Why OpenAI and Anthropic should fear Meta Muse

0:00Danny: Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most advanced heart rate sensing in an Apple Watch. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, could tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. For general wellness purposes only, not intended for clinical use or to detect, diagnose, monitor or treat medical conditions. requires iPhone 11 or later. This episode of the Times Tech podcast is sponsored by KPMG.

0:36Katie, we've been tracking the AI surge for a while, but some of the latest data is pretty striking.

0:43Danny: It is. KPMG's latest quarterly AI pulse suggests that seven in 10 UK business leaders still see AI as a top investment priority, even if the economy slows down in the next year. But turning that investment into tangible value is another question. And so a lot of organizations are still figuring out how to move from endless AI pilots to something that works across the business. KPMG's focus is on that gap, helping organizations scale from the pilot phase to AI-powered transformation they can trust. To find out more about how KPMG can help your organization make the difference, you can visit kpmg.co.uk forward slash AI.

1:23This episode of the Times Tech Podcast is sponsored by ServiceNow.

1:27Danny: Danny, one thing we keep hearing from business leaders right now is AI sounds great, but how do you actually make it work inside a company? Exactly, because most organizations aren't neat, shiny systems. They're layers of software, legacy tech, and teams all doing things slightly differently. ServiceNow sits across all that, acting as a control tower for making work move seamlessly through the organization. Connecting people, systems, data, and increasingly AI agents so that things don't happen in silos. Learn how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people at servicenow.com.

2:05Danny: Danny, every time I see you, you're in a different place. It's very glamorous. Yes, I am in New York City. You know why? Why? Well, it's climate week, so I'm doing some stuff out here. It's also the UN General Assembly. And I don't know if you saw the news, but it's big news out here. What's that? It's no longer artificial intelligence. What do you mean? They've changed the name. Trump gave a big speech at the UN General Assembly. He's like, as of today, it's now super intelligence, SI. I mean, well, I was getting a bit bored of A-I-A-I-A-I. Yeah, so now it's SI. Not to be confused with STI. Very different.

2:47Danny: Very different. Should we get to the pod? Let's do it. Hello and welcome to Times Tech, where we unpack how technology is reshaping our everyday lives. I am Danny Fortson, coming to you live from New York. And I'm Katie Prescott here in London. And this week, we're looking at the high stakes rivalries that are shaping the global AI race. First, the corporate battle between open AI and Anthropic, as both tech giants prepare for what could be two of the largest IPOs in history. Yeah, and we've talked a lot about those deals recently, but that's because the amount of money at stake is actually quite staggering.

3:23But this week, it was reported that Anthropik is on track to make more than$100 billion in revenue this year, but it has decided to delay going public by a month, the potential reasons for which we're going to get back to very shortly.

3:39Danny: And meanwhile, OpenAI is trying to convince investors to put even more money into the company. We'll be getting into all of that. The money, of course, the why, the how, and the who comes out on top here. Which dovetails directly with the bigger rivalry that's dominating the AI race, which of course is between the US and China. Yeah, as we mentioned last week, President Trump remains fiercely opposed to any slowdown in AI or SI development. SI, thank you. Sorry, of course. And this week he's meeting with the Chinese Premier Xi Jinping to try and come to some sort of agreement as tensions escalate.

4:16That's right. And he plans to pitch a kind of US-China AI hotline, you know, like the big red phone back in the...

4:24Danny: SI alert! SI alert! So we'll get into all of that, plus Trump's plans to form a so-called AI force, which is also quite confusing now that it's SI. But I guess, you know, we're gonna have to rebrand that as well. Yeah, lost in tech jargon as usual. Just a reminder as well, you get not one, but two episodes from us this week. On Friday, we're going to bring you the biggest tech stories of the week in our news episode. And on Sundays, you can hear our big interview, which is a longer conversation with the founders, CEOs, and everyone else who's shaping what happens next in tech. And this week, that interview is with Nick Bolton, who's the boss of Ordnance Survey, which is actually fascinating, more than 200 years old.

5:08Danny: And you might know them best for those very old fashioned maps. But the geospatial data that they have is powering all sorts of technology now. So that's a fascinating interview for Sunday. But back to today's episode. I've got some news from over here. Oh. It may not have the same global implications as a rebrand of AI. Well, I'm sure it's big though. It's big for me. I think it's sort of big for you as well. Norman has been replaced. Oh, wow. Hold on now. What do you mean replaced? So our good old friend Norman, my AI agent, who had such a wonderful sense of humor and was so reliable and brilliant in so many ways.

5:47This is a full breakup story, I hear.

5:50Danny: So he was so wonderful and we loved him. But as you know, he ran on a Raspberry Pi in our tech department. Yes. And he kept disconnecting. And so I had to keep messaging the tech team to reconnect him. And it was a bit clunky and a bit of a difficult relationship. And so in the end, I stopped using him and we've sort of drifted apart. But I've got a new agent and she's called Bridget. Oh, Bridget. And unlike Norman, Bridget was so simple to set up. She's an instinct agent. Oh, instinct. Big, big thing out here. yeah yeah yeah instinct which is also a san francisco company has launched its agents globally and essentially it is a like a norman that you download onto your phone and you can give access to various parts of your life my instinct agent has access to my google drive but it also offered me the chance to connect it to granola which is a note-taking app and all sorts of other things and so then it has access to all of this information and you communicate with it through whatsapp and it can do various tasks for you and she has a little message for you you're ready for this yeah hi danny uh bridget here katie's assistant lovely to be on the tech podcast even if it's just a cameo be nice to her and maybe to me too oh bridget she's so charming She is charming Yeah and she is She was easier to set up She's more on the button And I don't have to go through a third party tech Did you basically ghost Norman?

7:29Danny: I did yeah That's not cool So when the robots rise up I just want you to remember this moment Because Norman's coming for you He's probably coming for me Because I was not very nice to him He's far too lovely to come for anyone I've got a new agent myself Have you? Yeah Don't be jealous Tell me more His name is, and this is an homage to our departed friend, I called him Norm. So I want to be able to tell Norman and I can't now. Isn't that tragic? So Norm is a Meta Muse agent. So Meta launched it last week. And it's an agent you can download on the App Store. Like Instinct, very easy to set up.

8:09And it's just rocketed out the gate. And a lot of people were like, oh, I'm starting to get this whole AI thing. because this is like AI for normies. And I don't know, they made it look like a little cartoon character, like a little like navy bean with eyes and a mouth or something. It's very strange looking. But the idea is you download it, you hook it up. I did it through my Facebook account, which I never use anymore. So you hit a couple of buttons and all of a sudden you have this thing. They're like, hey, do you want to hook it up to your email, to your calendar? The more you use me, the better I get, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

8:43And I did it. And people are getting very excited about this. And the thing is, it's like, it's a productization of all of this kind of AI hype we're talking about. And it's free. And it's quite powerful. So a lot of people are like, ooh, you know, because once you start using an agent, once you give it access to your life, that's a pretty powerful like lock in. And it could really take some wind out of the sails of OpenAI, of Anthropic, as they're trying to show the world, hey, we're taking over the world. So it's a really interesting moment that this has come out.

9:17Danny: I'm very jealous you have access to Muse. I was talking to an American investor earlier this week who said, oh, you've got to download it. It's incredible. And I tried. And of course, it's not available in the UK and Europe yet. but I have Bridget on instinct which I have a very similar story to your muse one I downloaded instinct off the app store put in my phone number almost immediately she connected on whatsapp I linked her up to my google drive email calendar documents the whole shebang and off she's gone and she can do everything that Norman did for me. But the whole process has been so smooth.

10:01Danny: When did I download Norman? February, March, something like that? And to build him, you remember, was such a complicated process. And we had some really senior guys in our tech team doing it for me. As I described earlier, he kept disconnecting. It wasn't a seamless process by any stretch of the imagination. this as you say just commoditizes agents yeah and it's fascinating to see the success of muse because i'm sure many people like you have facebook accounts certainly i do that we don't use for sure but suddenly this is drawing us back into the meta world in a way that we don't have that relationship with anthropic or open ai you do with google for sure because of gmail i'm talking about the average person on the street here.

10:52Danny: But you know, the open AI is an anthropics of this world don't have that sort of mass consumer relationship. Yeah, no, it's really interesting. Muse is like, Hey, here I am. He's like, I have my own computer. I have my own memory. I have my own AI system that meta has built. I am your co pilot in life. What do you want me to do? And I'll give you one example. So I hook it up to my email to my calendar. I'm in New York. But like When I'm home, usually I'm the one managing the kids' sports stuff, soccer, baseball practice, all that stuff. I'm running around New York, and I'm not really paying attention.

11:29My wife is manning the ship, but I get this message from Muse. And it says, quick heads up, Jet, who's my youngest. Jet's soccer coach emailed this afternoon. The session has now switched fields, so he needs cleats, not turf shoes. It's already underway in case anyone's heading over there right now, but just a heads up. So it had read my email, saw something about an event happening the same day. And it was like, hey, just in case you haven't seen this, this is what's happening. And I was like, it's quite useful.

12:01Danny: It's incredible. Yeah. And that's like what, you know, a personal assistant would do if we all had one. And now we can, as you say, for free. Everybody's like, oh, my goodness. This is a thing. And like, if I was ChatGPT, I'd be worried. it's this product that as you say three and a half billion people use the facebook apps facebook instagram threads meta and if you can just easily plug in this new thing that's a big advantage but what's really interesting so everybody's getting all excited about this and then amazon is like nope because one of the things that norm my norm told me he's like i can buy stuff you know just tell me blah blah blah but amazon was like absolutely not and has blocked muse from being able to go on to amazon to buy stuff so now it's there's this fight between meta and amazon obviously two of the biggest beasts in the jungle about allowing this agent to be able to just freely roam around at site and buy things and they're like hey we think it's like a pretty basic thing to like, you know, think twice before we just like, let this happen.

13:12Danny: How interesting. Yeah, I'm sure Amazon has other reasons for blocking it, perhaps because they're trying to build their own similar something. Because they too have like billions of users. And Alexa in terms of, you know, it's clunky version. I did have a moment where I was like, am I about to really give this access to like, to my life? And then I just did it. How long have you had your personal Gmail account that you've connected Norm to? Oh, 20 plus years. Yeah, same here. I mean, it is worrying, isn't it? When you think about what you're giving this agent access to, things that you were writing about, people you were writing to 20 years ago.

13:53Danny: Anyway, the rise of the agents. I hope everybody gets to try them. Let us know. Let us know what your experiences are. Well, should we turn back to talking about the IPO race? Anthropic pushing its back and OpenAI looks like knocking its into next year as well. Yeah. And it's really interesting because, you know, we talked earlier, I think it was last week, around this idea of like, oh, Anthropic and OpenAI are all, you know, calling for a slowdown. Coordinated slowdown. We need to kind of give ourselves time to get ready for the rapture. But again, the cynical take is like, maybe things were already slowing down.

14:28And this is an artful cover for a slowdown in growth because a couple things are happening one you have the kind of bursting onto the scene of these super uh useful agents that are getting people very excited you know neither of which come from the two frontier labs and at the same time you have the surge in open source open weight free models where again if you go back to the beginning of the year those three frontier labs, Google, Anthropic, OpenAI, in terms of like the tokens being used and tokens are like the measure of AI usage, basically chunks of words. Two thirds of the world's tokens were basically coming from those three AIs, Anthropic, ChatGPT, Google.

15:15And then the rest of it was like all these like little open source projects and Chinese competitors and stuff. now it's completely flipped two-thirds are now open source because as we've talked about before everybody's like wait this stuff's really expensive i don't need to spend all this money if i'm a big corporate i can you know have these free models to do all my grunt work and that is just happening now the question is like what does that mean for the finance of these companies we don't know we'll find out soon but i do think the anthropic s1 you know the big document pre-ipo that lets people see for the first time all of their business in minute detail is going to be a moment where people either stop and be like, hmm, I don't know about the future trajectory of this, or they'll be like, wow, this thing is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

16:05Danny: And it sounds like that moment for OpenAI is going to be pushed back even further than we thought. And I know we've spoken a lot before about the fact that Anthropik and OpenAI aren't exactly elated about opening up their books. to public scrutiny because, you know, as you say, for the first time, we'll start to understand their finances, the investments that have been made in them, the investments that they're making in other people. And it'll tell us a lot about the AI ecosystem as a whole, and perhaps expose a lot of concerns that investors have about the circular financial deals that have been going on.

16:38Danny: But Open AI looks like they're going to get more private investment. So there've been reports in the last week, the next funding round could value them at one and a half trillion dollars. It's crazy. And that obviously kicks the IPO can down the road even further. And you know what's crazy? OpenAI has already raised more money than any company ever in terms of like any private company in the history of capitalism. It has raised more money. And so has Anthropik. And they're about to raise more. And they're still losing a ton of money. It is just kind of mind bending when you think about it. But I think we should get to our other story.

17:15We should. Because, you know, there's big things happening out in the world there, Katie. Big, big things.

17:20Danny: We'll be right back.

17:25This episode of the Times Tech Podcast is sponsored by KPMG.

17:30Danny: We often talk about the shiny object problem with AI, where things look impressive in isolation, but are much harder to roll out across a large organization. Issues like governance, workforce readiness and trust tend to become more important as things scale. KPMG's approach is to look beyond AI as just another technology rollout and instead how it could redesign work across the organization and fit into wider processes and decision making. So it's less about individual use cases and more about how organizations can transform and deliver outcomes powered by AI. To find out more about how it can help your organization make the difference, you can visit kpmg.co.uk slash AI.

18:35Danny: you live healthier. Find out more at vitality.co.uk. Today's episode of the Times Tech podcast is sponsored by ServiceNow. ServiceNow describes itself as an AI control tower for business reinvention, connecting people, systems, data and AI so workflows more smoothly across an organization. The platform integrates with different clouds, models and data sources, bringing them together in one place to help your team. To learn more about how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com.

19:13Danny: So in the midst of all these AI warnings last week, Trump announced that he's going to form an AI force. AI force. It's weird. It's not SI force. You can't just say it. Okay. AI force. AI force. AI force. AI force. AI force one. Do, do. And he's going to appoint an artificial intelligence czar. Tell me. tell me about the AI force what do we know I mean that's all we know he's comparing it to Space Force which is this thing he launched about space which nobody you know like have you heard about Space Force since he launched it right like do we have an intergalactic fighting force yet we don't but I think it's broadly like hey we're gonna go to the moon we're gonna go to Mars it's like kind of just i think communicating the urgency of a mission and so now we have ai force but it's not really clear what it's supposed to be um but he said you know i will be announcing in the near future the ais are only high iq individuals need apply oh wait hold on i just need to delete my application from it i thought you'd be a shoo-in oh thank you gosh that's nice so who knows what it means right it's an announcement it's a press release it's a communication of the importance of what he sees and how he sees it which is we ain't slowing down this whole doomerism thing is a quote-unquote hoax and the country that wins ai wins wins it all effectively but there really are only two global players in this race yeah it is the us versus China, and whether they can both agree on some sort of, I mean, it doesn't sound like there's going to be any sort of global rules about it, but at least to come to the table and talk about what's going on, talk about these advances, and have an open dialogue on it, when these are the two countries that are really at the frontier, the only people who can pace the frontier is really important.

21:19So Trump and Jir's meeting this week in Washington, they're talking about like a hotline, like the big red phone from back in nuclear times when it was like, you know, if you need a direct line leader to leader, if something is scary, which is interesting. But I also think it's obviously it's like this great power competition. But there is, I think there is a greater uniformity of interest than perhaps we recognize because again, China's a big place that prizes control of all things of its population of thought of what is allowed to be spoken about public etc what they don't want is out of control ais you know what i mean so i do think there is probably some kind of common ground to be found around like okay we're in a competition but also neither of us wants to build this doomsday device that one of us is going to lose control of So I don't know how that manifests itself in talks like this, but I think it is kind of interesting.

22:23If you buy any part of the Doomer narrative, that would freak out Xi Jinping as much as Donald Trump or anybody else.

22:31Danny: And it may well be that AI is the only place that they can find some common ground. If you look at what else they'll be discussing in terms of, you know, Chinese bans on the export of rare earth metals, American bans on the exports of high tech, including NVIDIA chips, Taiwan, Iran, actually, the dangers of AI feels simple. yeah and i think the other thing is the competition is you know you talk to defense types it is akin to nuclear it is akin to like you know whoever has the superior technology and what dario amade and others have warned about is like it's starting to recursively self-improve like it just gets better and better and better and better and then it kind of runs away from everybody else in terms of supremacy that like whoever controls that it's like they have the atomic bomb and nobody else does in other words it's like this strategic strength that everybody is running toward because it gives you the supremacy and this threat that is quite powerful when you're talking about what kind of big nation so it'll be really i don't know if they might set up the quote-unquote notification mechanism the big red phone but beyond that i don't know because i do think you know if you talk to people in the pentagon the stakes are seen as kind of could not be higher especially when you see what's happening with like drone warfare ai controlled drones these things that can kind of go out in swarms and do damage and we're seeing that in ukraine and iran and other places so it is it is all very live in that part you know it's kind of proof of concept happening in real time well as as bill gates almost said what a time for there to be a vacuum of leadership in washington yes indeed well it feels like a good point to end on yes indeed yes super intelligence si yeah i'll get my agent to call your agent if we can because you know i bet you we could do that let's work on that yeah okay let's work for next week before you go yeah i think you need to send a note to Norman just to kind of let the brother down easy because he's over he's over there just floating in the ether by himself waiting for his human to call on him I do feel bad but he keeps disconnecting you just ghosted him I keep feeling bad about having to get the guys to reconnect him you know just sort of they've got busy lives okay Norman's down again you know you're right i should just swallow the frog as they say yeah because you know the robots are coming for us all and norman's gonna be mad he's such a nice person i don't think he would be so that's it for this week's episode of the times tech podcast we'll be back on sunday with the interview with nick bolton who's the boss of ordnance survey the 235 year old british map making company which is making waves in the tech world here's a clip from that interview Did I use an LLM to design my vegetable patch this year?

25:31Yeah. I like to grow vegetables. And of course, how you plant a vegetable patch is an optimization problem. And so basically I explained to Claude the environment that I had and it came up with the plan. I would then take a picture of the bed after I planted it with exactly the spacing. They'd come back saying, you've done a great job, Nick. And that is so rewarding because it's not me saying that's a good job. It's, come on, tell me, that's much better. Thank you for listening. And if you don't already, please do follow us on YouTube. You know, smash the subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss an episode.

26:09Danny: See you. See you next week. Bye. This episode of the Times Tech Podcast was sponsored by KPMG. One of the themes we keep coming back to is the gap between AI ambition and real world application. And that's where KPMG is focusing its work, helping organizations move beyond pilots and think about how AI can change the way the business operates and how it fits into wider processes and decision making. You can find all their insights and how they can help your organization make the difference through successful AI workforce adoption. Visit kpmg.co.uk slash AI.

26:54Danny: Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most advanced heart rate sensing in an Apple Watch. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, could tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. For general wellness purposes only, not intended for clinical use or to detect, diagnose, monitor, or treat medical conditions. Requires iPhone 11 or later. When everything is moving all at once, your workforce, your tech stack, your business, you don't need more tools.

27:29Danny: You need one solution. That's why Paylocity built a single platform to connect HR, finance, and IT with AI-driven insights and automated workflows that simplify the complex and power what's next. Because when everything comes together in one place, growth comes easy. Experience one place for all your HCM needs. Start now at paylossity.com slash one.