinking about like it actually moves the conversation away from agents are going to lead to human extinction back to the much more mundane but real, oh, wait, weird tech people are going to take all my data and use it to monetize themselves and give away and steal my privacy, which is the worst conversation Meta ever wants to be in.

31:16So you got a good product. Let it run. Let it run.

31:20Big Technology Podcast:You know, we do talk a lot about marketing on this show, and maybe just a lot of it is bad marketing. So you mentioned the Tamagotchi. We should talk about it because it's not only the agent. There is a device as well. It looks like a Tamagotchi. This is from Bloomberg. Meta debuts dedicated charm device for using Muse AI. Meta platforms unveiled a palm size dedicated gadget for using Muse, the company's popular new artificial intelligence assistant, pushing deeper into the AI devices market with a surprise announcement. The product was born out of the company's new design lab, led by Apple's former interface design chief, Alan Dye, and its super intelligence AI group.

31:58Big Technology Podcast:It's called the Muse Charm. It looks like a Tamagotchi, the digital pet from the 90s. It has a roughly two-inch display and runs an operating system designed to bring Muse to life on its own hardware. It's also kind of cute, right? You just kind of hold it and there's like a little Muse avatar there and I guess it can get stuff done for you. I don't know what's your reaction this I I tweeted about it I was like well what do you what well who's going to be the brave one in their social circle to break out the muse muse buddy first and it's certainly like it's some of these devices like Apple Vision Pro for instance you know they seem cool in the demo and and they do cool things but there is a weird social element to it the same thing that had the Google glasses I don't know if you're sitting at a table and somebody breaks out the MuseBuddy and asks it to call it an Uber.

32:51Big Technology Podcast:I don't know. Are they the cool person in the group, or do they not get an invite to dinner the next time? What do you think? Well, also, what is the Venn diagram between people who like cute Tamagotchi-type stuff and early adopters of personal AI agentic hardware? Maybe it's— We'll find out. There's some overlap. We will find out. So, okay. In terms of Meta being back, I have to say, So the one, any experimentation on form factors of hardware, I am excited by. Even the Rabbit R1, rest in peace, the Humane pin, we talked about all these a lot. Someone is going to crack a new form factor. Anything that moves us away from just looking at our phones that are rectangular blocks and maybe foldable rectangular blocks.

33:39But still, I'm excited. So I love that Meta is trying. But even bigger to me, actually, I think the audio-only glasses, this is really interesting. Like I actually was close to putting in the pre-order. I might go put it in this weekend. So I have the Meta Ray-Bans. You do too. We've talked about it a lot. They were great for photos and video, especially like on vacation, walking around, walk around New York City. They were pretty good at listening to audio. But meta AI was effectively useless on them. Now the idea, so obviously there's been plenty of backlash in fairness to, even though I do love the camera and I use it responsibly of people being creeped out by the camera.

34:26If Muse can translate into an audio only interface well for how good it is on the phone, I mean, audio only AI glasses become huge. Like I still can't even start to think about if that becomes a form factor that you're just walking along. Again, that proactivity that you're walking along, suddenly it's like, oh, wait, American Airlines just sent an email that because of the storms there might be a delay. That's massive. And to have that directly on your face with no creepiness of a camera. So to me, that's the biggest part of the whole hardware announcement. Separate, the VR glasses and stuff we can get into.

35:08But I think audio-only Ray-Bans is big.

35:12Big Technology Podcast:Yeah, I think it is. It is. And they've been called the pervert glasses, and I think they need to reverse that narrative. So that's one step to do that. That's okay. Are you going to buy that, the camera-free glasses? And are you going to buy a Muse Tamagotchi? I will buy the camera-free glasses, audio-only. I think I have to. I'm committing to that now. No, I'm not going to get a Tamagotchi. I'm like, I don't know. That's too much. And again, I can never look at that thing the same after what Alexander Wang did to that poor little labubu. It's like it's weird. He's still doing it. It's still going.

35:50It's weird. It's like you can't only look at it. But, oh, God. Just leave it alone, Alexander Wang.

35:58Big Technology Podcast:Wow. I'm glad we spoke about this. Yeah. Strong emotions on you. Someone tweeted, Tom, I got your data. I thought that was funny. I mean, they have to not fall down that path of like this is one big data stealing story. That's the only risk they have to leading in this race. Like otherwise, they're going to push this. Actually, do you know what this made me think about though? On one hand, their distribution advantage makes me convinced. Obviously, they're going to win. They're just going to push this out to everyone. But have you been on threads recently? Because that was their last creative product that should be dominant.

36:47And have you been on threads at all?

36:50Big Technology Podcast:No, I'm only on threads when Instagram basically makes me go there, but the incessant notifications that I need to be on threads. Yeah. I was wondering, that actually showed me that you can, will Muse end up like threads where they have a distribution advantage? They're going to get some number of people who are interested in that kind. It's the same reason Twitter never actually grew or X in terms of overall user numbers. It's because there's only weirdos like us that love to spend time on it. and like Threads, the TAM was not as big. So yeah, that's what I was definitely wondering. Is that an ominous potential signal for where Muse ends up?

37:38Big Technology Podcast:Well, I don't know. I mean, basically the question is the competition. Like with Threads, like Threads is bigger than X, but it's also like the size of X is not what matters. It's the influence. And it's hard to argue that Threads is 1 20th as influential as X. So I'm not 100 % sure. But I think we should, you know, the interesting thing here for me is that Meta was able to build this Muse product with an inferior model. And what does it mean for OpenAI's ability to compete with it, even though, like, OpenAI has better models? You know, are those better models going to make a difference? And, you know, going back to what we spoke about last week, if you can build good enough or good AI products with standard models, do you really need the frontier?

38:24Big Technology Podcast:So we're going to talk about that when we come back after the break. Before we go to the break, a word of thanks to you, our audience. Last week, we talked a little bit about how the pedants were owning our reviews. And of course, like when we're going out to try to interview somebody like Jeff Hinton or Demis Asabas and like the, you know, the front page of the show is a bunch of like one star pedantic complaints. It becomes harder to have, you know, to to book these interviews. And of course, like the show gets worse. So we knew that there was a lot of people who liked the show and just asked you to express it.

38:58Big Technology Podcast:And boy, did you answer the call last week? And, you know, it takes about like 30 five star reviews to wash out one. And it looks like we got that and more. So you're the best audience in the world. Really believe that. And just so thrilled that you responded the way you did after we asked for some five-star reviews last week. So thank you. I'll leave it alone for as long as I can. And just appreciate you all for doing that. All right. We'll be back right after this. This episode is brought to you by PayPal. You know how a mom's bag has everything? Sunscreen? Snacks? A stapler? The new PayPal app is like that, but for your money.

39:37Shop, pay, manage your account, and earn rewards all in one place. And with purchase protection on eligible items, biometric security, and pass keys, you're protected at every step. Download the new PayPal app to get started. See paypal.com slash protection terms.

39:52Big Technology Podcast:This episode is brought to you by AvePoint. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data, and most teams have no single way to see it, secure it, and prove it's under control. That's exactly what AvePoint does. For 25 years, they've been the trusted layer beneath the world's most demanding data, now extended across your entire AI estate. Your data, your cloud, and the agents acting on your behalf. It's how more than 28 ,000 organizations deploy AI with confidence. So innovation scales without scaling risk.

40:37Big Technology Podcast:Avpoint, the unifying trust layer for AI. Head to avpoint.com to see how enterprises deploy AI with confidence. Learn more at avpt.co slash big technology podcast. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, Use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast.

41:17Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

41:23Big Technology Podcast:And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast Friday edition. joined as always by Ranjan Roy of Margins. All right, Ranjan. So before we get into the fact that, or maybe this all connects, right? I was going to say before we get into the fact that Meta was able to build Muse with an inferior model to what OpenAI has, and they have, and so we'll talk about the implications there. But one of the interesting things that came through my feed, just to go all harness hive here was somebody tweeted it's it's not the harness that it's the harness that matters not the model with the picture of like the guy in the old old time meeting trying to stand up and make a point and instead of the guy's face there's the muse labubu face there which is g-rated so we can show it but but um the thing that's interesting is what meta did here was they took a good enough model right because we've seen all the benchmarks We're like the meta models and the Grok models were chasing the frontier at a lower cost.

42:28Big Technology Podcast:And we're like, all right, let's see if that takes on. But what they were able to do is use that model, which was not the frontier model, and then hook it in to all these different services via connectors. And that has in turn made a very useful product without having to use frontier AI intelligence. So you were right. It was all about the harness and they're doing work. So talk a little bit about what you think that says about the future of AI and how important these connectors are. I'm glad we are saying this. My only quip with that tweet is that's kind of the confess your unpopular opinion meme framework.

43:12And it's not an unpopular opinion. I've been saying this. Others have been saying this. And again, I have seen this firsthand at Reiter in terms of our own foundation models that are not at the frontier but are advanced, but the harness and the product and how everything connects to other systems data for a while now. So I think I've had an advantage in terms of why that should work and what we're seeing right now. But maybe to try to be nuanced about it, there's two questions right here. Do you need that level of connectivity, tool definition, overall data, how you handle memory, compute, like to make Muse work?

43:54The frontier model argument has always been that still over time, like frontier models will subsume all of that infrastructure and just be able to do it without most of that infrastructure. So I think – I don't know. It's still relatively open. But I'm very glad that like – it is – like no one is talking about what models it's running on, Muse is running on. And I love that. We're only talking about not even – the harness is good. It's the product in the end. So I've always been harness side team product and it's finally getting some recognition.

44:34Big Technology Podcast:So it's a big win for Ron John's side. Now, I would argue the models have gotten to the point where this is possible, and therefore they are able to use these harnesses and connectors. But, you know, we should talk a little bit about the connectors because basically, you know, they have been tweeting a long list of companies that are going to connect with Muse. Things like Best Buy and Gap and Fanatics and Walmart, Sephora, Dick's Sporting Goods, Wayfair. I've mentioned before, Expedia, Shopify has connected with it. So talk a little bit about what added functionality that I think T-Mobile, I used it with T-Mobile this week to check on my phone bill.

45:13Big Technology Podcast:What do these connectors do and why are they important? Yeah, I think it is really important on two sides. There's the agentic commerce side. But again, this is where announcing all these partnerships means these companies are going to be pushing direct feeds into Muse rather than it having to go use web search slash computer use to try to log in to try to get to your find different items. So I think that's going to be very interesting. Trying to replicate the activity that would take place in a dedicated iOS app but directly within the Muse app and ecosystem is very interesting. I think there is something too.

45:53It is still clunky. It's gotten a lot better of logging into T-Mobile via some kind of web browser takeover. Now being able to do that kind of work, I think gets very interesting. But to me, the most interesting tension here is, and there was a lot of chatter around this this week, it's so much of so many businesses is built around consumer lack of inertia. like customer i mean t-mobile i'm sure like do they want to have you be able to go in and be like actually explain to me that five-page pdf phone bill that i've never quite understood and never took the time to upload into chat gpt and go consume a comparison shop and tell me how i can save money and get find a better plan like this is gonna be there's a i mean this is what a lot of people, Expedia.

46:50Expedia does not actually own the inventory. Expedia is a price comparison engine that then will lead out and make money off the lead gen to the travel site. So does that start to go away? It's actually interesting to me that these companies are jumping into these partnerships because I actually think this disintermediates a lot of existing businesses. This actually changes a lot of businesses that have been built off people forgetting to unsubscribe or whatever else. So to me, these partnerships, I get it. You're trying to look cool and add it to some magenta commerce press earnings call or something.

47:30I don't know. But I still think it's not good for a lot of these businesses.

47:35Big Technology Podcast:Yeah, and it was interesting because there was initial joy when this came out when these companies were connecting with Muse. And the stock market really reacted to it. Like they sent Shopify up. They sent, I think, Instacart up. They sent Expedia up. And then all these companies, maybe outside of Shopify, gave up their gains like immediately. And there's a chart that's been making its way around X called the Muse Sell-Off Travel Aggregators versus Meta. And you've seen Meta up, you know, 20 % since August 25th. And who's down? It's Uber, DoorDash, Expedia, TripAdvisor, Instacart, Airbnb, and the list goes on.

48:14Big Technology Podcast:And it's almost proportional to the gains that Meta has had, the losses that these companies had. And I think that's actually, you know, I was thinking this week, you know, do you give these companies credit for playing ball with Muse? Because it's going to basically like, even if Muse doesn't take off, this is going to be a thing most likely. And so they're going to make the decisions they make now will definitely influence how they operate in the future. So do you give them credit or do you say, you know, they're probably toast. And I agree with you. I think the rise of, you know, apps like Muse, you know, they become, they become threats to these platforms because they basically perform like a app like Muse will perform the function that something like Expedia did, where Expedia used to be the agent where it would go to every website, every like travel site and find you the hotel or find you the flight.

49:03Big Technology Podcast:Now Muse can do that. So it sort of makes I think this plays out like the death of SaaS, where nothing's going to happen immediately or dramatically. But I do think there's a strong parallel between the idea that, like, enterprise agentic AI is going to kill off SaaS, which I still believe over time. I think this does any kind of, like, non-inventory owning marketplace, sorry, not, like, effectively agent, as you said, is severely under threat. And if it's not Muse, it could be Instinct. It could be Google releases something. There's like all those services. Whoever wins in that race or if there's multiple players, they do the same work that the Expedias of the world have done.

49:47But I mean, yeah, commerce is definitely going to change. I think that's a fair thing to say. Okay.

49:56Big Technology Podcast:So before we move on from this, I need to ask you, what does this say about Frontier Labs in general? right because if meta was able to build muse with a non-frontier model with the harness and connectors do you need frontier labs to do most things and it goes back to our discussion from last week about the the chart we brought up from the ramp economics lab where frontier model usage was 53 percent of all ai spent august 2nd it dropped down to 45 percent of all ai spent september six now it's gone up and down right it's at its moment but the thing that i found most interesting was uh this is from eric karazian who's the chief economist at ramp if he says if you see this chart know this is my perspective the revenue going grow the rev the revenue growth path for open ai and anthropic has weakened due to the competition and that competition is from other u.s models not china and open source so the standard models are doing a good enough job and the standard models are often cheaper.

50:58So what do you think this says? It's a trend across multiple data points. And it's a massive threat into any kind of IPO story. And I think that's what I'm not saying directly the human extinction conversation has helped distract from, but it is a massive threat. I firmly believe I've seen this firsthand, like the conversation change. If you want to do 3D world modeling, Astra's your guy. Like, great. If you want to...

51:28Big Technology Podcast:Everything else, go to Alexander Wang and the sexualized LeBouBou. Yeah, go to the LeBou... Oh, God. Sorry. I need to just erase that from my mind. We're going to have to do explicit. But it's not forever. The LeBouBous themselves, I can never have one in my house again. Not that we have them. We don't have any LeBouBous, but I can never get one. We have a LeBouBou. Yeah. Well, I guess we should throw ours out. Yeah, we have a Lububu keychain. Get rid of that thing. Or look at it. Look at it and tell me how you feel next time. You're going to feel dirty.

52:04I think this is going to be, to me, actually, the single most important conversation of the fall in the next few months. Because why pay for a frontier model? Can other models do the job? What is the added benefit? Does something about frontier models subsume all of the harness? This is the debate. And it going into this kind of IPO environment, it's a dangerous one for these companies. Yeah.

52:37Big Technology Podcast:No, I have a story coming out about it on Big Technology. It's called Right Now the Working Headline, and I'm going to publish it later this afternoon. On Friday, Meta's Muse revival and the AI frontier's unspoken threat. I think it's a big deal. no sexualized libubo images though please no i will not only for the people watching youtube will i put those uh those images up everybody else or i guess on our shorts everybody else is freed from them um all right before we go got to talk to you about dopamine sites and we can do this briefly uh there is a phenomenon where people have gotten so much dopamine from like shopping online that there are these new sites called dopamine sites that are meant just to mimic that activity and you don't actually do the activity, right?

53:22Big Technology Podcast:So this is from One Story About It. This week I placed orders for a$44 ,000 Patek Philippe hand-engraved watch, a$12 ,500 Hermes bag, a$9 ,800 Tiffany diamond ring, and a$7 ,000 Cartier love bracelet and yellow gold. I don't need any of them. I certainly can't afford them. Thankfully, they'll never arrive. Instead of Amazon, I spent the past week browsing a new breed of websites called dopamine sites, a trend that's emerged in South Korea. It's called like dopamine shop or food never comes where you order food and shop online. And you just do it for the dopamine hit, not for the actual products themselves.

54:04Big Technology Podcast:I think we just have to talk about this before we go. You must have some perspective on these dopamine sites. It's crazy, right? Right. So, okay, my hot take on this is going to be, I actually think this is great. What? Yes. Because I was thinking about it, my initial reaction was like, oh my God, this represents the end of humanity. This represents like, this is the most depressing thing ever. But in reality, it's just kind of like a video game at that point. It's just kind of like, and we all do it, like scrolling Zillow and setting alerts on houses that you're not going to buy, shopping. Like you see these every, I mean, having worked in digital commerce for many years, like so much of the experience is around the thrill of the search and the dopamine resulting from that or getting that deal.

54:58That is entire basis of retail in general. So something that kind of, it's like it turns it into a little bit of a video game. To me, it kind of feels like actually dress-up games are quite popular where you just like buy clothes, any kind of digital good that you're buying. And now you don't even have to buy it. You just go through the shopping itself. So I'm pro-dopamine sites. And if it's not sports betting and other more negative and nefarious dopamine hits, why not, Alex? Why not?

55:32Big Technology Podcast:Someone had this amazing idea. They wrote, multi-billion dollar opportunity in combining these dopamine sites with the lottery. So you pay$50 and there's a one in 1 ,000 chance that that Patek actually arrives. I love that. Can you imagine? You know, there's like bid up, I think. There are all these sites that are really kind of scammy, but basically are built around like you put in like a dollar and you might win something that's like$8 ,000. but then they only do it when a certain critical mass does it. Like this, I guess this model has definitely, this exists in the scammy corners of the internet forever.

56:10And now, but now they're not taking your money. They're just, how are they monetizing, do you think? Or they're just like, it's just for the love of the dopamine.

56:19Big Technology Podcast:They're selling your data to Meta so they can build these things on Muse. No, you know what? They are doing it for the love of the game. The love of just giving you, we'll pay for a little bit of compute and you get the dopamine. So I'm pro dopamine sites. I can't get on board with it. But look, folks, you know, if you don't want to shop on a dopamine site, you could always get your twice weekly hit of dopamine here on Big Technology Podcast. Okay. Won't always be perfect. Promise that. But we're here and we'll hand that dopamine over. and we won't make you go through a fake sales process. No.

57:00Big Technology Podcast:Sounds about right. Give us your data. You don't have to give us your data. No, don't give us your data. Absolutely not. We don't need that data. I don't even know what I would do with it. Yeah, me neither. Ranjan, great time as always. Nice to talk about something non-extinction as you said. No, I don't know. Sexualized the boo-boos. I don't know what wins in the great debate. Well, folks, if you've stayed this far, we appreciate you. So thank you for doing that. And I would promise not to have any conversations about sexualized labubli next week, although that's a promise that might be broken.

57:37Big Technology Podcast:All right. See you next week. All right, Ranjan. Thank you again. Thanks, everybody, for listening and watching. And we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast. Push your limits. Train with precision. See the results. At Equinox, that's high-performance living. everything you need to lock in and unlock your potential at equinox start today at equinox.com

58:01brussels clean up nicely at sweet green maple glazed roasted and edges perfectly caramelized sweet green's fall harvest is back on the menu and the season's most overlooked little green vegetable is dressed to be devoured you know what to do order on the sweet green app