Will Apple (Finally) Get AI Right At WWDC?, Anthropic’s Worry, Microsoft vs. OpenAI

17:07Ranjan Roy:that's why it's like i don't want to say an abusive relationship but i it's been so many times i've wanted to believe in them so many times, starting with Bella Ramsey kind of like ignoring, not listening to her dinner companion, but still, I think, writing an email to them or whatever that ad was two years ago. I mean, the fact that they actually positioned themselves as being able to provide this as a service two years ago, I think actually now it's even making me think how fundamentally they misunderstood the actual technology back then. I just hope, I want them to, I don't think they can. Right.

17:50Big Technology Podcast Host:So the question is, so the question isn't, this is progress for Apple. This is what I'm kind of saying. They have made progress. They understand the technology. They're actually showing us a vision that aligns with the technology's capabilities. And they probably have Google, whether it's, you know, forward deployed engineers or whatever you want to call them or Demis himself, they sure have Google in there working with them to ensure that this is deployed successfully because it's Google's reputation on the line as well, right? Google doesn't want to be part of a failure here. So the execution part is a big question, but, you know, at least this is something that's a target that is reachable.

18:27Ranjan Roy:Wait, actually, how do you think that Google-Apple relationship works? And the reason I ask is I have a Pixel 9. I just, it's not a burner phone. I just got it at some point, I think, relatively inexpensively. And I wanted to have an Android phone as well for testing. The way Google Assistant is integrated into the overall phone is all of this. It's done all of this for the last year. And it does it well. Even Alexa Plus on the Echo show does all of this really well. So it should be table stakes. It's where the technology is today but is google incentivized to make this work because i don't even not even

19:09Big Technology Podcast Host:looking at the the agreement you would imagine they were they would be because it's gemini's name consumption there well and it's consumption at a massive scale like actually is apple going

19:21Ranjan Roy:to pay google on a consumption basis the more people no no the sorry the the stories uh seem

19:29Big Technology Podcast Host:to indicate that they basically distilled their version of Siri from Gemini.

19:35Ranjan Roy:Okay. Well, but then the better this gets, the worse it is for Google's hardware business. Like this still represents, again, I had not thought about moving from Apple, and I get so frustrated with Siri that I've looked up the Pixel Fold a number of times and I'm not ready to drop$1 ,800 and completely remove myself of the Apple ecosystem. But like that is a threat to them and that is an opening for Google. But I guess they're basically they just signed away the model kind of adaptation rights to Apple. But beyond that, they don't really care is what we're saying.

20:14Big Technology Podcast Host:Yeah. I mean, ultimately, if you're Google, right, and this becomes – are you asking if this becomes a defining feature of the phone? Is Google hurting themselves by selling this to Apple? Yeah.

20:24Ranjan Roy:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

20:25Big Technology Podcast Host:Yes and no. I mean, yes, they're going to power like they're our rivals, right? It's like number one and number two in terms of phone makers. But they also have great power over Apple, right? Because they're going to make another more powerful model and Apple's going to want to distill that. And they're going to make another more powerful model.

20:42Ranjan Roy:No, that's true. And Apple's going to want to distill that.

20:44Big Technology Podcast Host:And at a certain point, if they see that, oh, we have a chance to like decimate the iPhone, I don't think they're going to be making all these deals. So it's great power in the hands of Google.

20:54Ranjan Roy:I like that. I like that.

20:56Big Technology Podcast Host:Okay, so now that I've made the case that Apple is thinking the right way and has a good chance of being able to execute this, even though we haven't seen them do it before, so we're going to hold our praise until we see it, there is a disconcerting line in German's report that I'm going to read to you because you asked about the rollout and then get your reaction. Apple has labeled the new Siri as a beta and preview internally, suggesting that the Assistant won't be marketed as a fully finished software when it's released later this year. The original Siri held the same description for two years.

21:32Big Technology Podcast Host:There is also the possibility of a wait list of some sort for people who want to try new features and approach used with the initial launch of the Apple intelligence platform in 2024. Your reaction?

21:49Ranjan Roy:Oh, God. I was just getting excited. and this, okay, hold on. The upside, I would prefer they actually more strongly take this approach rather than having a heavy, glossy marketing campaign that indicates that everything is perfect. But this is just giving me PTSD of that first Apple intelligence launch. Again, I think nearly two years ago, I remember sitting there and enabling Apple intelligence on my phone thinking it was going to do something And it really is one of the worst kind of product rollouts, I don't want to say in history, but it's been pretty bad. So I was just starting to get excited that maybe they had a really coherent strategy and were believing in the execution.

22:36Ranjan Roy:But I'm going to wait and see. I'm going to wait and see and hope. But that just made me a little more uncertain. Do you think, does this make you more or less excited?

22:48Big Technology Podcast Host:Less excited. I mean, I definitely held that out to caveat at the end. I would say if I were to sum up my perspective on this, it is three things. One, AI doesn't matter as much to Apple as the narrative makes it seems like, at least in the short term. We're really going to have to wait for an AI device to really matter for Apple to start to say that their failures on AI are going to really stack up and add to anything. Now, that doesn't mean they're going to be safe forever, but they're at least safe for now. So that's point one. Point two is, I think that the positive sign, like I said before, is that they are actually building to the technology's capabilities as opposed to like something they dreamed up, you know, in a conference room in Cupertino together.

23:38Big Technology Podcast Host:But then there's the worry. And the worry is the execution and while they should be in a better position to execute this time, that line about the wait list worries me. Wories me for sure. Do you think the failure of execution has been,

23:59Ranjan Roy:what's the term? Is it Dutch disease? Where like, it's where you have oil or, oh man.

24:06Big Technology Podcast Host:Natural resource curse?

24:08Ranjan Roy:Okay, it is Dutch disease. and originally it was around the massive influx of foreign currency but yeah the idea it's like a resource curse that uh when you have some specific resource it kind of distorts your ability to kind of develop other parts of the economy within a nation it shouldn't be because oh go ahead go ahead well no i mean those iphones are still selling they haven't i mean maybe you believe they have dramatically approved i would tend to argue that it's been yeah at least you said refining not revolutionizing but again when you're selling iphones at that clip and everyone keeps buying them and i'm about to go spend 250 bucks to replace an airpod like you just don't have the internal energy and incentive to actually build these kind of things if you look throughout

25:00Big Technology Podcast Host:big tech you will see companies with natural resources and the ones that these tech giants have been able to stay on top because they haven't sat on their laurels and they've realized they have a natural resource, but they still need to innovate. That goes to everyone, like Google, for instance, with search.

25:17Ranjan Roy:Google has the greatest natural monopoly of all time. Exactly.

25:20Big Technology Podcast Host:And you can see that they've been big on AI for the last decade. So to me, maybe it's part natural resource curse for Apple, but I don't think we should wave it away as saying it's just a natural resource curse. I think it is a cultural issue, and I've been on record about this for a long time uh the culture of apple is very high on its own supply and they believe that the culture that they've built is responsible for the creation of the iphone and while it was that also came from steve jobs and so they've remained this refined jobs idea culture uh even though they don't have jobs anymore and they are sort of so happy about the way that they do things or proud of the way they do things that they will not try any other model that's why yeah you're i

26:16Ranjan Roy:mean yeah google completely disproves my point but i still my one of my favorite hot takes is that google's entire ai transformation success can be traced back to the fact that sundar was a mckinsey alum and looks at everything in terms of like organizational design and change management so basically if tim cook was mckinsey they'd be fine i stand by it this is a pro mckinsey podcast now

26:45Big Technology Podcast Host:it is interesting because um the mckinsey model of like like we talked about the engine room and farming it out to the product areas i just spoke about this with mg on monday um it might help make the specific products better but the question is can you build a unified assistant with with that model because you still have this centralized division working with the product areas within google like gmail and maps and search but if we're going to move towards a quote-unquote super app you know you're going to need these product areas to succeed their egos to sort of make that centralized app work right again like you were talking previously what's the cutting edge now It's learning what to call, right?

27:28Big Technology Podcast Host:It's learning what systems to tap into. And if you have a lot of systems that sort of prefer that people spend time within them or prefer priority over others, it's going to be tough in the centralized assistant world. On the topic of Super App, in a bit we're going to get to one of the other stories where we'll discuss it more.

27:47Ranjan Roy:And I have some gripes. But one of the most interesting parts of this was one of the biggest additions this year is a dedicated Siri app for holding conversations and continuing past chats. Users can jump into the Siri app by pulling down on a result. So basically, dedicated Siri app, running conversations, basically your chat GPT-ish style assistant. Do you think Siri is going to become the super app one to two years from now? I think that's Apple's ambition.

28:19Big Technology Podcast Host:I mean, that's part of the ambition for sure.

28:21Ranjan Roy:Do you think there is a slide deck Siri, the super app somewhere, super app Siri?

28:27Big Technology Podcast Host:Probably. I mean, the truth is iOS is a super app, right? So these apps become operating systems of their own, right? That to me is like the real question in terms of the viability of Apple's business model moving forward. It's if the chat bot and the AI becomes the operating system, what's your answer to it? So you would imagine that they're thinking about that. Super absyuri. Super absyuri. Okay, so we'll obviously watch and come back next week and talk a little bit about what we've seen. In the meantime, we should definitely talk about Anthropic telling us that AI may be close to recursive self-improvement and maybe it's time to slow it all down.

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31:43Big Technology Podcast Host:Plan your fun at visitmo.com. And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast, Friday edition with Ranjan Roy of Margins, as we do every Friday. Ranjan, I thought of you when I saw the headline of Anthropik's latest blog post, or really an article. The headline is, When AI builds itself, our progress towards recursive self-improvement and its implication. This is from the story. Anthropic engineers on average ship eight times as much code per quarter as they did from 2021 to 2025. That is, of course, with the assistance of AI models like Mythos. The rare occurrences of misalignment present in today's models could compound as the models build their successors growing more frequent but less understood until we lose control of them.

32:31Big Technology Podcast Host:The argument is basically AI has made engineers much more productive than they were previously. They're still a human in the loop. There may not need to be. And if there doesn't need to be, there could be some problems. What did you think when you saw this and the numbers, the posts, the ideas? What was your reaction?

32:51Ranjan Roy:I can't even right now. I actually, I think one of the things that, it is funny. I feel we're at the point of the market cycle where I'm going to be citing Ed Zitron more, who has been quite a bear. And I still vehemently disagree with him on the potential of the technology itself. But I liked he had said after this announcement, it was like, get some fucking new material, please. I mean, it's just like we have heard this over and over again. And I talked a lot about this a few weeks ago when, like, the Mythos announcement was so, and a developer eating a sandwich in the park and receiving a message that had broken out of containment was a very clear kind of PR -coordinated message push.

33:40Ranjan Roy:um it's my question to anthropic is as they are steamrolling ahead and obviously like to me the one of the most interesting stories of the next two to three months is who gets out first and when spacex anthropic uh open ai how do they get out it's this rush to get out to the public markets if you want to slow things down you can you don't need to raise another 65 billion dollars at a $950 valuation and then start kind of leaking that you're S1 or I guess actually filing your S1. And like, if this is truly a risk to humanity that can pose significant societal risks and like, wouldn't you stop? Why wouldn't you?

34:27Ranjan Roy:Like, what do you think it is? Do you think it's just, do you think Dario believes this? Do you think there's a large group of people that do believe of this, but then the marketers and business folks and growth folks override them? Do you think this, I know, I mean, we go over this a lot, but where's your head right now as we get closer to the Anthropic IPO of what really is behind this messaging and what do people really believe? All right.

34:57Big Technology Podcast Host:First of all, I think that we should sort of tackle the core message here. And would Before we go into what's going on within the company, would you agree at least that the AI coding tools from Anthropic have gotten way better and enabled people to do much more?

35:13Ranjan Roy:Six months ago, yes. I think the 4.8 was actually kind of like a pretty big dud. Okay, but the line is pointing upward. No, no, of course, but none of that – whatever exists in the last one month existed in their line of sight six to eight months ago. If that was truly the case, one would hope that decent people would be like, let's figure this out. Let's actually slow things down. Again, one to two months before your actual IPO to continue this, maybe we should have, again, in terms of the actual qualification of risk of overall AI, I think it's just a separate conversation from this.

36:04Big Technology Podcast Host:For the sake of argument, you could argue. For the sake of argument, you could argue. Double argue. Anyway.

36:12Ranjan Roy:But one day I'll learn how to speak. Any statement that starts with that, I'm excited for.

36:17Big Technology Podcast Host:That they did slow down to a degree by deciding not to release Mythos to everybody. And a lot of this coding improvement has happened because of Mythos internally.

36:27Ranjan Roy:You're saying that, okay, so you're still, for the sake of argument, you are arguing that that was the official slowdown. I don't know, like, is it still raising this much money, pushing ahead with this intensity, like, organizationally, like, one decision? Maybe Mythos is this be-all, end-all God model that, like, will destroy humanity and they have done - No one's saying that. No one's saying that. We'll break the fabric of society by -

37:04Big Technology Podcast Host:Maybe it's not, like, you know, so special. Maybe some of the latest OpenAI models can do similar things. But what it's trying to do is set this tone that's like, you know, if you can use this model to hack through things, we should be careful about the way we roll it out.

37:19Ranjan Roy:No, I appreciate that idea. But still, then you don't roll it out as we had discussed. Like, then you don't have a big press announcement with named partners. And then now there's reporting that they're apparently working with the NSA. And, like, again, they have the greatest PR and comps team in the world in terms of, like, understanding which stories can actually make it into the press. Like, you wouldn't do that. You would actually, in the background, coordinate and kind of work with everyone who is needed to to try to actually solve this problem. It wouldn't be a PR release with a large consortium named.

38:00Ranjan Roy:That's why even that, if it were real, I still think it would be handled in a more, in a different way. Like if it was real. I would not. How would you handle it? You have a new - Only because, go ahead, go ahead. No, no. Let's say you got a new model. You suddenly, Alex is sitting there in a Brooklyn apartment, has a bunch of, has your own Colossus set up, and suddenly you train Kantrowitz 5.7. Suddenly you're like, oh my God, this could, has the potential to pose significant societal risks. What do you do next?

38:41Big Technology Podcast Host:First of all, if I had a Colossus set up in my Brooklyn apartment, I guarantee you the morning after I set it up, my wife would have every single one of those servers on the curb because we would finally have space in our apartment. So I promised you the next day there would be racks and racks of Vera Rubens on the curb in Brooklyn. I promise you. It doesn't matter how much they're worth. Okay. So now what would I do? And this is what I was going to say. only because you're so myopic about this, wouldn't you do exactly what they're doing? So this is the argument, right? The argument is if you are, why keep pushing forward if you feel the technology is potentially dangerous?

39:26Big Technology Podcast Host:You keep pushing forward because you feel the technology, while you feel the technology is dangerous because if you are building the leading models, you actually have a say in the way that the deployment works. People will listen to you. if anthropic was grok was like meta right now and had like you know whatever their their their latest uh you know model is that they're delaying by the way and they said hey you know guys in the front maybe slow it down no one would listen to them you the argument is you only really have influence on the way this works if you are leading and the way that you do that is you're loud about about it.

40:04Ranjan Roy:So you are taking the I alone can fix it approach.

40:09Big Technology Podcast Host:I'm not, first of all, I'm not taking this approach.

40:11Ranjan Roy:This is you, this is you and your Colossus and you have just made a significant breakthrough.

40:16Big Technology Podcast Host:Don't put this on me. I'm just trying to talk you through the other side of this argument. I like how in this thought experiment

40:23Ranjan Roy:you have just turned into this world, like this James Bondian villain, but continue.

40:29Big Technology Podcast Host:No, I promise you my real world experience of this would be waking up in a Tony Soprano bathrobe and walking out, getting the newspaper and seeing like racks and racks of grace black walls next to the fire hydrant. I promise you. Okay.

40:42Ranjan Roy:And that was actually, that slows down the destruction of humanity. And that's why she did it for you.

40:48Big Technology Podcast Host:That's right. So thank you for that. But seriously, yeah. I mean, what is your, I just want to get your response to that argument that you stay in the lead so So people listen to you and you're loud because you want to have influence over the process.

41:05Ranjan Roy:My response would be they have been saying this since the beginning. And I do think there was a moment that they might have believed it. But no matter who is in the lead, OpenAI and Anthropic, Sam and Dario, but now the entire organizations. Actually, OpenAI has pulled back from it, you can see, like pretty purposefully. But this idea that this technology is so incredibly dangerous, yet I will continue to push ahead at full steam has always been kind of the narrative. And it's helped them tremendously. I mean, have you ever heard Sundar say that? He said it's fire, which would be funny hearing.

41:46Ranjan Roy:No, you haven't.

41:47Big Technology Podcast Host:But obviously Sundar's perspective is going to be different than theirs. Why?

41:52Ranjan Roy:Why?

41:54Big Technology Podcast Host:well i guess maybe obviously is the wrong word but it google has always been more capitalistic wouldn't you say i mean they removed don't be evil right like they started that way they became

42:07Ranjan Roy:a normal oh you're buying into it alex you're buying it raising 65 billion dollars at a 950 billion dollar valuation is is about as capitalistic as it gets no okay no you're right

42:19Big Technology Podcast Host:you're right and and let me now i was saving this but you've now sort of forced me to spit it out let's do it speaking of google the most okay i learned a lot from jeff hinton when we sat down and that interview is on the feed from uh on on from the wednesday show the thing that will probably stay with me the longest from hinton is not him saying ai is conscious although i thought that was really interesting it was our discussion about safety and particularly whether anthropic would be able to pursue its safety mission while on the public market. And as Hinton points out, when you IPO, you have a legal obligation to your shareholders to maximize profit and not to maximize AI safety.

43:03Big Technology Podcast Host:And I just don't see how it adds up where Anthropik continues to pursue the safety mission while it's legally required to maximize profit for shareholders.

43:11Ranjan Roy:Yeah, but you also have a legal obligation to not destroy humanity. I mean, again, Like that's a hyperbolic statement, but like – Whose side are you on, Roy? No, no, no. No, no, but it's like again, you can be – Philip Morris turned Altria as a public company but still has to abide by – I guess those are actual regulations and they're not self-imposed. But like still, we are – in 2026, the whole corporations is good. everyone kind of moved past that but like still i think if you have a fundamental technology that can pose significant societal risks investors aren't shouldn't like that if that were true okay let's just that presents a risk that presents let's give an example let's talk

44:04Big Technology Podcast Host:through an example all right anthropic is public it has mythos open ai has just released a like a a dynamic coding model right and you know yes there's a cost benefit analysis yes it might lead to more hacks but it also will end up you know providing anthropic with the ability to grow faster than open ai and head off this threat couldn't there be shareholder lawsuits if it you know decides to hold back mythos because there's you know it's not an end of the world situation it's okay there's a few more cyber hacks that we want to be mindful about it becomes much more difficult to do that when you're on the public market are you saying that open ai presented the risks of mythos as just a few more cyber hacks no you're saying anthropic sorry anthropic

44:52Ranjan Roy:yeah yeah is just a few more cyber hacks not a big deal maybe uh your your squarespace site goes

44:59Big Technology Podcast Host:down a couple of times it's up to first of all it's up to the shareholders and second um it becomes wouldn't you agree it becomes much harder to hold something like that back if you're on the public market that's all i'm saying i i think it brings a lot more attention to it and actually the good

45:17Ranjan Roy:thing is it would actually force more transparency around the reality of the situation you just took my side is that's what i've been trying to say the whole show no but but i don't think it forces them, it adds, I don't think the legality of a shareholder lawsuit, because Anthropic in a competitive battle does not release the model that actually they have marketed themselves presents significant risks and had to like national security, like at every level. I think shareholders, the idea that they would sue that you did not release that to the general public when a competitor was being careless and callous i don't think would happen i don't know all right and nowadays anything's possible in the financial markets but so let me see if i can

46:10Big Technology Podcast Host:i i think there is consistency to your position here and i i think i reacted to something different in terms of your transparency is the transparency from the company not transparency in the industry fair enough is your position that right now anthropic telling us about all these you know models and by the way that we i mean we've sort of kind of talked over it but they did then after saying that the models could recursively self-improve say it might be a good idea for frontier building to pause for a bit okay um so is your position that them doing this building and saying this is actually marketing.

46:49Big Technology Podcast Host:And actually they are a capitalist company, you know, as everybody else. Yeah. And don't believe that stuff, it's marketing. And when they go public, being public will still, you know, even though they are, you know, a company that does good marketing and is trying to maximize profit share, maximize shareholder value and doesn't have a special thing about privacy, a special thing about safety, they'll still be required to act with safety in mind. So it's not inconsistent.

47:21Ranjan Roy:Yes, I think so. I think we've aligned.

47:26Big Technology Podcast Host:Well, I'm just repeating your point. I will say it's a valid argument. Are you agreeing? Okay, okay. I'm not ready to agree just yet, but I think it's a valid argument.

47:34Ranjan Roy:But I want to bring it back to the beginning. Do you think the average Anthropic employee genuinely believes they own and operate technology And in their own words, that pose unprecedented cybersecurity risks severe enough to cause widespread disruption to the global financial system and critical infrastructure. A little more dramatic than a few cyber hacks. Okay.

48:02Big Technology Podcast Host:I have this. Let's end with this. I have this actually from the Wall Street Journal story. A quote from one of our favorite sources, a friend of the program, I guess. He's been on once. Ethan Malek, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. and an influential scholar on AI transformation. Here's what he told the Wall Street Journal. While some anthropocritics see fluff and marketing in their safety pronouncements, many within the company are true believers. AI labs are a mix of things, said Malik. There is a trillion-dollar company with all the normal trillion-dollar company stuff like marketing teams and lawyers.

48:37Big Technology Podcast Host:There is a core of researchers who are just building the next models. And then there is a set of people who are philosopher kings and concerned about the future and what comes next. And they're all in conflict with each other at times. I think that's about as good of an explanation as you're going to get.

48:51Ranjan Roy:We just talked about this. We've been talking about this for months. Ethan just, he just made it all make sense to me. Is this coexistence book going to be about this idea?

49:05Big Technology Podcast Host:Oh, so he has a book, AI Coexistence, coming out in the fall, according to the story. I don't think it's going to be about how these people coexist within Anthropic. I think it's going to be about us coexisting with AI, but hopefully we can bring him on the show and get him to talk about it.

49:20Ranjan Roy:Just coexistence. Let's coexist together.

49:24Big Technology Podcast Host:We shall. Oh, speaking of coexistence. Wow, that was a beautiful segue. Can Microsoft and OpenAI coexist? Microsoft has been on like the weirdest press tour this week. I don't know if you've paid attention to it, but they had this build event where they announced a bunch of their AI announcements and the core thing was like, hey, look, you know, we are, we're not wedded to open AI anymore. So we can just go do our stuff. And we're going to build like the best AI models. But a lot of it was like them talking about like how like we know, I mean, I guess you want to acknowledge that you're behind just like Google did recently with the coding apps.

49:58Big Technology Podcast Host:But they really got taken to the cleaners in a couple of these pieces. My favorite line was one in The Verge. Let's see. For years, Microsoft AI business leaned hard on its early and exclusive partnership with OpenAI, but the drama-filled marriage slowly devolved into a situationship, and the pair effectively separated in late April, though Microsoft is still OpenAI's primary cloud partner for now. This year's build had the vibe of a freshly singled divorcee posting a thirst trap on Instagram. It's always fun to be at developer conferences, and great times have changed, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said on stage Tuesday, adding that events like this are about coming to grips with the new opportunity.

50:40Big Technology Podcast Host:And to do that, Microsoft has basically said, all right, we are ready to go and compete head to head with OpenAI. The goal is to prove that we can become one of the top four labs in the world. Mustafa Suleiman, the head of one of Microsoft AI divisions, told The Verge. He said, there's three labs that matter, Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic. We are not one of them at the moment and that's always been my intention.

51:04Ranjan Roy:I just love that meta is not on there even though I mean we kind of know it but still it's always interesting to see it placed that definitively. I've been thinking about this so the same way Apple solely by owning the end user real estate with the iPhone has an opportunity. Microsoft certainly I mean we hear about this all the time Everyone has Copilot, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people, whatever it is. If they figure it out, it's interesting. Do you think there's a world where Microsoft and Apple a year from now are interesting in this? Of course there's a world. Are winning, but even the way Google within the span of a year became a player, do you think Microsoft has a chance?

52:00Big Technology Podcast Host:do you think microsoft definitely yeah sure why not i mean they they have like you said they have office they have access to opening eyes ip i don't think they're like well here's a better question i mean like first of all okay let me answer your question then i'll ask my question to sort of end this um so i think there's a chance um and they have the like you said the products i think there's a chance for apple they have the products um if you're microsoft why do you care about building foundational AI models. I seriously don't get it.

52:31Ranjan Roy:I think it's because of Suleiman. I think it's like, this is one of those things organizationally, like he's there. He's not there to build a new co-pilot product feature. And my favorite still is in the most Microsoft way, which kind of Google seems to have moved past. They have this new thing, Microsoft IQ, but there's also work IQ, then there's fabric IQ, then there's foundry iq then there's web iq like just their way they kind of roll out and name products is comical at times but i think they like that's the stuff that that layer is not interesting like he was brought on and he has power within the organization to be a player and okay i think it's that simple do you think i want to i want to dig a level deeper on this

53:18Big Technology Podcast Host:um all right so he was brought on to do this why strategically is there a reason for microsoft to

53:23Ranjan Roy:do this can you think i don't think there is i don't in fact i think the apple oh so i can tell you model routing has become like so dominant in conversations in my world now like it went from you know like just there's you have to have the latest frontier model and they're all encompassing and within the span of two months everyone is like get find the right model for the right problem model cost optimization, tokenomics. So if I'm Microsoft, I actually agree. I don't think that's the right approach. I think like, you know what? Let them all battle it out. Apple over there is going to suddenly make Siri a powerhouse because it's going to be called the best model at the time and we're all going to forget about Bella Ramsey's ad and maybe Microsoft has a chance too.

54:20Big Technology Podcast Host:Okay. What do you think? One reason why they might do it. Satya Nadella is speaking to Ben Thompson in Stratechery. So Ben Thompson tells Satya Nadella that OpenAI is a major tenant on Azure. He goes, they're a major tenant, but let's face it. Anthropic Overtime or OpenAI Overtime will build their own. It makes sense. Pretty sure that's talking about a cloud service. And OpenAI has talked about building its own cloud service. and so ultimately if you're microsoft you're going to compete with open ai so open ai can build the servers which you have for azure and then put the ai model on top of them the only way to compete with that is to have your own foundational models maybe that's the reason okay i mean i still don't buy it though but why not i don't know like if open ai cloud open ai makes open ai ai cloud and you can't answer that right then maybe you do want to build your own models.

55:18Ranjan Roy:That's a big if. That is a big if. There's a lot of ambition.

55:23Big Technology Podcast Host:But Tanya Nadella believes it's a possibility.

55:26Ranjan Roy:Wait, that is actually interesting because it's funny, like heading into IPO season, like hot IPO summer with Anthropic, OpenAI and everybody, SpaceX, no one has actually talked about the AI cloud in terms of OpenAI's potential business model. That was like a passing comment from Sam. Like, do you think Satya really believes that or has some information? I don't know. Like the fact that he's even addressing that is kind of shocking to me.

55:55Big Technology Podcast Host:Very interesting. Yeah. Sorry. I had that. I put that in the deck and forgot about it. But that to me is what you might. That's the story.

56:02Ranjan Roy:That's the story.

56:02Big Technology Podcast Host:Funny enough, none of the report. I don't, I didn't see any reporters outside and, you know, bring that up and make that connection. I mean, I guess Thompson was the best at getting it out, but still like the conversation

56:13Ranjan Roy:What does Satya know? What does Satya know? I mean, he's got to know something. He's got to know something.

56:18Big Technology Podcast Host:He has all their IP until 2032.

56:20Ranjan Roy:Yeah.

56:22Big Technology Podcast Host:All right. Well, folks, forgive my voice this week. I just completely blew it out at the Beer Authority next to Port Authority on 42nd Street in New York on Wednesday night watching the next Beat the Spurs. And we're about to head into Friday night, and I think I'm going to let what's left of it go. So maybe it's a good thing I'm not going to be on site at WWDC. I won't be able to speak.

56:47Ranjan Roy:I'm sitting here looking down at Madison Square Garden from the 18th floor of Penn Plaza, and there's a lot of people out there, even though they're not playing here. There's blue and orange as far as the eye can see.

57:03Big Technology Podcast Host:You're a Celtics fan?

57:05Ranjan Roy:I am. I'm rooting for the Knicks right now. I'm out of New York sports teams. Like there's no part of me that could ever come around to the Yankees, Giants, or Jets. But I don't know. The Knicks, especially this team, I mean, you can't hate. And I'm not saying I'm bandwagoning fully, but I'm certainly rooting for them. But as a general fan of the NBA, I mean, these are the – I can't root against either of these teams, and it's just good to watch. So I'm enjoying it.

57:37Big Technology Podcast Host:Such a fun story. Yeah. Yeah, so that's, I don't know about you, that's my weekend. Tonight, yell at the TV for three hours straight. Tomorrow, wake up, get the newspaper and see a whole stack of data center servers on the curb. Sunday, fly to San Francisco only to not be let into WWDC. I'm excited.

57:56Ranjan Roy:I think, wait, hold on, I'm just going to, there was that story that NVIDIA is going to pay people to like build data centers in their house or something.

58:05Big Technology Podcast Host:I saw that.

58:06Ranjan Roy:Sign us up, Jensen. We're ready. No, I promise you. Alex is not ready.

58:11Big Technology Podcast Host:You would find my cold body on the sidewalk in the morning if I put one of those in the backyard that we don't have.

58:17Ranjan Roy:Yeah, I think New York apartment holders are probably last on that list.

58:23Big Technology Podcast Host:Yeah, we can pass on the backyard server. All right, Ranjan, have a great weekend, man. See you next week. And folks, Ranjan and I are going to be doing the show live at the Big Technology Summit on June 18th. I think it's probably the last time I'll mention it until you hear some of the episodes, because we're going to post them on the feed. It's going to be in San Francisco at the Commonwealth Club Summit at bigtechnology.com. We're just about sold out. Thank you to everybody who signed up. It's been pretty overwhelming, the response that we've gotten. And we're going to have one hell of a day out there in San Francisco.

58:53Big Technology Podcast Host:So stoked to be doing that with you, Ranjan. Excited. And yeah, it's going to be great. And I think we'll leave it there. So thanks everybody for listening and watching. And we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast. This is Cade Courtley, former Navy SEAL, sniper, and platoon commander. I've seen what happens when the lights go out and after Hurricane Helene left 4 million Americans in the dark for days, I'm giving you the same advice I give my own family. Get backup power now.

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