Musk vs. OpenAI, Artists Leak Sora, Temu Black Friday

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31:24You're used to hearing my voice on the world bringing you interviews from around the globe. And you hear me reporting environment and climate news. I'm Carolyn Buehler. And I'm Marco Werman. We're now with you hosting the world together. More global journalism with a fresh new sound. Listen to the world on your local public radio station and wherever you find your podcasts.

31:52And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast Friday edition coming to you on a holiday weekend Sunday. Let's talk quickly about this Mark Benioff perspective on agents. So this is the way I put it in my recap of the interview. By the way, if you are interested in the interview, we, of course, will have it as the most recent episode in your feed, my conversation with Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff. But this is how I put it in the summary. Instead of our own assistants, Benioff thinks all companies will build their own AI agents that will act on our behalf when we check in with customer service or need regular attention.

32:28And he's angling Salesforce as the data provider that will make it all work. Basically, like our view of agents has been like it will be an agent that acts on your behalf, uses your computer on your behalf. And Benioff is saying, I have all your sales data, all your customer service data. When you need something from a company, you just check in with them. They're going to use Salesforce as the back end. And that will be the agent that enables you to do more. So it will be coming from the corporate side as opposed to necessarily the individual side. Rajan, I'm sure you have a perspective on this.

32:59And I'm curious what you think about this. Is this the future of agents? I agree with Mark. In theory, in theory, I agree with Mark. I think this idea, he's exactly correct. He has the correct vision that agents will be built by companies to solve existing workflows and problems that they already have some heavy processes around, potentially a lot of people involved with. It's not going to be, there's like the augmentation side of it where you're actually helping an individual do an existing process better. And then there's the replace monotonous, repetitive processes completely and remove people from them so they can do higher value work.

33:44I think the second scenario is the more likely scenario and probably going to be the better one because it both, I mean, and it's going to be disruptive. It will be completely disruptive, but it allows, it's going to be more efficient for companies and their bottom line. Again, like replace the repetitive monotonous workflows and processes with AI agents. And I think it'll allow people to do more important work. And this is what we've seen, I mean, through any kind of like disruptive transformation and how work is done from the factory line to computers coming into the workforce. And I think this is what's going to happen again.

34:27So what do you think that means for the plans from like ChatGPT, from, sorry, OpenAI and Claude to build their own version of agents? You know, they've had this like sort of platform attitude where they want to build the big platforms that will take over your computer, interact with every service on your behalf. And their vision is that will be from the perspective of the consumer. I mean, maybe their bots, the bots that they build interact with the Salesforce bots. But, you know, I'm curious what you think it means for like the broader vision from these consumer facing companies. I don't think it changes that much because the split between enterprise and consumer is how this world of software works today.

35:08I think some of these companies made it feel like maybe there would be more of a blurring between the two. But this could just be a reminder that there will be some companies that are the winners in enterprise. Again, sales forces and service nows are not companies that are on the tip of like the tongue of every regular person. So there are companies that clearly want to consume in enterprise that don't touch consumer at all. And I think that's going to happen again. Because again, businesses will have very, very specific needs where they need to build things that actually help them run more efficiently and do work better and make people more productive.

35:48And then individuals, like the idea that an individual is going to let Claude take over their computer at work to try to figure out how to do their own individual job better, I think is never, was never going to be like how this works. There's always, there's too many different teams and functions and data sets and whatever else within any organization that no one person is going to be the one to build that agent. It's going to be like the company that does it. Fascinating. So this is a clarifying moment here. It's like basically Benioff has the right idea. I think he has the right idea. I think Salesforce and Agent Force, it's interesting though, like how they're approaching this is they're coming at this in a big way, which has been interesting to me rather than just, you know, like releasing it, letting people use it, showing the adoption.

36:44Yeah, this is, and again, he's one of the world's greatest salesmen. But it's such a marketing-heavy process. And going back to what I was saying earlier, again, very long-term, bullish, short-term worried. This is the kind of promise in marketing where I do worry that when every one of these customers from Salesforce sits down, sees some demo, hears some vision from Benioff, and then tries to actually build what they're trying to build and realizes, wait, this doesn't just magically work. Like agents, the biggest like disconnect I still see is the promise of agents is that, okay, you have like 10 steps in some process.

37:26The idea is eventually the AI agent will be able to make a decision at every step of that process about what to do next. That is hard. That is going to, that I don't want to say it's impossible, but that is going to be really, really hard. versus maybe you take some, there's some like hard-coded if-then logic. There's some generative AI sprinkled into some layers. There's some things that people literally hard-code into these workflows. I think that is a more realistic idea, but the way they're pitching this right now is you just plug it in. The AI knows what to do at every step of the way, knows where the data is.

38:08And that, especially for large corporations, I don't see as realistic. $2 per conversation, if it can pull it off, is that a good deal? That actually was a good deal. I liked you had brought up the pricing around$2 per conversation. So the price, two bucks. I think customer service is expensive for anyone who calls and gets frustrated with like any kind of retail customer service. It is pricey. It can definitely cost a lot more than that. So that I think is okay. But one thing that's interesting is pricing per conversation, I don't think is going to be the model. I think it's going to be pricing per outcome.

38:45And I've seen this from some other, some other like AI sales, CRM transformation type companies that they actually, until you pay for the resolution and all, because again, the AI, the time spent and the number of steps it takes to get to the outcome is no longer as important as it was when it was a person dealing with it. So I think pricing per outcome is going to be the right business model, not for just having the conversation. Okay. And one last thing I want to touch on Benioff's comments on Klarna. And you also have some thoughts on the Klarna IPO. So let's do that. And then we're going to move on to this Australia social media bill.

39:26Oh, so I loved the fact that you asked about the Klarna CEO talking about canceling Salesforce because Benioff replied, they said they were canceling, but I didn't get their cancellation notice. All I saw was a lot of provocative statements. At the same time, they're also writing on LinkedIn about how they're loving Slack and rebuilding it. So I like, again, Benioff, we just talked about how potentially overselling, but at least being very grand in terms of the vision that's being sold, and him calling out and recognizing another CEO who's able to do the same. One of the interesting things about that was Benioff mentioned that Klarna is going to IPO and they're going to have to show Wall Street statements about workforce and statements about their pipeline and data and that stuff that's typically housed within Salesforce.

40:21And he's basically like, you're going to just throw that into an AI system and, you know, have it spit out the answers. And he's like, basically like, I'd like to see them try. so I'm curious A, do you think this is true that they're really moving off given the fact that the IPO is coming and B, what do you think about the Klarna IPO? And Klarna of course for folks is a financial technology company that lets people pay for things later among other activities sorry, go ahead Yeah, so on A what's hilarious to me is what Benioff is kind of accusing Klarna's CEO of is exactly what he is promising, is that there's going to be this new infrastructure that allows you to just take all the data that sits in your computer, I said sits in your company and corporation, and just have it all analyzed and run and magically execute these processes without having to have too much software.

41:23Of course, his argument is that the only software that will be able to do this for you is Salesforce. And Klarna is basically saying, okay, we just don't need the Salesforce layer to do this. We can do this ourselves using just any existing LLMs. But they're both pitching the same exact vision. Benioff's just saying that you need Salesforce to do it. Yeah, I didn't even think about it that way, but it's true. In terms of the IPO, I wanted to, I was reading Klarna's IPO, I think is going to be a good bellwether for tech IPOs have been far and few between. I think 2025 is going to be a really, really interesting year because there are dozens, if not maybe hundreds of unicorns, especially some very, very hefty valued unicorns that have been waiting to go public at some point.

42:16And next year is supposed to be the year. And Klarin is supposed to be one of those. There's like Chime, Brex, I think a few others, Ramp, they're all supposed to kind of be this new class of newly public fintech companies. So I think in terms of will we finally see the wave of IPOs that we got a bit of it in 2021 and it stopped, are we going to start to see them again next year? We're supposed to, and it's going to be really interesting for the overall markets whether we do. And what do you think Klarna's chances are? And do you think all this AI hype that they're doing is part of their sort of sales pitch to Wall Street when they come out?

42:58Yeah, I think they're playing this really well, I think. And again, I said it, I listened to your episode with the interview with the Klarna CEO, and he gets what he's talking about. Like, there's no doubt. I was a little skeptical going in, and I like that he did recognize it was for the hype. But the way you can tell when someone is talking about like they've done the work, like they know this isn't just, oh, we are using GPT-402 magically transform customer service. Like he was actually talking about starting with certain simple things, scaling them, which parts exactly of the overall customer service process you can automate with an LLM.

43:41So he gets it. I think it's going to be a good part of their story and it should help them. I hope it does. Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see. I think as Benioff mentioned, once they come out, are they able to produce accurate data? They actually really canceled Salesforce. These are going to be some interesting questions that we're going to ask as they hit their roadshow. So in Australia, this is a story that's been percolating for a while and seemed to have a big moment last week. The country has passed a ban on kids using social media under 16. So under the age of 16. So 15 and under, you are not able to use social media.

44:21It's from one of the stories under the new laws from CNBC, under the new laws which are scheduled to come into effect in about one year. Children in Australia under the age of 16 will be banned from setting up accounts of popular social media sites, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. Australia's ban is wildly popular with voters. 77 % support the move. and there's been some terrible things that have happened to kids in Australia, as there have been to kids all around the world who have used social media and either felt bad about themselves or become obsessed with self-harm and then gone and taken action.

44:58And if one of these platforms are found to have not been enforcing the age limit, the penalty could be as much as$50 million Australian, which is 32 million US for breaches. And I think that's per breach. So this could be quite costly if they don't enforce it. Of course, there's some weird things about the bill. Like they're not allowed to check government IDs. So how are you going to know if a kid is actually 15 or under? I don't know how that's going to work, but I personally will say my perspective on this bill is positive. I don't believe kids 15 and under should be using social media. And I don't think you can really do this unilaterally as a parent.

45:41If your other kids are using social media, you can't say my 15-year-old will not because they become a pariah. And this is a place where government intervention is actually quite good because it just makes everybody ban it. What do you think? I think this is such a perfect example of unintended or poorly drafted legislation that has the exact right intention. Because again, I 1000 % agree with you that the idea that, especially like middle schoolers, early high schoolers are sitting there and like social media and the algorithmic interactions behind it are actually driving their wellbeing and how they're kind of like, how they socialize.

46:24But I think this ban, it exempts YouTube. And under the auspices that it's a health and wellness platform and education platform, which, yes, you can argue, maybe. But again, as I'm now reporting back from a week with the normies, my niece was just YouTube shorts all the time. And YouTube shorts is TikTok to teenagers, and she's 12 years old. And I've seen this with other friends' kids as well, that YouTube shorts, YouTube has quietly defeated TikTok among younger people, I think. And it's the same thing. It's just scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. TikTok is not a social network as much as in the same way Facebook ever was.

47:15Even Instagram with reels is not a social network in that same traditional way where people are posting a photo of himself in a nice situation and waiting for comments. Like all of these are moving towards pure, just kind of unhealthy media consumption platforms. And I think this misses the mark by exempting YouTube. So your big thing on this is like good idea, but it should go further? Yes, 100%. They, I mean, YouTube. Oh, here we go. YouTube, maybe shorts cannot be accessible to a non-verified teenager. I don't know. I get the verification side of it. It's going to be the most complex part of this.

48:01But it's as all these companies, they're all moving towards, again, Instagram with reels, YouTube with shorts. They're all moving to that same kind of passive consumption TikTok model. and TikTok is not a social network in any normal sense of the word that we use it as. So I think it has to be thought of as differently. This kind of feels like if you took social media circuit 2017 and you were trying to come up with what is social media and how do we make it better, which is something I've written about back then. This feels like something I would have thought then before TikTok changed everything.

48:40Yeah. I think if your main claim is that this is something that just needs to go further and I'd still sign on for it. But I do think that it'll be really tough to take YouTube away from kids and especially from parents giving YouTube to kids because it's like YouTube on the iPad is the new pacifier and it's going to be very tough to like take that away. And then you get into competition issues where it's like, well, what about Netflix? You know, so I don't know. That's where it really gets a little bit difficult. But I think this broader idea of like, let's use government power to sort of enforce some sort of limits on the kid use of social media.

49:21I think that's quite good. And it's going to be interesting to see how this all plays out because I don't know, kids that young having access to social media, it's rough and it will cost these companies some business not being able to advertise to kids. So we'll see how that goes. But I don't think there's any perfect way to do this. And I think what the nice thing about, you know, tech companies often try, they test in Australia, right? It's like English language speaking, and they're not going to tell anybody back in the U.S. what's happening. So then you can have a control result and a variable result and see what's better.

49:58So let's test this one in Australia. Thanks for doing this. And we'll figure out how it goes. I am looking forward to visiting Australia this Christmas season. So I'm thankful for Australia taking the hit on whatever, whatever these new features and test limits are. Exactly. Okay. One quick item I want to touch on. I just am sort of bringing this up because I think this is important and we should talk about it. And it's going to have an impact in the tech world. And we can just do like one or two minutes on it. but Huawei launched the first phone capable of running its new self-developed operating system called Harmony OS.

50:38And this is with the Mate 70, which basically has these new chips that put it on par with the iPhone. And I'm curious what you think about this, because it could be a real big deal. I think this could be a big deal. I mean, we're already talking about Android potentially being spun out of Google. We know how much iOS has become critical to Apple's dominant position. So the idea that a fully self-developed mobile operating system could come from a different company, I think would be big if this actually works and this actually gets rolled out properly. I don't know. Why do you think this is such a big story?

51:19I think, A, we know that Apple has struggled to sell iPhones in China. What's the reason? And Chinese developed phones have become much, much better. And so that's made a huge difference. And I think this could actually be a challenge to Apple. The more this comes, the more this rises, because again, 20 % of Apple sales come from China. Then you think about the global dominance. And more and more in places like Europe, where they're allowed, Huawei phones are making an impact. And if they have better chips that enable them to run like an iPhone does, and they have their own operating system, this could be a real, not only area of a business challenge for manufacturers like Apple and technology companies like Apple, but a cultural challenge where you'll see certain apps preloaded, maybe WeChat becomes standard.

52:08I mean, I'm just spitballing, but I think this is something not to be ignored. The fact that China is starting to make some really good smartphones the same way they're starting to make some really good EVs. Wait, that's a, okay. I'm with you on that, that it's something that hasn't existed before. And as we'll talk in just a second, like expanding their own retail powerhouse companies outside of China into the rest of the world has upended the industry completely. The idea that this becomes really the first way to take the Chinese internet and expand it outside of China, could it be WeChat as a default app, as you said?

52:48Or who knows? But I agree, it completely changes how technology is distributed around the world. And that's something that America has been completely dominant, as every smartphone in the world is Android-based at the least, if not on iOS. So that could be big. I also, I will say, did you ever see that Trifold phone that Huawei released? Sure did. Yeah. Apparently, I just looked up, they're going for$6 ,000 on eBay. but if this maybe I will be using Harmony OS if that price can come down just a little bit. All right let's come for a landing this week talking about Black Friday because of course it's Black Friday weekend moving into Cyber Monday.

53:29Is Cyber Monday even a thing anymore like back in the day when there was the internet and there was brick and mortar we would do Cyber Monday but something interesting has happened this year which is not a surprise to our listeners which is that Timu and Sheehan have really gained especially among young people So where do people do their Black Friday shopping? This is from Modern Retail and Attest Research. 80 % said Amazon, 62 % said Walmart, 37 % said Target, 24 % Best Buy. At the very end is Timu, 21 % and Shein, 14%. But then the numbers are quite interesting when it comes to Gen Z. Gen Z respondents said they plan to do their Black Friday shopping on Timu at 24 % and then Xi 'an at a quarter.

54:18I think one quarter, more than one quarter said Timu and 24 % said Xi 'an. So you have these two Chinese retailers making up effectively 50 % of all Black Friday shopping for young people. One comment and then a question to you. Comment is, I had no idea that you could even do Black Friday shopping on a Shein or a T-MU because I thought they were already discounted to the bone and there was no, you couldn't go further. So that's interesting to me. And the question to you is, is this a sea change in behavior or something that's more minor? Because when we talked about these two companies, it's always been like a push and pull between like, you know, are they actually a threat to Amazon or are they just like one tiny percentage?

55:04But seeing 50 % of Gen Z doing their Black Friday shopping on these two sites cannot be something received very well within Amazon HQ. On your first point, I will agree that I did go on Timo. I did not actually shop on there on Friday. These sites are so heavily discounted. I could not even tell whether there was any actual sales going on or whether it was some other like dark pattern UX trick to try to make me think. But when Timu, if you go on any normal day, literally it says 100 % off on the order is the banner up top. And then there's a bunch of like little customer journey tricks that it takes you on on some crazy path as you're just trying to buy something.

55:50So yes, I don't think they're giving real sales. What's interesting though, and Reuters have reported on this is that Timu was bidding on terms like Walmart Black Friday deals, Kohl's Black Friday, Bed Bath & Beyond on Google search, and then increasing the actual cost per click for each of those searches for the original retailer itself. So they are going head to head with America's largest retailers and trying to pull away business. And again, this kind of like competitor keyword bidding is not unheard of at all in the retail world, but they are moving in aggressively on this. But given their existing prices, there's one line, it was saying, we are witnessing the death of Black Friday, a Bloomberg opinion contributor said, not because people stopped shopping, but because they never stop shopping.

56:44And I think that's actually the biggest takeaway of this is that they have made shopping at severe discounts, something that we would wait for Friday for as the norm for a lot of consumers. And that does change this whole thing. That's why Amazon now is not Black Friday, it's Black Friday week. And everyone, it's Black Friday weekend. It's no longer just one day you get these deals. Is Cyber Monday still a thing? do you know do you know cyber five no this term so in retail originally there was black friday then there was cyber monday then because they noticed people start were shopping from thanksgiving to monday there was a few years it was called the cyber five basically the thursday to monday shopping period and now i think everyone is just looking at this like you know it's weeks i'm sure your inbox has been clogged up with Black Friday promotions for many, many days now.

57:44And people are shopping. I think Salesforce, their retail segment released some numbers, Shopify released numbers that overall, this is supposed to be a pretty good Black Friday. And Timon Sheehan did not steal all of Walmart and Kohl's business. But overall, yeah, I think consumers now, it's the idea that it's just to Friday's long, long gone. Right. And we did a big Black Friday sale on Big Technology Substack. So if you're a subscriber, check your inbox and maybe sign up. Maybe you'll have one last big Black Friday purchase left in you. And I might have one in me because Ronjan, I'm about to maybe do something crazy.

58:23What are you going to do? Well, I just went to teamu.com and I saw a beautiful thing. What'd you see? E-bike for adults, 400 watt motor, 20 mile per hour to 25 mile per hour range. It has 14 inch tires. It's a big boy. It looks like a motorcycle. Originally on sale for$2 ,042.96. Black Friday deal,$311.20. An 84 % discount. It doesn't say whether it will burn your house down or not, but this is a beautiful looking e-bike. They've sold 1.2 thousand. It's the number nine bestseller on the site. It has a 4.5 star rating. This is baby J in the US. I love it. I got it to commute to work and had my first day with it and everyone loved it as well.

59:19It's low key sexy as heck to find my style and definitely worth the money another user ta star star star 23 excellent i bought this for my husband for our anniversary and even with him being 6 4 it's very comfortable and has amazing power behind it great for the cost meets expectations and i'm looking at here i'm thinking about adding it to the card at an 84 discount me on the i don't even know if it has a name wait does it have a name that's what i was gonna ask because i just called the timu mobile coming to a street near you i i just went on timu and searched e-bike for adults as well and i see the chroma 750 watt adult electric scooter that has a photo of an e-bike with a little puppy in a basket kind of on the underside of it which is the most odd picture i've ever seen however i will just note that this also says it's discounted by 60%.

1:00:23But then when I Google the same name, I see the same item on Amazon for the same price. So I think this is a reminder that everything, inflation is over. Since we like to bet probabilities, let's end with this. Over under 50 % chance that this thing burns down your house. Oh, I would take the heavy over on that one. Heavy over. This thing, it's basically, yeah, that poor puppy at the bottom that does not look too safe. The Insurance Fraud 4000 stored in your garage and cash in within 90 days. That's the real value here. All right, Ranjan, well, I'm wishing you a happy Cyber Sunday, moving into a Cyber Monday.

1:01:07Great to see you. And thanks again for being here. Well, I'll see you next week on my new T-Mobile. Okay, I'll bring over the Insurance Fraud 4000 and you and I can record in person. All right, everybody, thanks for listening. And we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.