The ‘AI-First Company,’ Big Tech Mega Earnings, NVIDIA vs. Anthropic

26:49The first is, can this be top down? Like, can this really be something that a CEO commands a company to do and they end up doing it? So normally I would have said no, but I actually think the Shopify memo has an interesting take on it. Again, the idea that if you want budget, you have to demonstrate it could not be done in a different way, that is a good top-down, like, actual behavioral way to push the change. If it's just everyone spend two hours a week using whatever internal AI tool or system we're building, that's not going to work. But this is actually the way you get it done. So I think it could be done.

27:30I think it's going to cause some internal tension and speed bumps, as you said. But I think it can be done. What about you? Definitely. Yeah, I was skeptical at first, but then I think that when you integrate something into performance reviews, that's when it gets done, right? I think that performance management is what drives a lot of the tech industry, comp. I mean, as you might imagine, money matters. And if your pay is contingent upon you spending a couple hours or building ChatGPT into everything you do, you're going to do it. You want to get paid. I mean, it's no different than any other major tool set that came before.

28:13Again, using docs collaboratively was like transformational, I guess, but we all just kind of did it. Okay, here's my second question for you. Obviously, this is happening within three very techie tech companies, right? Can we see this in non-tech companies? And if so, how long do you think that's going to take? that is a good question because I do agree that, I mean, yeah, if you are a digitally native, pure tech company, that's like lots of engineers, it's going to be easier, but yeah, actually, I don't know. I don't know. That's a tough one. I mean, it could be, I would like to see something kind of dramatic soon and let's say in the next few months, But I don't know if we will.

28:59I think it will take years. I mean, that's one of the things that when we think about the transformative power of this technology, the transformation takes quite some time always. So even if this does become a thing everywhere in the tech industry for normal companies to implement it, it's just going to take much longer. It's my perspective. Years, years, not months. I don't know. Maybe as the tools get actually better and more functional and intuitive, I think there's a shot. There's a shot. I'm more optimistic, I think. You know what helps those companies or those tools become better, more intuitive and usable?

29:38Better products. No, model improvement. Good try, though. Better UI. All right. No, I mean, there's a case to be made for both. Let's talk a little bit about big tech earnings. Actually, it's been a very interesting earnings season. So we're talking here Thursday night. We're doing Friday edition a little early because I'm about to go to France. Let's talk about it. We had Apple, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft all report over the past couple days. And the reason why I pay attention to these companies, I mean, among many reasons, but one of the most interesting things about them is they can sort of be a read through to the rest of the economy, if things are going well with Amazon, then things are probably going well with the consumer.

30:23And if things are going well with Microsoft, then enterprises are probably faring well. Companies by and large beat their earnings expectations. The big tech companies by and large beat their earnings expectations in the quarter that they just reported. Remember, this is Q1, so that's January, February, and March before Liberation Day. But Apple reported, this is from Wall Street Journal, the highest first quarter or March quarter revenue it's seen in more than two years as people move quickly to buy smartphones and other devices before the tariffs were announced in April. The company said sales rose 5%,$95 billion, which was ahead of analyst expectations.

31:03However, the China revenue came in just a little bit lower than expected. So they're going to clearly see some issues in the China market, especially after the US and China go head to head and China's putting out propaganda like China won't kneel, which is if you watch that and you're in China and then you go to the store to buy a smartphone, it doesn't seem like you're going to run the American version, given the signals your government is sending. And also, iPhones are banned within Chinese government offices. And then you look at the another interesting thing that we heard was production. So this is from CNBC.

31:46Half the iPhones sold in the US were made in India. And Gene Munster, an analyst at Loop Ventures, said he expected the figure to be close to 25%. So it's already, the Apple seems to be driving much of its manufacturing capability to India, especially for the US market. One last stat, and then I'll turn over you. Mark Gurman talked about the tariff impact. Apple said there was no tariff impact in the March quarter. It cannot precisely estimate for June quarter, which is the current one, but estimates$900 million in cost increases in the period. This is with an exception for iPhone. What's your big picture take on what's happening with Apple?

32:27It seems like it's weathered the worst of it. I think anything that happened pre-Liberation Day, January through March, obviously tariffs people expected were coming. But I mean, I guess attributing, I don't know, like, did you personally in the months of January to March, were you like, I got to stock up on stuff before? Were you panic buying or? No, I just bought, I mean, I bought in April after Liberation Day. I bought a couple pairs of sneakers from Amazon. That was it. No, see, that's the thing. I think any kind of like even the conversation around panic buying really started after Liberation Day.

33:04So, I mean, to their credit, it looks like and the release of the iPhone 16E was also cited as one of those factors and kind of like the lower cost, but still Apple intelligence enabled phone. So I don't know. I think I still believe and we're certainly going to get into Apple, the X tariff conversation. but I don't know. Apple still is the most vulnerable, but the most promising part of that was the 50 % in India. That blew me away. I mean, it blew Gene Munster away, but I mean, 50 % already, I guess supply chain Tim has been pretty good on this stuff already. It's almost as if, yeah, if you're going to take one CEO who's ready for this, it is the guy with the supply chain.

33:52It's supply chain Tim. But I don't think this is going to be the end of the story. I mean, OK, so Cook also said that the tariff hit will be about 1 % in the June quarter, which is less than most had been expecting, according to Gene Musser. Again, Apple had this exemption from tariffs, but that is the export side of things. So I think the real thing is the China market. 17 % of Apple's revenue last year came from China. It was 15 % in Q1. I don't know the percentage yet for this year, but I think it was kind of in line on that front. A shrinking of Apple revenue in China is going to be bad. Yeah, I'll agree there.

34:36And actually, that's, I mean, not just bad, but potentially catastrophic. Because I have to imagine, out of all things, an expensive cell phone purchase. like and again we will get into apple the product side of it but the it's more of a status symbol than anything in the same way like i mean tesla we've seen the brand impact on the product sales like when the iphones one of its primary values is that of a status symbol and suddenly that status in china could be have a very negative connotation rather than this means you are cool and wealthy that could be a huge problem independent of any actual like regulatory or legal restrictions just from pure brand standpoint and then the other side of this is let's say okay we didn't see any price hikes right but let's say the price has to go up because of this uh or we lose china downloads because of this the thing that apple is selling uh and has growth potential is services which is a hundred billion dollar business and has been growing at an insane clip and has major margins.

35:48So you want to be able to sell as many phones as possible so you can sell more services. And if tariffs cause an issue there, then that could be a problem for Apple. But I have to say, candidly, my reaction to what we've seen and heard from Apple on the call so far and from earnings is actually it's not as bad as feared to use a line from Dan Ives. Yeah, I think that's the market at least responded accordingly. I mean, I think we ended up today as a recording on Thursday, only up a little bit. We were up more earlier. Well, the stock did trade down in after hours, but not tremendously. It's down 2 % in after hours.

36:29Oh, yeah, I guess Apple. Overall, from the earnings, just this narrative that it's not as bad as we were thinking, even though the time period that all these companies are reporting for is before Liberation Day. Still the idea that there's some like good feeling that actually the economy is humming along at some capacity still. And basically, I guess if we go back to zero tariffs or something like that, everything will be okay again, seems to be the feeling right now. But something beyond tariffs can hurt Apple, and that is aimed directly at its services revenue. Because for a long time, Apple had told app developers that they could not tell other people that they could buy subscriptions to their products through mechanisms that were not the Apple App Store.

37:24So for instance, if you were on Netflix, Netflix couldn't say, just go sign up on Netflix.com and you will avoid the Apple App Store attacks. Then the federal government had something else to say. Why don't you cue us into the story, Ranjan? Okay. I think this is one of the biggest tech stories in a long time. And I think this really poses a huge threat to Apple. And I will inject my own personal feelings about, as a longtime Apple fanboy, but what I've been seeing happening to the company. So there's been this trial with Epic Games that's gone on almost five years that actually, and again, it's amazing that like through different administrations, through different political climates, actually ended with the judge ruling that Apple, not only two years ago, that there was an injunction against the idea that they take a 30 % commission and block any other way or are very overly restrictive about how app developers, as you said, that you can't include any language, go to Netflix.com to pay.

38:33And I'm sure many listeners have dealt with this. Like if you try to buy something. I think if you try to like on Amazon, sometimes you're a book, you're redirected to the Amazon app on the mobile web, like it really creates bad overall UX flows. So then what happened is after that initial injunction, Apple basically did a bunch of workarounds and still were forcing app developers to pay 27%. And the judge came out and said, that is completely not okay. And now you have to allow the options to actually let people go and pay elsewhere outside of your actual embedded app payment ecosystem. There's two big things that came out of this.

39:20First, so in 2023, after the initial decision, Phil Schiller had actually said that maybe we moved to a model where Apple takes no commission. But apparently, Apple's finance chief had come up with the idea around 27%. Tim Cook sided with the finance chief, Luca Maestri. So you have a situation where it's very clearly documented and now in the public record that even after this initial injunction, that they basically worked around for circumventing this. The second thing that this is actually the craziest part to me because as a user, I felt this. If listeners have tried to go and pay, even like click out to a directly to a payment site on an external website, there is a Slack conversation that leaked through this or we're in the court filings where they talk about, they're like, okay, external websites sound scary.

40:19So the execs are going to love it. Basically like saying you're going to an external website. And I've been in that position. You're like, oh wait, maybe something's insecure right here. And then it even says, wait, to make your version even worse, you can add the developer name rather than the app name, just to make it look overall a little shadier that if you're going to go do this, to which the other developer responded, oh, keep going. Like they were sitting there like, How do we make this seem like this kind of shady, spammy transaction when in reality it was not? And it just made me start to question, like, Apple's entire brand and what has gotten them to where they are today is the idea they're the ones for privacy and security and the user interest when all these other tech companies are sucking up your data and leading you through dark patterns.

41:13and suddenly you're seeing, this was November, 2021, this was being discussed, like the dark pattern thing, they're in there. And to me, that can completely change the perception of the entire company. Well, I used to think that, but Apple has been able to weather so many storms like this and nothing seems to stick. And I think it's just because people love iPhones so much that like this is not gonna resonate with the individual user. So I think that that is not going to be a big deal. Also, I just love that the term external website sounds scary. Like, excuse me, what is an external website? Like, what the hell am I on right now?

41:57It's still a website. It's just a website. Yeah, but to the average user, I get it. It sounds like a virus. Yeah, anything that makes it seem like you are no longer in the safe walled garden of Apple's payment ecosystem and your credit card is going to get, it could get stolen out there, who knows? But to me, there's another big thing. And the pragmatic engineer, Gergely Oros, is that how you say his name? Gergely. Gergely, Gergely. So he had a great thread and he talks about how the actual payment ecosystem is like a perfect representation of Monopoly because it has not improved. The whole idea is this 30 % fee is supposed to allow you access to this robust, safe, secure ecosystem.

42:49It's good for consumers. It's good for app developers. But he pointed out all these things that I hadn't really thought about, but our table stakes for any kind of subscription e-commerce, giving a full or partial refund directly, like providing customer service messaging around any kind of transaction or especially refund, providing certain types of discounts rather than just a three or seven day or 30 day trial. Like all of these things are just so normalized and part of like running a good subscription type service and Apple doesn't allow them. And then you start to think like, and as he points out, it's because they haven't had to improve it at all.

43:34So again, the promise that it actually was the best place to be, and that's why you should pay 30%. In reality, this was like the most clean example of monopolizing behavior where it just was pure market weight and dominance. and in fact that experience got worse and worse and i'll say this like have you canceled a subscription on itunes slash app store whatever whichever one it's on now i think so like it's 10 steps you have to log into your icloud account which who goes into icloud ever you have to go file a dispute. It's the most heavy, ugly, annoying process ever. And I'm so convinced that they make a lot of money off of people just not knowing how to do that or not even realizing or not caring.

44:32And again, think about how many apps are like seven day trial and then$69.99 for one year. They've pushed the whole ecosystem towards the more scammy side of the way this stuff can work versus the rest of the internet. I'm with you. I think this is the most egregious thing that Apple does with its power or the most egregious thing I can think of right now. And I do love that the federal government is trying to get them for it. And frankly, the reason why I think it is such a righteous crusade here is because the one that ends up getting hurt is the customer always. Like, why am I paying 30 % more for Netflix?

45:11It's the same service. I mean, I know Netflix doesn't even take payments on Apple's ad platform. So that's an extremely righteous reason to pursue action here. And just to bring it back to our discussion of where Apple's business goes, App Store fees are a major part of its services revenue. Like Apple's big revenue growth moment, again, is services. Wait, what services does Apple provide? Now, of course, there's Apple Music and Apple TV +, but a big part of the service, quote unquote, that Apple provides is extortion. $30 billion. $30 billion. That's the estimated revenue directly from the payment side of it.

45:55I mean, that's a lot of money. And what is anyone getting for that? That's the question. Yeah. Now, of course, I don't mean extortion like in the legal sense, but sometimes it feels like there's, you know, you sort of, you know, be terrible if something happened to the nice business you had over there with that company. All right. Let's talk a little bit more about what's going on with big tech, because this does, again, have a read through to the economy. Very interesting stuff with Microsoft, which crushed earnings expectations. Microsoft chief financial officer Amy Hood said demand signals across the company's business have remained consistent so far this month.

46:30So everything's still going quite well in April. And Azure grew 35 % year over year. I think that's open AI. What's your read, Ranjan? I mean, I think the general theme from this week was AI is still powering the economy. Yes. I mean, maybe that's why you got to be an AI first company. But like, I definitely think, and again, in the whole how much is of that money is Microsoft's own investment money coming back to Microsoft? I mean, this stuff gets a little difficult to fully understand. But overall, I mean, when Azure is growing at 35 % year on year, that's pretty spectacular. And again, I think it's a sign that every company is moving towards that paradigm.

47:24And so you better get on. That's right. And Amazon, AWS grew 17%, missing expectations. I don't know. I think that next quarter is really going to be the interesting quarter to watch for Amazon. Did you know that 60 % of the company's e-commerce sales came from third-party merchants? Okay, come from third-party merchants that get many of their products from China? and then sell on Amazon's website. I mean, I try to get this, speak to Jamil Ghani about this, but he wouldn't give a number also the head of Prime. But this is coming out in places like the Journal. The company is way over-indexed on China, whatever way you look at it.

48:02Yeah, I think Amazon, potentially more than Apple, or at least equally, is in trouble. And actually, this is a good sign. Do you want supply chain Tim? He might not make great product with Apple Intelligence, but he can shift supply chains faster than anybody else. But I mean, Amazon made this strategic shift a number of years ago to push for more Chinese suppliers and allowing Chinese suppliers directly onto the platform rather than Chinese suppliers selling to American businesses that then resell on the platform. So, I mean, it's been a long time coming. And obviously, they kind of had to do it in many ways to compete against Xi 'an and Timu.

48:44but they're they're gonna this is gonna be a big issue and we're gonna see this stuff yeah play out a lot more directly in the the months to come but hey maybe you don't need 30 alex maybe two are good enough isn't that what trump said yeah that's what trump said what was the new york post headline oh yeah the new york post headline uh trump admits tariffs uh will raise some prices cause shortages maybe children will have two dollars instead of 30 dollars and there's a picture of barbie and trump and the headline is skimp on the barbie oh god classic do you think ai is going to replace the new york post head in a headline front page probably unfortunately probably you know what i don't that's classic it's very human yeah that's a good one though no you know what ai can't come up with that one that's too good that's original yep skimp on the barbie It's never been done before.

49:40New York Post is probably the single most defensive, front page headline writer is the most defensible job against AI. Don't tell that to Mark Andreessen, who said this week that it was VC. Early stage venture. Early stage venture. Confirmation bias, maybe. All right. Very quickly, Facebook, 42 billion in sales in the first quarter. I think that is kind of insane. Zuckerberg says they're well positioned to weather macroeconomic uncertainty. CapEx, spending that they're going to go from AI, is going to go. The original range was$60 to$65 billion. Now it's going to be$64 to$72 billion, largely on artificial intelligence investments.

50:21Meta, I have been through many cycles with Meta, and it's hard to keep them down for long. They find a way. Yeah, I think meta, the digital advertising impact is almost going to be like a second order effect versus the manufacturing one, which is going to be a lot more immediate in this quarter. We'll start to see that downstream. And we haven't, I mean, I know Snap issued some like headwinds guidance, but I think meta is overall relatively pretty well positioned right now. And I also say that now that it's been getting warm in New York, I'll admit I am loving my Meta Ray-Bans even more. Like wearing Meta Ray-Bans, walking around New York City, listening to music on it, asking it questions while you're just wandering around.

51:13It's a good product. It's a really good product. Now, would you wear them in a podcast interview like Zuckerberg has been this week? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I got them in December and I haven't used them that much, but they're cool, like on vacation and when I was skiing and stuff. But now wearing them outside when it's sunny out isn't weird. So then you can just go around and actually use them. I still will not wear them. I don't have the transition lenses, though. So they're just the dark ones. So I'm definitely not wearing it inside. But I don't know if I'd wear it. Maybe if we're an AI first podcast, Alex.

51:50Gotta wear those Ray Bands. Gotta wear the Ray-Bans. All right, next time we're in person, let's do it. All right. Okay, let's take a quick break and come back and talk about NVIDIA and Anthropic going at it. And then this great letter that we got from a professor of philosophy from Wilford Laurier University. We'll do that 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.

52:28Every swipe at the store or gas pump earns you instant rewards deposited straight to your account. Plus, sign up now for a$200 Bitcoin bonus to kickstart your rewards. Visit Gemini.com slash card today. Check out the link in the description for more information on rates. Again, if you're looking to invest in Bitcoin but don't know where to start, the Gemini credit card makes it easy. The Gemini credit card is issued by WebBank. In order to qualify for the$200 crypto intro bonus, you must spend$3 ,000 in your first 90 days. Some exclusions apply to instant rewards in which rewards are deposited when the transaction posts.

53:05This content is not investment advice and trading crypto involves risk. The Gemini credit card cannot be used to make gambling-related purchases.

53:16You'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 Beeler. 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.

53:44and we're back here on big technology podcast friday edition coming into the home stretch stretch uh very quickly ron john i know we have this in our in our headline of the of the story of the episode but let's just talk about it it's kind of interesting nvidia and anthropic are going head-to-head i don't know if you caught this but anthropic really doesn't like the fact that chips are getting into the hands of developers in China. And they said that the chips are being smuggled in to China in baby bumps or alongside live lobsters. And they would like an increase of funding for export enforcement.

54:25Export controls are only effective with proper enforcement. Anthropic says enhanced resources for the Bureau of Industry and Security would significantly improve control effectiveness. Now, NVIDIA, which sells a lot of chips into Singapore, and I think we can say with a good deal of certainty, many of those end up in China, is not happy about this at all. And on Thursday said, American firms should focus on innovation and rise to the challenge rather than tell telltales that large, heavy and sensitive electronics are somehow smuggled in baby bumps or alongside live lobsters. Very interesting fight.

55:04I mean, it is interesting that we're going to start to see American firms become more and more concerned about what's going on in China. And NVIDIA, which I think depends to some degree on selling them, is going to fight back. And we're seeing that play out. And among two companies who really don't want to be publicly fighting with each other. What do you think? I think I'm convinced Trump is going to address this one. I'm making the call right here in the next three to four days because it's just too perfect. If you hear smuggled and prosthetic baby bumps or alongside live lobsters, I mean, that's just too enticing to make a comment on.

55:42But I don't know. I mean, we're going to start to see more of these very nuanced divisions that you wouldn't quite expect. And I agree, like at that scale, and I'm sure Anthropic is a highly dependent customer on NVIDIA as well. Like it's pretty surprising that they're doing this, but I don't know. And NVIDIA has to play both sides basically. So I think we're going to see more of this coming out, especially as whatever happens on the trade side happens. We'll definitely see more. Not to be a guy that plays both sides of the fence here, but I definitely am on Team Anthropic. that we know whatever export controls are in place aren't working.

56:26So if you're serious about the export controls, you may want to try to enforce them. And then I'm also on NVIDIA's side here that if you wanted to smuggle a GPU cross borders, it's going to be very difficult to make it look like it's just a normal pregnancy. And a GPU certainly does not look like a lobster. That's just my opinion. I could pick out a GPU server next to a lobster. I don't know. For my chip mule behavior, I like to go with the lobsters over the baby bumps. You know, it's just lobsters. Actually, do we export lobster to China? I think I remember reading a while ago that is a big export to China.

57:10So might as well, right? Makes more sense. This is why Red Lobster went out of business is because they started serving GPUs instead of the actual thing. Actually, the next one is, you know, like another major export to China from America is the like leftover pig and cow parts because things that are chicken feet as well, things that are not eaten in the US. So, yeah, keep an eye on those chicken feet to the customs officials. I have a feeling that's where they're going next. I'm just imagining a man sitting down for dinner at a Red Lobster and tucking his little napkin into his shirt collar and being so excited, drinking a little beer maybe.

57:56And they bring the plate out and they say, sir, here's your lobster. And it's an H100. It's an H100. God damn it. Send it back. That is not what I ordered. Send it back. This is not well done. I like that we went down that road rather than the prosthetic baby bump, because that raises a whole host of ethical issues. I don't even know how you would do that. Okay. No. Let's talk about this great letter that we got from Professor Brian Williston from the Department of Philosophy at Wilfrid Laurier University. So we spoke about AI consciousness at the beginning of last show, and we always love hearing from listeners, especially when there's thoughtful feedback that will help us advance the discussion and think a little bit more.

58:43So what Professor Williston said was that we talked about how there's consciousness, which is what you feel, and intelligence, which is knowledge. He said, here's the problem. In assessing whether or not any entity is conscious, is conscious. All we have to go on ever are displays of intelligence. The only bit of consciousness in the universe that we can access directly is our own, and we take it for granted that other humans are indeed conscious. Why? Because I make an inference from their displays of intelligence, which I can access to what I presume is going on inside of them. This is exactly the same boat we are in with respect to LLMs.

59:27Intelligence in all cases, humans or machines, is all we have to go on. Well, that really threw me for a loop, I would say. It definitely helped expand my mind here on this question because, wait a second, if the only thing that we can determine whether something is conscious or not is its intelligence, whether we basically look at them and say, does it, is it, does it make, um, is when, is there something going on inside this being that is like actually being versus just existing like a rock? Um, then who are we to say that machines, uh, aren't conscious or can't be conscious? Because I think my implication was, if you can't feel, you can't be conscious.

1:00:09Um, but how, how do we know now I'm still on the side of this AI isn't conscious. But I do kind of think that it's a very interesting prod at the ideas we shared last week. And I want to turn it over to you to get your response. My first reaction on this was, this is why I love our listeners. Honestly, like, actually genuinely intelligent, thoughtful, and like long responses to what we say. I mean, that's, And it's kind of like reflects the type of conversation in the discord channel as well. Like this, I love getting this kind of email from listeners. But then the other thing too is I agree. It made me at least be like, who are we to say that machines are not conscious?

1:01:00Like it's one thing to be like, I don't think they are, but to definitively say they are not given kind of how he, the framework that he set up. and even how we were talking about last week. Now, I think maybe I am in the camp of, I will not take a position and I will recuse myself from, because again, our displays of intelligence are talking about lobsters and GPUs. So I don't know what that says about our own consciousness. Right. I don't know. I guess like the other side, the other definition is self-awareness. And you could say that these AIs today are already self-aware. Yeah. Maybe that's a stretch.

1:01:41No, no, but there's been a lot of behavior that show actually, no, but, oh, we didn't even talk about sycophantic chat GPT. It did not solve itself. They had to go into the system prompt. So, so I think, I don't think we're at self-aware yet. Okay. But I think that we can certainly see a path to it getting there. Maybe. I think we'll. Self-awareness is, is a, I think is a lower qualification than consciousness. Is it before or after AGI? maybe it's right at AGI I don't know again if a Waymo can drive the streets of New York City I'll give you self-aware AGI not conscious but close well maybe we can end with the greatest sign of technological progress we've seen in millennia if not the length of time that's longer than millennia maybe eternity I don't know what's longer than millennia double millennias double 10 i don't know if there's a unit for 10 000 years but we'll check with ai because we're an ai first podcast in a moment and it is a beautiful new gadget that you're going to tell us all about called the mag 2 um i am now as we've been doing more video i with respect to the youtube commenters who are like why is ron john looking down at the camera like that and what is this angle?

1:03:04And I'm someone who enjoys some good framing in any kind of video. This company Plexicam has this new, it's a magnetic thing that attaches to a webcam. So you can put your webcam in the middle of your screen right over the other person you're talking to or right next to it. So you can look, when you're looking at them, your eye contact for the video is actually looking into the camera. A lot of people, I'm guessing if you've done video, you know, you kind of try to force yourself to look up to the middle of your laptop. I'm a big fan. This is my first time using it. We'll see how the video comes out, but I'm a big fan of this.

1:03:44And I'm going to put this under the camp of AI first podcasting. All right. I don't know why it's actually magnetic. It's one of the oldest technologies in the world. Magnetism, the original artificial intelligence. Magnetism? There was a big transformation where you had to go magnet first. Otherwise you were left in the desk. It's going in the performance review. You are magnet deficient. Get out of here. Speaking of which, let's do that ourselves. Ronjohn, great to see you as always. Thanks for coming on the show. All right. See you next week. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for listening and watching.

1:04:19It's always great to have you here. Join us on Wednesday for a discussion about whether scaling is over with Gary Marcus, an AI skeptic. And then Ranjan and I will be back on Friday to break down the week's news. Until then, we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.