OpenAI’s Risky Browser Bet, Amazon’s Mass Automation Plan, Clippy’s Back

29:22And that if you download the app, I see a video here in New York, 56th and 8th, which I've actually been to that Dave's Hot Chicken. There was a bit of a mini riot out there of people trying to get in and get their free sliders. So cheers to the marketers out there who could still cause a mini riot by just giving out free sliders if you download their app. Well, allow me to say it loud and clear. Happy birthday to you, Drake, and congrats for being the reason why Sora is no longer number one on the App Store. You did it, man. You did it, Drake. Thank you for just bringing us back to what tech should be, a brand tricking you into downloading their app for some chicken.

30:05Going back to the roots. So yeah, on the other side of this break, we are going to talk about this crazy Amazon story to me, the biggest tech story of the week. The New York Times headline, Amazon plans to replace more than half a million jobs with robots. That's coming up right after this. Did you know your credit card points and miles can lose value to inflation? Credit card companies often reduce the redemption value of your points and miles. Now imagine a credit card with rewards that can grow in value. With the Gemini credit card, you can earn Bitcoin or one of over 50 other cryptos instantly with no annual fee.

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31:17This content is not investment advice and trading crypto involves risk. The Gemini credit card cannot be used to make gambling-related purchases. Shape the future of enterprise AI with agency. A-G-N-T-C-Y. Now an open source Linux Foundation project, Agency is leading the way in establishing trusted identity and access management for the Internet of Agents, a collaboration layer that ensures AI agents can securely discover, connect, and work across any framework. With agency, your organization gains open, standardized tools and seamless integration, including robust identity management to be able to identify, authenticate and interact across any platform, empowering you to deploy multi-agent systems with confidence.

32:06Join industry leaders like Cisco, Dell Technologies, Google Cloud, Oracle, Red Hat and 75 plus supporting companies to set the standard for secure, scalable AI infrastructure. Is your enterprise ready for the future of Vigentic AI? Visit agency.org to explore use cases now. That's A-G-N-T-C-Y dot O-R-G. And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast Friday edition. Major story in the New York Times this week. Amazon plans to replace more than a half million jobs with robots. I'll read the beginning of it. Amazon executives believe that companies on the cusp of its next big workplace shift, replacing more than a half million jobs with robots, Amazon's U.S.

32:48workforce has more than tripled since 2018 to almost 1.2 million people. But Amazon's automation team expects the company can avoid hiring more than 160 ,000 people in the United States it would otherwise need by 2027. That would save 30 cents on each item that Amazon picks, packs and delivers to its customers. executives told Amazon's board last year that they helped robotic automation would allow the company to continue to avoid adding to its U.S. workforce in the coming years. Even though they expect to sell twice as many products by 2033, that would translate to more than 600 ,000 people whom Amazon didn't need to hire.

33:28All right, a couple things here. It's not that they're going to replace the people, as far as we know, that are in the workplace, in the warehouses today, or fulfillment centers, as Amazon likes to call them, it's that the coming robotics would basically alleviate the need for them to hire more people. So this headline, they're going to replace the people, I think is a little bit extreme. But I'll just say this one thing and then turn it over to you, Rajan. We are seeing the robotic technology increase at an unbelievable pace. And of course, a lot of that has to do with years of research behind it, but also better AI models within these things.

34:13And for Amazon, the real problem has always been putting the items in the rack and then picking them out and then putting them in a package. That requires real dexterity of the human hands that robots have not been able to do. They're very good at shuffling racks back and forth. That technology has really improved tremendously in recent years. And whether that's going to happen or not, I don't know. But part of the story says Amazon would like to see 75 % of its fulfillment center workforce automated, which means that they believe that this technology is really progressing. So let me turn to you around, John.

34:55What did you think about this story? And is it as scary to you as it sounds to me in terms of the impact on employment? I think it's as scary as it sounds in terms of like the impact of unemployment. I think it is inevitable, again, having been in the retail world and like pick pack ship is what you're describing and seeing what robotics are already feasible. And you have it correct that like, like actually like receive like, you know, a person reaching into one container, pulling into another, understanding which product it's actually going to put, they are actually going to pull, putting it into a robot that then takes it to a different part of the warehouse.

35:36that's how things already work to replace that person who's doing the picking and the packing into like the as part of the process is it's such a different skill robots i do think are moving in that direction i think that where i see the speed of it being very difficult is like uh warehouses or fulfillment centers are still built for people to do that work so are you going to have and this kind of gets back into like optimists and do robots have to look like humans and have the same dexterity as humans versus you actually build the fulfillment center specific to what robots are best at um but yeah and which we debate in the past i think but uh but overall i think it's it's telling and i to me there's no doubt that this is what a fulfillment center will look like 10 years from now.

36:33And I think we do like to critique some of the PR around this stuff. So before we get deeper in, there's these lines from the time story that are amazing. So this is something where it's clear that Amazon wants to buy the community off. Amazon is so convinced this automated future is around the corner that it has started developing plans to mitigate the fallout in communities that may lose jobs. Documents show the company has considered building an image as a good corporate citizen through greater participation in community events such as parades and toys for tots it is so funny because like you know you see these programs you see oh here's amazon it's a sponsor and it's never quite clear that there's a line between yeah we're gonna you know automate jobs in your community or or raise the standard the the um raise uh the prices of living because of these salaries we pay engineers and it's just clear that the company blatantly sees these community initiatives as like PR tools to blunt the impact.

37:31There's also the terminology that they talked about using. Yeah, this really just made me want to fall out of my seat, but I was on an airplane when I read it and it would have been impolite. The documents contemplate avoiding using terms like automation and AI when discussing robotics instead and instead use terms like advanced technology or replace the word robot with cobot. I mean, that one, it doesn't bother me as much, I think. I honestly would rather they're not just throwing in AI for the sake of AI and actually talking about what it is. But I will say in this market and environment, it's almost scarier when a company is like worried about their technology being so good that they're afraid to say AI versus every company that's just stuffing AI into whatever it's saying for the sake of it.

38:30So maybe that actually is a testament to how far along they are. Right, but it's manipulative. That's what I'm trying to say. It's like, you know, it is a specific language exercise and community initiative meant to try to blunt the image of what it's actually doing. And I just find that to be uncool. But well, so my question is, this is one of the, especially for a retailer, this forecast that they will potentially sell twice as many items. If no one is employed, no one is buying these items. Like this is the kind of catch 22 I see for an Amazon specifically, like for potentially other tech giants that are not just selling consumer goods to everyone, to like the mass of the population.

39:22If there is a significant impact on employment, they're not selling twice as much stuff like there's no way. maybe probably i mean hasn't that been the problem in uh in the u.s in particular for so many years we've gone from a place where if you work on the automation or if you work on the assembly line of a car you should make enough money to buy the car to now that you know you you sort of you you might work on the floor of walmart you don't have enough money to buy the car and walmart then goes to the suppliers and demand such cheap prices that they send the jobs away or automate them. We've just been in this declining cycle of lower wages and greater consumption.

40:09And just eventually it squeezes everything to the bottom of the barrel at a certain point. And I think that's where we stand. It's probably a big reason for all the unrest that we have in the U.S. right now. Yeah, I mean, that's a much bigger discussion, I think. But I think there's already been a lot of pressure on consumption around how the models of employment, but America's done pretty good so far on the consumption side of things. But basically, we're going to have to invent an entirely new form of credit. It's the only answer, so everyone can keep buying stuff. I think that you should just take credit - say that in jest to our listeners just to make sure yeah you should take credit from the uh nvidia bank of america and then just use that to fund infrastructure and then and your own personal consumption and buying random amazon yeah then when the ai bubble burst there'll be no cascading problems i'm glad we're not doing that i'm glad mr beast might be a bank one day but nvidia doesn't seem like it's on that trajectory so that's good uh amazon statement so they said the documents, this is all in documents, the documents viewed by the Times were incomplete and did not represent the company's overall hiring strategy.

41:27Amazon also said that it's not insisting executives avoid certain terms in that community involvement is unrelated to automation. And to that, I say, sure. I'm sure as well. I'm okay with that, Amazon. So let's just talk lastly about what's going on. So there is a facility in Trevorport, Louisiana, that is a template Shreveport. Have you been there? Uh, no, but I had a friend from Shreveport. That's the only reason I know. God bless your friend. Thank you for your friend. Um, it's a template for future. Save Alex on this one, Jacob. Thanks Jake. Big thanks to Jake. Jake, go get to yourself a chicken sandwich for free.

42:07Hot chicken slider. Yeah. All right. So anyway, it's a template for, uh, this Shreveport fulfillment center is a template for future robotic fulfillment centers. Once an item is there in a package, a human barely touches it again. The company uses a thousand robots in that fulfillment center, allowing it to employ a quarter fewer workers last year than it would have without automation. Next year, as more robots are introduced, it expects to employ about half as many workers there as it would without automation. So I just want to say one thing. I wrote this book about workplaces, the workplaces of the big tech companies, including Amazon was the first chapter.

42:44The book is called Always Day One. Okay. So it's like clearly like Amazon inspired. My belief was always that these companies would find places for people whose jobs they automated to do different things. But the one place that I really could never fully wrap my head around on whether that would happen was the fulfillment centers. And I do, I mean, I think Amazon's going to accomplish its goal. I think they're going to get to that 75 % automation. And I think that is going to be, you know, I don't know, I think it's going to be a clear problem. Well, I think because it's a major employer. But the way you what you're describing, I think the real reason there's so much kind of like hype and unrest around potential job losses, it's no longer in the fulfillment center, it's going to be in the corporate offices that you'll actually see in the past in the corporate office side, that's where it always was.

43:36you know you can uh you can give them something else to do there's going to be new growth opportunities to me that's why this is such a different story right now is because that's where the potential job loss is right but i think what the amazon story is showing is that the potential job loss might actually be in these fulfillment centers uh as these robotics get get uh more advanced so i mean we could see it in both areas really well i mean speaking of white collar jobs potentially going away. Did you see the OpenAI investment banker story? I sure did. And as someone who has sat on the floor of a banking institution, I would like to hear your perspective on it.

44:18So tell us what happened and give us your thoughts on whether this is going to be the end of the junior banker. Well, and also I was on the sales and the trading floor side, not the investment banking side, But even more so, I think the investment banking profession has certainly been ripe for a bit of disruption. And basically, OpenAI, apparently there's something called Project Mercury, where they've hired over 100 ex-bankers to train their models to basically, you know, like, do that tagging work. Good answer, not good answer. You know, start helping the models understand different transaction types, IPOs.

44:58Like, you know, what did the documentation look like? What are the right ways to approach it? I think, to me. Wait, they're uploading full financial models. I mean, that's also - Yeah, yeah, uploading their own financial models. Which is unbelievable that the models can learn from this stuff. I think, I mean, this is, it's an interesting approach. Honestly, the most shocking part of it to me, or the funniest part was, apparently they're only getting paid 150 bucks an hour, which is not, I mean, it's not a ton of money, especially for if you're in the banking world. That one surprised me a bit.

45:33But overall, this kind of work, repetitive work that's just aggregating and routinely synthesizing information, that's the stuff that LLMs were made for. And that is what bankers would stay in the office till 3 a.m. doing. So I enjoyed this one. I think we should all – should we all celebrate Project Mercury? Uh, maybe. See, this is the thing. It's still, it's still so unclear about where this is heading. I'll give you one example, right? Okay. So like what happens when this stuff is automated? So I was in Mountain View this week as part of one stop I had on a longer trip across the US. And I got a chance to speak with Yossi Matias, who is the head of, who's the head of Google Research.

46:25And I asked him, I said, well, do you think AI, you know, basically we talked last week about how Google had this model that came up with the hypothesis about cancer cell behavior, and that was actually confirmed in living cells to be true, which is unbelievable. So I asked him, I was like, do you think AI, which can go out and do this stuff, is going to replace researchers, or how does this sort of net out? And so what he said is, we're actually going to need many more researchers in all disciplines. The only situation where you're going to need less researchers is if you assume that we practically have answered all unanswered questions.

47:00I don't think anybody here would think that. We are only understanding a tiny bit of what we need to understand. Using AlphaFold as an example, AI automated the decoding of protein folding. It led to the need for more protein researchers because once you have that foundation, you can actually work on bigger problems and not just decoding the structure of protein. So that's sort of like my question is like is is every uh occupation gonna have this same thing like if you think about the vast space of research that has yet to be uncovered you can automate you know all the work that researchers are doing today and you have so much more to do and so does that hold in like places like investment banks or even in in companies where they're automating customer service uh does that hold and do they actually have the same situation as the researchers where they're going to need more people as opposed to reduce the amount.

47:50I'm still going to say no, because in this case, again, you're going to be, there's going to be less of a need to raise capital because no one's going to have any money. There's going to be no businesses growing. So bankers don't need to go put together a pitch deck and kind of like issue some new to buy some new debt or, you know, like raise some new equity on one side of it. But also the corollary of that would be potentially there's so many new financial products that are being created thanks to AI that it somehow maybe creates that new wave of credit that we were talking about a moment ago.

48:28But that doesn't sound appealing to me either, like getting more potential financial products. So I don't I don't I don't see the correlation between the like protein folding and kind of like cellular research and bankers being able to automate an S1. Hold on. I want to turn this back to you because are you saying that we're going to have this technology that's going to basically advance productivity so much that, and of course this is the standard argument, but are you saying we're going to have this technology that's going to advance productivity so much that it's going to be able to automate junior investment banker jobs.

49:07And that will lead to a society that has so much less money that they won't be able to consume anymore. Well, I mean, not as direct as, but it all falls in line with Amazon as well. There, if you're, you're automating away the warehouse jobs, people don't need to buy more stuff. So you're not going to sell twice as many products. You're automating away more white collar work. So the amount of companies that actually need to raise capital becomes less. I mean, I think that's the weird balance that in this whole kind of job loss discussion is ignored. It's like, what are the follow on effects of not having the job?

49:49Then the business itself doesn't keep growing. So yes, that is what I'm saying. Okay. I will take the other side of that. But of course, we'll only be able to know in time. Okay, one last thing about this, because I think it goes along with our job. The interview process for these bankers is fascinating. So this was the craziest part of the whole story to me. The application process for Project Mercury involves almost no human interaction. The first step is a roughly 20-minute interview with an AI chatbot, which asks questions based on the applicant's resume. The second phase tests candidates on their knowledge of financial statements.

50:26The final stage is a modeling test. I mean, this is just like reading those two paragraphs to me is insane. The idea that you're going to be able to like conduct an interview and test an applicant's financial knowledge. And again, this is coming from OpenAI. So they have the jump on how to use this technology best before everybody else. That is just fascinating. They've literally replaced the human interviewers and they're trusting these people. they're going to put the financial models that they make into their AI model. I weirdly like this part of it, mainly because their job is going to be interacting and communicating with an AI.

51:06So what better place to actually have an AI interview you? It's one thing if you're interviewing someone for a job and you're trying to just cut corners and having AI. Imagine you're having your voice through 11 labs conduct the interview and faking it. But in reality that person is going to have to interact with people so that's a slightly different thing but this part place their job is to talk to the model so why not start that in the interview process i'm loving project mercury i'm no i'm not even i'm just i'm not even criticizing it i'm pointing out how crazy it is that they have the technology that's able to do this.

51:45That's bananas. It's bananas. I agree. But it oddly, more so than Atlas, I'm going to give this is OpenAI's win of the week, Project Mercury. I'm starting to understand really why the hot chicken app is the top app. Sorry, Dave's hot chicken app is the top app. Here's what's happened. America's jobs have been automated. They've spent their days using Sora, but they are hungry. It's Drake's birthday. They need to eat. and now Dave's Hot. That's the look at our future. It's the Dave's Hot Chicken app future. This is where we're going. Listeners, go online. You will see people clamoring and like pushing each other to get some free sliders for downloading the Dave's Hot Chicken app for Drake's birthday.

52:31This story pulls together everything about job loss, automation, celebrity culture, hot chicken and food trends, everything in one tight package that's some bullshit this is the future that the ai vcs want isn't it is this what you guys wanted oh it's not too bad at least people are getting free chicken okay yeah but not every you don't get your chicken unless you're fighting your way to the front well you gotta you gotta work for the chicken life is free ranjan nothing in life is free no such thing as free chicken not even on drake's birthday maybe there is okay uh one more break. When we come back, we're going to talk about the cuts at Meta Super Intelligence Labs and then, of course, the return of Clippy.

53:15We'll be back right after this. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge, and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One.

54:06We're learning alongside you, making the complexity of AI make sense to all of us. Want AI news that informs and doesn't inflame? Subscribe to the AI Inside podcast wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back here on Big Technology Podcast Friday edition, bringing it home. Meta has cut 600 jobs in its AI superintelligence labs after spending, I think, billions of dollars on AI talent. Here's the New York Times. Meta said on Wednesday that it cut approximately 600 jobs in its artificial intelligence division. Mark Zuckerberg has been on a hiring spree to stack his company with AI researchers, but he has started to cut.

54:45The cuts on Wednesday did not affect the newest hires who have been empowered to develop super intelligence. The job cuts were aimed at cleaning up the organizational bloat that resulted from three years of building up Meta's AI efforts too quickly. The layoffs aimed to help Meta develop AI products more rapidly. Interestingly, though, they did cut some long-tenured, seemingly superstar AI researchers. Yuan Dong Tian is one of them. Several of my team members and myself were impacted by these layoffs today. He's not somebody who actually started, you know, who's recent, someone who's been hired recently.

55:33He actually was hired 10 years ago by FAIR. And most of these cuts came in the FAIR division, Facebook AI Research, or they call it Fundamental AI Research. Now the division started by Jan LeCun to advance the frontier of AI research within Meta. Ranjan, what is going on over there? Is Jan Lacoon going to stay, do you think? He's been on this show a number of times, right? Three times. Obviously, yeah, we like hearing from Jan. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, Jan has stayed at Meta and previously Facebook for many years. And through Thick and Thin, he's been one of the company's biggest defenders.

56:14So I will say it doesn't seem like he can be happy about this. I mean, this is really his division. So what do you think is happening here? I mean, I think this is just a very weird, but also not unconventional, complete organizational refresh. They bring in new leadership. They bring in a bunch of new people, get rid of the old people. Mark Zuckerberg was clearly not happy with their progress and where they were before. And he decided he wanted to do something about it. I felt like that detail that they concluded it had become overly bureaucratic was definitely very strategically leaked because I saw those words everywhere.

56:57And so like they. It's got to be a PR person on the phone. Yeah. Overly. And it sounds good. And it's like. It's also like it's according to two people familiar with the matter, I think. So it's like you just get to. I mean, I don't know. This is probably not what happened, but I'm just envisioning like two PR people coming on the phone and saying it and being like you can say multiple sources. has told you this and then you're and i mean they very clearly chose those words and then it starts to paint this picture and then everyone is like oh yeah like slow bloated um you know like no one likes overly bureaucratic things so suddenly it kind of now you're bringing the like hard charging alexander wang in the tbd group and like tbd lab and so i mean to me this is actually kind of like standard organizational politics, I think.

57:47It just happens to be at a very large scale in terms of salaries and importance, but otherwise it's not that surprising to me. Yeah. You could call it DOF, Department of Facebook Efficiency. Don't you think - Dome. Dome. Department of Meta Efficiency. Don't you think you'd want all the AI time? I mean, I get it, but you just spent like how much money can't be that big of a cost you're still highly profitable wouldn't you just want all the ai talent you could get it's a good point that like you would think just hoard i mean hoarding resources from competitors is certainly something our friends at meta are are great at so like i think uh it i agree it is actually kind of surprising that they weren't just saying but that actually kind of i think is reflective that it must have been very political because otherwise it would be a no-brainer that they just kind of keep paying people and make sure they don't go to other places.

58:46So that means that it must have gone down enough that they're like, we need to get rid of a number of people. What do you think about this move? In a sign of the escalating competition in AI, Meta said Saturday, it would cut off access to non-meta chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT on WhatsApp beginning next year. This means WhatsApp 3 billion users would no longer be able to use chat gpt uh in the messaging app i mean one thing that's interesting is all these companies that profess that they're dedicated to openness and the advancement of the technology like second shit gets real they're like yeah not that open wait wait sorry i was a bit confused of this story it said meta is shutting off 1-800 chat gpt within WhatsApp.

59:33So does that mean there is a large number of people like actually toll-free calling chat? I remember when this came out, we kind of joked about it, but is this one of those weird things that could actually have insane usage that we're just missing? Like people are actually toll-free calling chat GPT on WhatsApp. Yeah. I think that, uh, I could be wrong about this, but you could also just chat with it. Like it's a phone number you can also chat with, but i do think it's a very popular kevin wild specified shutting off 1-800 chat gpt right that's what i'm saying i think it's a phone number that you could chat with but but maybe not all right we're gonna have to look into this i'm gonna be calling chat gpt and then flirting and falling in love with them but not on whatsapp anymore yeah apparently uh it's gonna be one step more difficult to fall in love which is good because we we do know that according to the scientific research when the bot plays hard to get it actually leads to more deep relationships that's what they're doing thank you for mark for at least adding a bit of friction into my flirting with chat gpt that's right because now now my heart will flutter even more okay talk about this this reddit thing briefly and then we'll bring it home with clippy yeah just i wanted to we've talked a lot about kind of copyright i think this is going to continue to be a story this year.

1:00:51Basically, Reddit, in a kind of baller move, they're suing a number of providers, including Perplexity, for scraping Reddit data in unauthorized ways. And what Perplexity was doing is, if you ever search something in Google and add Reddit at the end, you'll get some amount of information in the Google search results without even going to Reddit. basically scraping those results that a lot of companies have been doing as a service and selling to OpenAI, Meta, and Perplexity. But Reddit basically tested, they had a fake post that was only accessible in Google search results, but was not accessible even by going onto Reddit or any other way on the internet of being accessed.

1:01:38And it showed up in Perplexity results, meaning they were still scraping Google for Reddit results and incorporating it into their own system. So I think to me, Reddit is going to play this really interesting role, I think, because they do have one of the most valuable data sets on the internet for LLMs. And they're kind of like a good upstart. I mean, they're a pretty big company, but they're still kind of like, if them battling the giants, I think is going to land well. So like the New York Times suing OpenAI, I don't know. I don't think that kind of draws as much energy as Reddit saying it's our time to fight back.

1:02:18And then fighting back in pretty creative ways. I think this will make me sound more cynical than I actually am. But I think it's worth just pointing out, what do you expect from an industry that is built entirely off of taking people's content without permission? Like it's sort of the fundamental thing. well yeah base of this i know i'm not i'm not dismissing them i'm just saying that like you know it doesn't surprise me and like if someone's telling you don't crawl something just don't crawl it it's kind of kind of disgusting to go for it well but that's why the way they approach this and tricked them or kind of caught them that's why it shows that they know how to play this battle like they are play to fight this battle like so that's what i think it's good baller i mean yeah it has to happen and you would think they would lose their you think they would lose their um uh gall and to do this after anthropic got hit with that massive lawsuit that could cost it a billion dollars yeah but no one's paid a billion yet i think it until there's like an exorbitant cost to any of these companies nothing's gonna happen no you're totally right sad all right let's go let's move uh to an uplifting story to send everybody off this weekend.

1:03:29This is from Mashable. Microsoft resurrects Clippy back from the dead after 21 years and the internet is wilding. So basically, if you use Myco, which is, it's interesting, it's this animated face from Copilot. Here's how Mustafa Suleiman describes it. It's expressive, customizable, and warm. The optional visual presence, listen, reacts, and even changes colors to reflect your interactions, making voice conversations with the bot feel more natural. Myco shows support through animation and expression, creating a friendly and engaging experience. So that's Myco. I think it's interesting. But if you poke it enough times, it will turn into Clippy again.

1:04:14So Clippy is back. Wait, what do you mean it turns into Clippy? Oh, it's like an Easter egg? Yes, an Easter egg. So if you have Myco on your phone, and you just keep tapping Myko's face, apparently it has enough of it, and it becomes the great paperclip known as Clippy. And if you anger it enough, it will become racist like the Microsoft chatbot Tay, if you remember. It'll get spicy. Destroy your relationship. All of the above. Microsoft? Myko, I think, might have a dark side. I think Myko, keep an eye on them. We brought it up at the beginning of the show, But as I think about it more and more, Maiko is just the best bot name.

1:04:58It's so good. It's so good. It's catchy. It's sensible. It makes sense. It's logical. Maiko. And also, I like the representation of AI being this kind of floating, cartoony, sunny, yellow little character. rather than, you know, like the chat GPT, the blue ball that kind of like hovers and floats if you use voice mode. Like, I think Micah's a little cuter. Micah's a little more, oh my God. Just don't flirt with Micah though. Oh, you will though. It's a little cartoon character. Stay away, stay away people. Well, Mustafa did tell me that like, he believes that all AI is going to differentiate on the basis of personality.

1:05:40So the fact that Microsoft has made this move is not surprising to me. And we'll see if he's right. But let's, I'm going to go chat with Maiko a bit because just being Microsoft, I'm curious how authentically engaging Maiko is as a character because they haven't had the best track record on this. That's true. Well, maybe one day we will see Maiko give away chicken sandwiches and then assert its rightful place at the top of the App Store. That's our future. and none of us will have jobs so we'll have to the only way you can get your food is by downloading an app no that and you have to beg michael and you have to beg just wait for it you'll be like michael can i get chicken it's like i didn't hear the desperation in your voice michael download this separate app and say please all right here's your tickets here's your tickets for your chicken The more desperate you are, the more buns and patties you get.

1:06:43So, yeah, it's like, oh, that was, you know, it was only good for four buns and two patties. Welcome to our future, folks. Welcome to our future. All right, Ronjan, good times. You know what? I can't tell if I'm enthused or depressed, but I'm happy that we talked. All this conversation, the only thing I can say is I think I'm going to go to Dave's Hot Chicken this weekend. Hopefully after the crowds died down. I don't think I think I missed the window for the free sliders. But you know what? I'm employed. I'll pay my $12 or$13 for a couple of pieces of that Dave's Hot. That's right. All right.

1:07:17Well, Ronjan, great talking with you as always. We'll leave it there. How about that? We'll come back next week and see how the sandwich was. See you next week. All right, everybody. See you, Ronjan. And see you all. I'll be back on Wednesday with a conversation with Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine about how AI is going to impact the future of writing. Also, it looks like I might be able to air that conversation I had with Yossi Tias from Google. So that would be coming on Sunday or Monday. So stay tuned. And of course, Ranjan and I will be back next Friday for a very spooky edition of Big Technology Podcast on Halloween.

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