OpenAI’s Superapp Ambitions, Jensen on Jobs, Bezos’s $100 Billion Automation Fund

19:25Ranjan Roy:I found it almost like a very mundane product detail that they could have almost just done without announcements.

19:33Big Technology Podcast Host:Well, I have this desktop app on my desktop that has standard chatbot and co-work stuff and coding capabilities in it, Cloud app. And having all that together on your browser, sorry, on your desktop, and giving it access to use your browser to go do things, that has been an unlock for me and many others. So I do think this might be OpenAI seeing that that system really works and saying, and maybe it's going there and saying, we'll put our models against Anthropics best and our coding against their best and let's go. Like, let's have at it.

20:11Ranjan Roy:See, here's where I will push back. co-work and computer control essentially giving Claude unfettered access to the files on your hard drive, basically like doing local work on your computer, that kind of experience from an enterprise standpoint is terrifying. So if you're really making the shift to enterprise, allowing local file, like a open local file access is actually not what you would want to be doing as like a core part of the product. Again, Claude Cowork is in research preview still. It's not a core part of the platform that they advertise, especially to enterprise. So like, to me, that's the reason, like I think the desktop part, again, it's like, that's fine.

20:56I wanna hear there's no more pin.

20:59Ranjan Roy:There's no more, like - You're not gonna hear that. No, no, Johnny Ive just walking out the door, pissed off, just wearing his pin. And that's what I think. Then I'll believe the focus. Then I will believe.

21:14Big Technology Podcast Host:I'm going to push back on your pushback. I mean, Jensen Wong, the NVIDIA CEO, happens to be driving the whole thing. Four and a half trillion dollar company, which is crazy. Just said that OpenClaw is the most important thing after ChatGPT. By the way, who acquired the OpenClaw team or Aqua hired them? That would be OpenAI. so if you're going into enterprise you're making this move all signs point to this open claw style agent and by the way anthropic just launched a version of it with i think it's called a clawed console where you could just kind of text claw to do stuff when you're away and it will do it for you so this is uh i will go even more in the tank for agentic than you are i'll say this is where

22:03Ranjan Roy:it's going the distinction between kind of like launching cloud-based operations and accessing kind of like monitored files versus local files and like just like uh where you can be offline or i mean it's just such a it's such a different thing and and again i agree like the whole open claw thing has taken the industry by storm across the board everyone's pushing it everyone wants to jump on it, but it's still like what it represents in terms of like finally doing agentic work. Yes, I get. But I think like if that's the core part of what OpenAI is trying to do, again, like everything is reactive right now.

22:46As you said, Claude has a good desktop app

22:50Ranjan Roy:that combines multiple platforms into one and makes it more usable. So then they're going to do that. Claude, we started talking about this last February when people are actually criticizing and showing charts about their drop in consumer usage and joking about it, pivoted hard to coding, which then led to enterprise. Like OpenAI being this reactive, I think, again, if they mean it, show it by just smashing the pin. That's all I ask.

23:19Big Technology Podcast Host:They're not smashing the pin. I'll just say this. I have no inside knowledge on this, but pretty interesting. Greg Brockman's going to run the super app. Fiji's going to help market it. where Sam probably working on the pin he's just in the back with Johnny that's my guess

23:36Ranjan Roy:just in the back with Johnny with the pin and and launching the entire AI cloud business and the whole consumer devices arm as well in addition to the pin why isn't the pin the consumer device oh yeah that's true and it's the only device that will exist and the only interface through which we will access AI in a matter maybe headphones no okay so headphones are dead It's only the pin.

24:01Big Technology Podcast Host:Don't tell that to Tim Cook. I pin.

24:06Ranjan Roy:I pin.

24:07Big Technology Podcast Host:The I pin. The I pin. Oh, God. That's what they're going to call it. I promise. It's going to be yesterday's vision, today's technology, the I pin. Simplicity. All right. Let's talk about proactivity. Let's talk about our favorite type of proactivity, which is consultants. You know, this stuff is messy. It's going to take your computer over. What do you need? you need consultants. CNBC, OpenAI lands a multi-year deal, multi-year deals with consulting giants in enterprise push. OpenAI on Monday announced it was entering into multi-year partnerships with four consulting firms that will help the company deploy its enterprise platform called Frontier.

24:45Big Technology Podcast Host:It's going to be working with Accenture, Boston Consulting Group, Capgemini, and McKinsey. OpenAI is racing against rivals like Google and Anthropic to win users and market share and the company has to make an aggressive push to court enterprise customers frontier which open ai unveiled earlier this month acts as an intelligence layer that stitches together disparate systems and data within an organization it aims to make it easier for companies to manage deploy and build ai agents which are tools that can independently complete tasks on behalf of the user all right so that's maybe how it works if it's going to build technology that's going to just take your stuff over.

25:25Big Technology Podcast Host:Maybe it happens with the assistance of McKinsey and the merry band of consultants who've now gone from being potentially displaced to essential in the rollout of this technology. Your thoughts?

25:40Ranjan Roy:Well, so this is a very delicate balance in these kind of situations in terms of, like you have the Palantir model of take technology and forward deployed engineer, and our people will be in there implementing technology. You have the partnership model in this case. And I think like it's interest. Anthropic has been traditionally more kind of the forward deployed engineer implementation model. They've also launched large partnership efforts very, I think just last week as well. Again, reacting in these kinds of ways, like copying what Anthropic is doing in this case. I think giving the relationship to the partner, if OpenAI, if this is truly the priority, rather than just going all in and being like, we're building a business around that, I think it adds another element of risk here.

26:33Ranjan Roy:But yeah, I think it's a bet, and it's actually going to kind of be a big judge of the type of success they do have.

26:41Big Technology Podcast Host:Now, one more idea about why we're seeing this. This is some crazy stuff that came out of RAMP, which is access to enterprise spending. And Axios wrote it up in a story called the AI spending flip. Here's the story. Anthropic is now capturing over 73 % of all spending among companies buying AI tools for the first time. 73%. Just 10 weeks ago, the split with OpenAI was 50-50. And it was 60-40 in OpenAI's favor as recently as December. this is an unbelievable flip where you're starting to see Anthropic be the first choice obviously it's related to cloud code among companies who need LLM technology and they've surpassed open AI I guess I'm sure open AI has access to this data and it's probably driving a lot of what we're seeing and talked about in the first half of the show I was just it's funny because I will

27:39Ranjan Roy:take my momentary rant that it still shocks me that everyone in the industry is okay that ramp does release this kind of data as someone whose company uses ramp it's still just kind of weird to me that like whatever i'm spending on will be able to be in an anonymized way still kind of

27:57Big Technology Podcast Host:advertised to the entire world but i'm all about that ramp economics lab man air over there just unbelievable data.

28:05Ranjan Roy:Don't end that party, Ranjan. I'm sorry. It's amazing, but it's still kind of weird to me that everyone's okay with it. But that's for another day. I think it's funny if, let's say OpenAI is looking at this data because Ramp is a really specific company. I work at a high growth technology enterprise AI startup writer. We use Ramp. Many people I know who work at cutting edge technology companies use ramp it's an amazing product i have i love it as someone who had to file expense reports in the past and it was a pain in the ass it's still such a specific profile so their data is going to be heavily skewed and whatever the coolest new so it'll show momentum but like in terms of showing actual like aggregate impact in the economy most large companies are not using ramp like i can't imagine especially more kind of like old-fashioned companies so so i don't know if it's true it would be surprised to me if it's actually like reflective of the economy at large versus the cool kids are using claude more than open ai right now yeah well maybe they're a leading indicator i guess that's the question is is what a silicon Valley startup is using today, is that going to be an indicator of what's going to happen to the rest of the economy?

29:32Ranjan Roy:Do you think it's a good one or do you think it's actually almost like counterproductive because it's such a different personality and consumer?

29:41Big Technology Podcast Host:That's a good question. I mean, I think category, yes, it is a leading indicator, but maybe not a specific vendor. And we're going to find out later this year. I don't know if you've seen this. Morgan Stanley, of all entities, has warned, this is according to Fortune, that an AI breakthrough is coming in 2026 and most of the world isn't ready. A massive AI breakthrough is coming in the first half of 2026. I guess we're halfway through. And Morgan Stanley says most of the world isn't ready for it. In a sweeping new report, the investment bank warns that a transformative leap in artificial intelligence is imminent, driven by an unprecedented accumulation of compute at America's top AI labs.

30:22Big Technology Podcast Host:Executives at major AI labs are telling investors to brace for progress that will shock them. What do you think they could be seeing? I mean, what does Morgan Stanley know that we don't or we do?

30:34Ranjan Roy:Well, you did. There's also the part that says researchers specifically highlighted a recent interview with Elon Musk citing his belief that applying 10x to compute to LLM training will double the model's intelligence. So that's one of their citations. Beyond that, I don't know. I genuinely don't know. And this is, again, as someone who is very bullish and somewhat thinks we need to be thoughtful about how smart and fast this technology can move. I'm still it's still funny to me this kind of curiosity gap style research report from a Morgan Stanley versus just say what is it? What is it just what's going to happen?

31:21Ranjan Roy:Take a bet take a bet. Give a prediction It was very bizarre.

31:25Big Technology Podcast Host:Anyway that's another interesting note. On the bottom of the story it says for this story fortune journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing. I thought that was interesting, but it wasn't to me the sort of weirdest use of generative AI in tech journalism or journalism this week. I don't know if you saw the Vanity Fair story about Dario Amadei. It was initially titled Dario Amadei Has a Cold. And it seems like this reporter got some decent access into Anthropic. And then towards the end of the story, He's been building up the whole story about getting to meet Dario Amadei, CEO of Anthropic.

32:09Big Technology Podcast Host:And then he writes this whole long interview that he had with Dario. And then afterwards, he's like, oh, I actually didn't interview Dario and ask these like biting questions to him. I like uploaded a lot of Dario's talks into Claude and I interviewed him that way. And that's what you've just read.

32:28Ranjan Roy:Yeah, this was. Would you do that and call it an interview?

32:34Big Technology Podcast Host:No. Okay. I wouldn't think about doing that. It's so disrespectful to the reader, to the companies. It's especially to the reader. I mean, that's awful.

32:45Ranjan Roy:Yeah. I think, I mean, yeah, it's more, was it like performance art or something?

32:51Big Technology Podcast Host:I hope that that's the best possible explanation. I mean, I think it wasn't just the interview. It wasn't like this person seems like they actually did real reporting and then just wrote the, put the fake interview at the end. Truly a puzzling situation.

33:06Ranjan Roy:I mean, like, I guess we hadn't planned on talking about it, but in terms of what is real and what's not anymore, I'm sure you've been following good old Bibi Netanyahu and these videos this week.

33:20Big Technology Podcast Host:I have. Yeah. So go ahead. You can introduce it.

33:23Ranjan Roy:I mean, I almost have to imagine every listener would have crossed paths with the rampant speculations that Benjamin Netanyahu is deceased and has been putting out AI videos of himself at a coffee shop. And then even today, there was a press conference, but still endless speculation that it was AI generated. And honestly, like, this, like, again, this kind of like Dario interview, and then it was AI, like, the Netanyahu stuff is actually, I think the most scared I've been around the impact of like, AI and video and people trying to understand what is true that like, just how absurd and crazy it is that if we're actually living in an era where world leader somehow, and is he trying to troll us by putting out a weird coffee shop video rather than just showing up live with a bunch of people?

34:25Ranjan Roy:But yeah, this one has gotten me pretty rattled this week. I don't know.

34:29Big Technology Podcast Host:I think you're on Blue Sky too much. I saw those videos. I didn't have any question about the veracity of them. Maybe I'm no, no, no, no, no, no.

34:38Ranjan Roy:This is X. This is this is I feel you're getting both sides on X. Yeah, that's true.

34:45Big Technology Podcast Host:I feel like this is one of the unifying things on all.

34:47Ranjan Roy:This is horseshoe theory loves AI generated Netanyahu.

34:52Big Technology Podcast Host:That's true. The epitome of it.

34:54Ranjan Roy:Yeah.

34:55Big Technology Podcast Host:All right. Let's let's go to break before this really goes off the rails. But if you're interested in the political story, folks, Senator Mark Warner is going to be on the show on Wednesday. We're going to talk about AI job loss. We're going to talk about the Anthropic and the Pentagon thing. And yes, we'll talk about one of my favorite topics, which is why do members of Congress continue to conduct seemingly insider trading? And they will not stop. They can't stop. And Senator Warner and I will discuss that next week on Wednesday. All right. Ranjan and I will be back right after this to talk about Jensen Wong's comments on AI layoffs.

35:34Big Technology Podcast Host:a little bit about the metaverse. And then, of course, it's really interesting.

35:38Ranjan Roy:Who did you say is going to be on the show for discussing insider trading?

35:43Big Technology Podcast Host:Mark Warner.

35:44Ranjan Roy:Jesus. The guests you get. I love it. For listeners, I love that Alex, with no heads up, just casually drops these names right before we go to break. Sorry. Okay, I have to. That was a compliment. That was a compliment. Yeah.

35:59Big Technology Podcast Host:All right. I guess we're leaving this in, Ranjan. I was just making my pitch for the second. All right. We'll be back after this with a conversation about Jensen Wong's AI, Jensen Wong's comments on AI layoffs, the metaverse, and then Jeff Bezos' fund. We'll be back right after this. I've interviewed a lot of great tech founders on this show, and one surprisingly universal challenge comes up again and again, finding the right domain name. It's something I ran into myself when launching big technology. The names you want are often taken, and it's tempting just to settle and move on. But the founders I respect most don't settle on fundamentals, and your name is one of them.

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37:51Big Technology Podcast Host:Get the word out like you have a marketing team behind you. easily create email and social campaigns wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling. It's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your$1 per month trial today at shopify.com slash big tech. Go to shopify.com slash big tech. That's shopify.com slash big tech. And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast, Friday edition. Yes, as you heard before the break. Senator Mark Warner is going to be on the show next week. We have an amazing, honestly, I think the strongest lineup we've had in a very long time, if not in the show's history, coming up on some of these Wednesday shows.

38:34Big Technology Podcast Host:So stay tuned for that. All right. Maybe Jensen Wang will come on. Maybe not. He certainly was speaking with Tim Kramer.

38:41Ranjan Roy:Yeah.

38:42Big Technology Podcast Host:Oh, yeah. So he did do this tour around GTC, similar to what we thought, which was basically making the case for artificial intelligence. And part of it was Jim Cramer asking him on CNBC about his impression on whether companies will continue to lay people off with AI. And Jensen, I think, captured what I was feeling about this pretty well. Here was what he said in response. For companies with imagination, you'll do more. For companies where the leadership is just out of ideas, they have nothing else to do. They have no reason to imagine greater than they are. Then when they have more capability, they don't do more.

39:27Big Technology Podcast Host:And this has kind of gone to my thought on the whole AI layoff thing, which is that, yeah, if you have no imagination, you'll just lay off and take profit. But if you do have imagination, you're going to do more with these tools. And there's so many things that ambitious CEOs want to do. And that's why I'm a little bit skeptical whenever I hear this AI will cause mass unemployment, you know, sort of line like we heard. You know, I don't know. We've heard from multiple places. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't be prepared. That's what I'm going to speak with Senator Warner about. But it also means like let's look at this in context and with some nuance like we tried to do on Wednesday with Andrew Ross-Organ.

40:05Big Technology Podcast Host:So what do you think about this line from Jensen? I think it captures it so well.

40:08Ranjan Roy:I think Jensen is slowly cementing himself, as we talked about on last week's episode, as the good guy of AI. And he's got a shot. People are going to like the leather jacket, the drinking beer and the fried chicken. And I think he's, this is a good line. When you have imagination, you can do more, that you can use this to just try new things and like scale more quickly. And just, yeah, it just opens up. I saw one thing I think I'm starting to buy into. It's like, it could mean fewer SaaS giants, but it could mean many, many more medium-sized SaaS businesses of like smaller teams, but still just more software is created, more technology is used in new kinds of ways.

40:59Ranjan Roy:Like, I think that's definitely the optimistic scenario. I think where, again, we saw with Block, we've seen a lot of time, and we're going to get into the rumored, the reported potential meta layoffs, like people are going to be attributing these to AI directly. people might even use ai as the excuse like we saw with jack dorsey but in a lot of these companies maybe they don't have much to do they overhired they were bloated and they potentially wouldn't need to cut anyway and they couldn't just reinvest those people into more interesting things

41:37Big Technology Podcast Host:yeah exactly i i really i i'm a believer in the bull case here not to say there won't be any disruption but it also means that like i won't discount the fact that there's a percentage chance that like their things will go bad and that's why you have to plan for that but i think jensen really captures it if you have imagination you're gonna do more if you don't have an imagination you're gonna lay off do you think by the summer is jensen has he cemented his role as the good guy of ai it's clear he's he's pushing well i don't know if good guy is the sort of framing I would use, but I think he's...

42:15Big Technology Podcast Host:The friendly face. He has a chance to be sort of the Steve Jobs of AI. And maybe he's already there. But he can be the visionary that explains and makes the... Like we were saying last week, someone's got to make a case for this technology and do it well because the polling numbers are bad. So I think he could be... Maybe Steve Jobs was a great marketer and salesman. Jensen is a great marketer and salesman. Different products, but I think that he can fill that marketer-salesman role for sure.

42:46Ranjan Roy:No, that's a good point. Okay. So maybe it's not like, you don't have to be even friendly face or a good guy. You just have to try to like make the optimist case for the industry. And again, like I feel there's a lot of times where it's almost like there's this tone of, even when you're trying to couch it as optimism, like people still it's like you have to deal with it otherwise you're dumb or you you know like it's it's still being shoved down your throat rather than making people want to actually just be excited about what's possible and uh we we certainly need that let's see because the implications of where this ai thing is going are are you know i think you you're also someone who's like let's not believe you know fully and drink the ai kool-aid on this because you if you go all

43:40Big Technology Podcast Host:the way in you can end up having you know shocks and disappointments on the way you know if things

43:45Ranjan Roy:don't go the positive way right well there's two types of shocks you can have one is it it doesn't work as advertised and that's just its own kind of shock and disappointment or it works just in a very scary way and just causes mass disruption as many in the ai community talk about and its own its own kind of shock so i think it could be either of those but there yeah that narrow path through the middle of those two no one has outlined in any kind of like decent way well i mean yeah

44:22Big Technology Podcast Host:the numbers the numbers tell the story right what was it they were below ai was pulling lower than

44:28Ranjan Roy:nice. Yeah. Yeah.

44:30Big Technology Podcast Host:The only above Iran and the Democratic Party.

44:33Ranjan Roy:Yeah.

44:34Big Technology Podcast Host:Which is not exactly the things that people are most into right now. By the way, you know, just one more plug on the Warner interview. I do speak with him about whether this negative polling can lead to delays in data centers. And coming from Virginia, which has the most data centers in the U.S., certainly knows a thing or two. So something to look out for. All right, meta and the metaverse. Should we call this segment, is it Schrodinger's metaverse? Is it alive or is it dead? This is from, let's see, CNBC. Meta is shutting down VR, social platform, Horizon Worlds, and further pivot away from the metaverse.

45:15Big Technology Podcast Host:Meta announced Tuesday that it was shutting down Horizon Worlds, the virtual reality social network for Quest VR headsets that was once a key piece of the pivot to the metaverse horizon worlds by the way was this kind of vr world where you would start hanging out with people no one really used it maybe some people did but not not many then here's the next story from mashable meta isn't or i'm sorry and gadget meta isn't shutting down its vr metaverse after all meta is backtracking on its plans to shut the vr meta version of its metaverse the company now plans to support horizon worlds in vr for the foreseeable future according to Andrew Bosworth, the CTO of Meta.

45:52Big Technology Podcast Host:We will keep it working in VR for existing games to support the fans who've reached out. Ranjan, is the Metaverse alive or the Metaverse dead?

46:04Ranjan Roy:I'm going to pivot from Schrodinger's Metaverse because it's dead. This isn't a dead or alive question to me. I would like to pivot to a very nostalgic, kind of like wistful look at i i liked i was seeing people share just those ridiculous like i think it was mark zuckerberg interviewing gail king in the metaverse there's like just just

46:31Big Technology Podcast Host:remember that time i mean i don't know if this is true or not but i saw someone share that someone paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to live next to snoop doug in the metaverse remember

46:41Ranjan Roy:Summer metaverse real estate metaverse. Like, ah, what a time. What a time that was.

46:48Big Technology Podcast Host:From the New York Times, they highlight some of it, some of the madness around it. Disney and Crate and Barrel and other companies were quick to appoint chief metaverse officers. And this is from McKinsey. With its potential to generate up to$5 trillion in value by 2030, the metaverse is too big for companies to ignore. so question did you ever go into the metaverse i think i did like what do we consider the meta did

47:23Ranjan Roy:you own an oculus quest or i guess you try i mean you tried the vision pro i don't even know if that

47:30Big Technology Podcast Host:counts as metaverse like no that was spatial computing no i never owned one oh i did i did have an oculus you know i had an oculus when i was uh it was a test device when i was at uh buzz feed back in the day and then i lent it to a co-worker because i wasn't using it very much and then covet happened and i never saw that person again meanwhile i would have i would have loved to have that uh you know a metaverse with me in covet which by the way it ended up being mostly a covet fever dream well i think because so i played like games with the oculus

48:04Ranjan Roy:quest but i didn't interact with other people also certainly never like a horizons world or anything like that um yeah no i don't think i ever made it to the metaverse i i kind of am regretting it now maybe we should go find ourselves some quests on a facebook marketplace pretty cheap and just go see who's hanging out on horizons world right now if any listeners are let us know we'll come find you we'll hang out if you're the person that's gonna go meet someone

48:38Big Technology Podcast Host:to pick up a quest on uh to go to the facebook marketplace they're just gonna hit you in the

48:44Ranjan Roy:head with a crowbar and take your money you should be wrong sorry sorry rajan decorum um no no but

48:52Big Technology Podcast Host:on a serious note maybe the metaverse was never just virtual reality i think this is from matthew ball. The metaverse is misdescribed as virtual reality. In truth, virtual reality is merely a way to experience the metaverse. To say VR is the metaverse is like saying the mobile internet is an app. Note, too, that hundreds of millions are already participating in virtual worlds on a daily basis and spending billions of them without VR, AR, MR, or XR devices. I see he's talking about Roblox. As a corollary to the above, VR headsets aren't the metaverse anymore than smartphones are the mobile internet.

49:31Big Technology Podcast Host:So maybe, okay.

49:33Ranjan Roy:Actually, you know what, here's the comeback. So world models, I think are going to be like the, you know, like AI models that instead of are being based on language or being based on actually understanding the physical world. And we're going to get into Bezos's new fund. I think, I think they keep the metaverse alive and reality labs and then slowly quietly pivot to the whole world model space and then suddenly it all comes back and zuck was right the whole time as he figures out ai ad lm-based advertising and comes back with world models and gets on his hoverboard thing with an american flag and just wins again

50:16Big Technology Podcast Host:yeah uh oh by the way that thing is called a foil i called it a foil hydra yeah sorry yeah

50:23Ranjan Roy:Yeah, one of my, yeah, yeah. Apologies to listeners. We should have made that one.

50:28Big Technology Podcast Host:We regret the error. But the funny thing would be if they do pivot to world models, guess who the perfect person to bring back to run that would be on Lacoon.

50:39Ranjan Roy:That's, that would, oh wait, isn't that his new startup?

50:43Big Technology Podcast Host:I think it's a big part of it is understanding the world, yes.

50:47Ranjan Roy:Yeah, world models. But it is, I think it is interesting to me because you take your Fortnites and Robloxes and people are still spending ungodly amounts of money for skins in those games and interacting everywhere. And those are virtual world experiences. So, yeah, Metaverse is alive. Just not legless avatars while wearing a virtual reality headset and sitting in a meeting because I still wish I did that once, but never got around to that.

51:20Big Technology Podcast Host:Yeah. I unfortunately think I was just not working in a company for when the time that came around. Oh, one last thing we should say. I think that this conversation about the metaverse, you know, is incomplete without talking about what it led to. Which is like, if there is a hope for consumer AI, which we debated in the beginning, it's probably through some form of device. And meta certainly has a head start on that. I mean, the Ray-Ban metas, which you and I both really like, and these newer projects are direct results from this VR move. And the VR headsets live on, just the metaverse know.

52:01Ranjan Roy:Take the win. I think, like, if they just said openly, like, these technologies gave us a head start in wearables in the entire new world of AI, no one would question it. It's right. so you don't have to just shut down horizon's world it's okay you don't have to pretend to keep it open you don't have to you guys no no i was i was just saying i to myself i think they

52:28Big Technology Podcast Host:are basically saying that that version of what you just said which is like this was it's almost like you know like the uh fire phone led to the echo or something exactly exactly there's a there's

52:41Ranjan Roy:a hero story here. There's a definite hero story.

52:45Big Technology Podcast Host:And now that they don't have to spend all that money supporting it, they can actually work to build AI. So, all right. Speaking of Amazon, there's this really interesting story that I don't think we should leave without talking about, which is that Jeff Bezos, according to the Wall Street Journal, is in talks to raise $100 billion for an AI manufacturing fund. Bezos is in early talks to raise$100 billion for a new fund that would buy up manufacturing companies and seek to use AI technology to accelerate their path to automation. The Amazon founder is meeting with some of the world's largest asset managers to raise funding for the project.

53:21Big Technology Podcast Host:A few months ago, he traveled to the Middle East to discuss the new fund with sovereign wealth representatives in the region. More recently, he went to Singapore. The fund, described in investor documents as a manufacturing transformation vehicle, is aiming to buy companies in major industrial sectors, such as chip-making defense and aerospace. It would dwarf the size of some of the world's largest buyout funds and rival SoftBank's$100 billion tech-focused vision fund. A couple of thoughts on this, if I may. Number one, why is Bezos raising this money? Doesn't he have it? I don't know, maybe you don't always want to use your own money, but if you believe that much in the idea, why don't you just put your own in towards it?

54:04Big Technology Podcast Host:Number two, it is somewhat horrifying that Jeff Bezos is going to after, well, I guess Amazon did increase its employees in the fulfillment centers after it brought the robots in. But it is somewhat horrifying that Bezos, who wants to automate everything he can lay his hands on, seems like he's ready to automate real blue-collar jobs with this push. And third of all, knowing Bezos the way I do, and that is, of course, reading about him and speaking to people who know him, he just tends to be right about these things all the time. And I really do believe that he's on to something here, that manufacturing transformation with AI is already underway, but is about to make a major, major leap, and there's a real opportunity there.

54:57Big Technology Podcast Host:So I think Bezos is on the money, and I have a lot of these feelings. What do you think, Rajan?

55:01Ranjan Roy:Well, if you continue reading the next two paragraphs on this, Bezos was recently appointed co-CEO of Project Prometheus, a new startup that is building artificial intelligence models that can understand and simulate the physical world. While much of the AI revolution has been focused on large language models, billions of dollars have begun to flow to companies that are seeking to apply spatially focused AI systems towards industries, including robotics and manufacturing. So yeah, I had not even seen that in our prep doc here before. World models, that's going to be the next big thing. And again, I like the point, not only is Bezos someone who is often right about this kind of thing, again, like what Amazon did to the entire warehouse space, bringing in more people, but still the level of automation is what led to us all getting addicted to.

55:58Ranjan Roy:two-day delivery and one-day instant delivery. Like the technological innovation that they were able to push, like he gets it. He's shown it time and time again. So I think he will definitely, this is something we will watch very, very closely.

56:15Big Technology Podcast Host:No, totally. I agree. I mean, the thing with Bezos is he knows that there are going to be companies that will implement this and companies that don't. And I think he's making a pretty sizable bet. Of course, with others' money, but he's going to make this big bet and probably be right. All right, Ronjan, before we leave, I have a question to ask you. It's somewhat sensible, but I just need to ask. Do you dry chat?

56:45Ranjan Roy:I have dry chatted. I have dry chatted.

56:48Big Technology Podcast Host:So Wall Street Journal reporter Megan Bobrowski tweets, what the and this is a seemingly a pitch that she got she goes one in four admit they what she did the email goes from mandy poor mandy getting put on blast in front of everybody one in four admit they try chat before emotionally difficult uh tasks what is try chatting here's the pitch hi megan jittery before a tough conversation have you tried jai chatting dry chatting apparently it's a trend as over half of adults admit they find it hard to articulate their emotions During tense conversations, many are turning to AI to rehearse. Enter dry chatting.

57:29Big Technology Podcast Host:Rehearsing emotionally challenging conversations with AI before having them in real life. I guess we found it. This is the use case. AI consumer.

57:39Ranjan Roy:This is the consumer use case. Dry chatting. I kind of, when I saw this, obviously the term dry chatting is just like, I don't know. It's disgusting. It's just something that gives you the icks. But then when you start to see it, you're like, wait, this is – so I have – I admit, like, if you have to write a tense email, running it through an AI and asking for some pointers and saying, like, what you want out of it is a pretty good thing I think most people should do. I haven't gone straight for the voice dry chat, I'll admit. Like I haven't talked to ChatGPT, Gemini, Cloud, whoever else, and tried to rehearse the conversation in full.

58:25But maybe it's worth it.

58:29Ranjan Roy:Maybe I might try dry chatting soon. It's like, you know what? if it helps you actually resolve the situation in a in a much more amicable way shouldn't we all be

58:44Big Technology Podcast Host:dry chatting first of all i will say i have used voice to dry chat uh you've voiced right yeah i have some of my some of my interviews uh before i like i have like a rundown and you know i want to anticipate what the interviewee is going to say so i role play with the bot sometimes and i'm like

59:01Ranjan Roy:you're this person and i'm me so i'm gonna separate dry chatting from like role playing oh like rehearsing because this this is specific i feel dry chattingly applies to like really like emotionally challenging conversations it could be if you're about to fire someone if you're like uh like you know you have to break up you have to like deliver some really bad news to I want to keep dry chatting, make sure we all understand.

59:31Big Technology Podcast Host:Oh, my God. The sycophancy and the dry chatting, I don't think it goes well together. It's like, all right, chat GPT, you're going to be my girlfriend, and I'm going to be me, and I have some news to share with you. And chat GPT is like, okay, go ahead. And you'll be like, baby, we need a breakup. And chat GPT will be like, great idea. They're always coming up with the smartest ideas.

59:56Ranjan Roy:Well, so, but so does dry chatting work better? What's like the eval? What's the dry chat benchmark? Because a 4.0 sycophantsy would, then when you go to deliver the actual bad news, you'll get ripped apart because sycophantic GPT 4.0 told you you're right about everything. Maybe that's the new benchmark we need to come up with.

1:00:21Big Technology Podcast Host:well you have it has to be this like sort of reinforcement learning where you reward conversations that don't get the person slapped in real life that's the so there's some poor scale ai guys who have to go through us gotta go all right listen you're you're tasked this week i'm ready for it um you got to break up with your girlfriend for science we got to see if she's you're getting slapped I'm telling you man this could be a reality reality TV series

1:00:55Ranjan Roy:dry chat actually yeah you go wait wait this you go you dry chat and then you go have the real conversation and everyone gets to watch how it actually plays out this is not a bad not a bad pitch

1:01:10Big Technology Podcast Host:have you seen Nathan Fielder's the rehearsal yeah yeah yeah So it was just like that. Nathan's just dry chatting with all these people.

1:01:18Ranjan Roy:Yeah.

1:01:19Big Technology Podcast Host:I put comedians out of business now.

1:01:23Ranjan Roy:All right. Well, I think on that note, I might have to get going.

1:01:28Big Technology Podcast Host:Well, this has been a lovely, I don't even want to say it. Is this a wet chat if that's a dry chat?

1:01:32Ranjan Roy:Still don't. Don't. Should we go? I think we should go. I specifically refrained this entire time.

1:01:42Big Technology Podcast Host:folks don't miss my interview with mark warner on wednesday thank you ron john thank you everybody listening and watching we'll see you next time on big technology podcast akamai cloud gpus for

1:01:54Ranjan Roy:agentic ai bring ai inferencing closer to users everywhere get started at akamai.com gpu

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