Can Microsoft fix Windows 11 by dumping AI?

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Hello everybody.

Hello.

We're going to be talking about Windows today, last week Microsoft announced some big

plans to sort of reset Windows 11 so it doesn't stink anymore and some of those plans

involves taking a step back from AI, which is kind of interesting.

So we've got a special guest on to talk about that.

There's also a bunch of other AI news, there's open AI, killing Sora, we'll discuss

what all that means and some things around social media too, big trials around meta, them

losing in court a few times, we'll talk about all that.

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So let's talk about Microsoft's big plan to fix Windows 11.

So joining us to talk about that is Mark Hockman from PC World, Hey Mark, how's it going?

Good, how are you guys?

Doing okay.

And kind of shocked by this news, like kind of shocked by this sort of like admitted

cell phone by Microsoft.

So Paven, the head of Windows and devices over there at Microsoft, somebody we've talked

to a couple of times actually, we did interview him a couple of years ago, and I think that

was around the co-pilot plus launch.

But he put up a blog post kind of admitting that people are not liking what Microsoft

is doing with co-pilot and Windows 11 these days, and they announced a series of changes.

And those changes are basically things everybody has been yelling at them at for.

They're going to be yanking co-pilot out of some apps.

So it's a bit less in your face.

They're going to be giving you more customization control.

You'll be able to once again, move the task bar along the side or top of the screen if you

want, rather than just the bottom.

And there are also some promises around in general making Windows Explorer, the file explorer,

far easier to just make it faster, more responsive.

They're also saying there are going to be some stability improvements and whatnot.

Kind of a shocking thing from a company that's been trying to shove co-pilot everywhere

over the last few years.

So Mark, what was your impression based on this news?

When you first read it, what is your impression about this potential fix?

Do you think it could fix Windows 11?

And what do you think about the state of Windows 11 right now?

Two things really.

One, it was long overdue.

I mean, this is something that should have happened two or three or four years ago or

probably should have never happened in the first place.

It should have been sort of a continuation of my mind from Windows 10.

And a second, I think it's obviously a plus for Microsoft.

When I saw this announcement, I thought to myself, oh, it's just going to be a few talking

points.

There's not going to be really much of substance here.

And there was a list of changes that Microsoft wanted to make and these changes that the

company is planning to make are what people have been asking for for a long time.

So it's obvious that they have heard and understood what the community has been asking for.

It's just they refuse to do it.

And I think probably the reason for that is the one that everyone sort of just understands

to be what Microsoft has had for, you know, how does this fatal flaw for the last couple

of years.

And that's just been this over dependence on AI stuffing co-pilot into pretty much everything

that Windows offers.

And just their acknowledgement that, you know, hey, sticking co-pilot into something like

a task bar or into into into a notepad, for example, is just an overreach.

And then you need to sort of pull back and offer features that consumers actually want

for themselves.

The thing that I honestly, and I'll just, you know, just throw this out there right away

because this is, I think, for me the most important thing is that, you know, five years ago,

six years ago, when Microsoft launched Windows 10, it was a real, I don't know if it was

a collaborative effort, I'm not going to go that far, but it felt like the opinions of

users were valued.

I mean, Microsoft had launched its Windows Insider program.

They put betas out there, they encouraged people to give them feedback.

But they also brought in people like, they actually had like in-person events where you

could go and talk to the developers themselves as they were creating these things.

And you could tell, and they could tell you, hey, this is what we thought when they created

this feature.

And you could say, well, that's a great idea, but what happens if you pursue this route?

And you know, just being able to talk to the person, the product manager, like overseeing

like the photos app, you know, it's almost revolutionary.

I mean, it's just something that it felt so, well, I guess welcoming to the right word,

just felt so again, kind of collaborative.

And you know, Windows 11 was sterile, it looked kind of like a Chromebook.

I mean, I hope I don't know if they're going to go back to this approach, but you know,

if there's any possibility that they could, I think that would be the kind of thing that

I would certainly welcome both as someone who covers Microsoft and as a user of Windows.

It's probably worth taking a step back to think about like how we got here, right?

Because you aren't talking about that Windows 10 error, which I think was really strong.

And Windows 10, it's always with these companies, right?

They screw up and then they have to come back being like, we're so sorry, we're going

to fix it all.

We're going to listen to you.

And the screw up before that was Windows 8, right?

And nobody liked Windows 8, Windows 8 was a thing where Microsoft was trying to shove

the touch experience like, oh, yeah, you're going to treat your Windows PC like a tablet,

a hybrid tablet, Windows device, or totally going to be a thing where you're going to love

them all.

And to a certain degree, sure, lots of tablets, lots of laptops got touch screens.

They launched the Surface devices, but I don't think anybody really liked Windows 8 because

that was like purely style over substance.

Windows 10 was going all the way back to like, okay, we know what you guys want.

You want the desktop.

You don't want this like tablet experience first.

You want a real start menu.

You want like an operating system that just works the way you expect it on a desktop.

And I think overall, Windows 10 was a huge success.

And that also came at the time where Sachin Dedella was coming on at Microsoft as well and

trying to like make his mark.

And he was in like boring nerd mode, right?

It was all about productivity, it was all about getting work done, is very, it's not like

the Apple thing, right?

Max where it feels like Apple's always trying to deliver a great experience and make you

feel good about using your products, Microsoft at that point was about getting work done.

And then Copilot happened and Sachin Dedella got really into AI.

And I could sort of feel the ground shifting underneath us like this is some sort of earthquake

and I don't know if it's good.

And that started with the Bing chat event that was like in February and they like at the

last minute rushed everybody to Seattle to check that out.

And it was cool.

It was like the coolest Bing ever was, I think, but what it symbolized was Microsoft just

being so amazed by what this partnership with opening I could do.

Okay, Bing is all AI now.

Now it's Bing chat.

Now it turns into Copilot.

Copilot's so great.

Let's put Copilot everywhere.

Copilot in Windows, Copilot in Microsoft 365.

And I think it's just this thing where they were so enamored with it.

Even when I would sit down and talk with executives and be like, this copilot is not giving

me right answers, right?

It's a very shiny thing, but it is often incorrect.

And the responses I got from Microsoft executives were always really weird.

They're like, oh yeah, give it time.

It would be better.

I'd be like, no, I'm not going to tell my calculator to be better.

If I ask you two plus two, you got to give me the real answer or I'm going to throw you

out.

It was this weird thing.

Did you get that similar sense, Mark?

First of all, it's interesting that you bring up a two plus two thing because at the

very end of the days of Cortana, that was one of the stories that I wrote and I asked

a two plus two and of course, get the wrong answer, which was fun.

Or how many hours are in strawberry or something?

That's always the one, right?

Exactly.

Yeah, that's right.

I would agree with you.

I think there's also something that I think that Microsoft executives were absolutely enamored

with.

I completely agree with you on that.

I also think it's a little bit more of a psychological thing.

You want to get users, two things that Microsoft wants to do.

They want to get users in the habit of using a specific feature and they want to get users

in the habit of paying for a specific feature.

By putting co-pilot everywhere, it was saturation bombing.

It just basically said, hey, get used to using it.

If you deliver as the answers you want, get used to paying for it.

I think there was obviously issues with putting it everywhere and then delivering the wrong

answer because people didn't see that as something that they wanted to use as what they

saw it as something they wanted to avoid.

I think even today, most people in the think of AI, they don't necessarily hit Windows

plus C, they open the co-pilot app.

They're opening up a web browser or a specific app to launch Clod or chat GPT or something

of that sort.

Microsoft was first to the market, but I think they have unfortunately fumbled the ball

in a left room for other people to take over that habitual usage thing that they were

trying to establish.

It's the desperation we see from all these companies, too.

That also explains what Meta has been doing.

Meta, when they saw the Metaverse wasn't working and we'll talk about the continued failure

of all their investments in the Metaverse, Zuckerberg was betting, okay, the Metaverse

is the next thing, VR is the next thing, we're going to own this because we missed mobile

and also the same thing Microsoft has worried about and also the same thing, a lot of other

tech companies are worried about.

Now they're like, okay, we're going to be in AI, we're going to be the AI pioneers.

To be the pioneers, you're going to take some hits and I also think users don't respond

well.

If you're basically delivering a product they don't really need.

I think people kind of inherently felt that.

Let's talk about some of the changes they say we're going to be seeing in Windows 11.

Yeah.

Pulling back and copilot from inessential apps, so stuff like notepad and photos, I don't

know who was using those things.

I think the best thing is being more flexible with Windows updates because this is something

I have noticed.

If you have updates sitting and you want to reboot your computer or turn off your computer,

your only option right now is to reboot and install updates or shut down and install

updates and they're going to give you a little more flexibility about how to do that.

I didn't used to think that was a problem but now that I'm looking at it, it does feel

like one of those things where Microsoft is really forcing you to do that and now that

they've been delivering these updates that have been unstable over the last few months

in the last year, they've been breaking computers.

I think there's good reason for people not to want to update immediately.

More control over widgets and feeds, more transparency about the Insider Windows Insider

program, so you'll be able to see what level of Windows Insider you are, you'll be able

to give feedback more easily.

These all seem like good things but it's kind of hilarious to me Mark.

Okay, you're going to make Windows work like it used to, essentially like less AI,

more core features, make it work a little faster, improve overall performance, they're

promising faster, more stability, better driver support, more stable driver stuff like that.

Nothing new.

It's more like, okay, it's going to be like the Windows you remember, right?

The Windows that it's most stable, which is what?

Windows 10, maybe Windows 2000 for the people who remember that.

I mean, there's certainly a blast in nostalgia here because yeah, yes, you're absolutely

right.

Going back to what we all liked about Windows, more collaboration, less overbearing

features and so forth.

I thought the interesting thing about the Windows update thing, I think it was interesting

because again, that's a thing that sort of, you know, if you see Windows fails on the

internet, it's usually like some newscast and all of a sudden they're teleprompter reboots

and the middle of it and so forth.

I mean, that's the kind of thing that people send to focus upon when it's Windows errors.

For me, you know, it's interesting because for a while there, Windows update wasn't exactly,

wasn't, wasn't especially obnoxious.

It was just like, there was a few updates every so often.

I could just go ahead, oh, okay, there's an update, I was scheduled and so forth.

It just seems like there's updates every day now.

And especially, I don't know if you've noticed, those security updates, those security updates

they've made launched this year, which I think are kind of new in the 26, so pretty much

every month of 26, so far.

They take a long time to download, they take a long time to install.

I mean, they're just, they're just, I can understand the reason for them in part because of what

you mentioned, you know, updates, breaking computers and so forth.

But they're just, they're just, they're just a pain.

And I think that yes, managing those in some fashion will provide a degree of relief

for somebody.

I also think that it's interesting that the key feature that sort of everyone focused

upon because we sort of had to and it's the one that sort of people were asking about

was a taskbar, the movable taskbar.

And it's interesting because I actually think that Microsoft just again dropped the

ball in this because I really don't think that people, they have telemetry where they

can see how many people use their features.

And I think with a movable taskbar, really nobody moves the taskbar.

They move it once and they sort of fix upon it.

That's the way they want it.

But it's the idea that you, you're not allowed to move it, a noise, a significant chunk

of people, right?

So it doesn't really matter if a lot of people do.

It's more like just let the nerd, let the nerds who want a top screen or side taskbar

do it.

But I saw it as like the ability to adjust your seat in your car, for example, because

once you have your seat adjusted, you tend to not move it ever again.

Unless there's a new driver or something like that.

So again, with taskbar, I'm sure nobody actually touched it because they put it on the

side or the top and left it there.

So Microsoft said to itself, oh, well, nobody wants this feature.

So let's go ahead and get rid of it.

Well, it was of course the wrong thing to do.

So now I think that maybe if that thesis is true, maybe Microsoft will sort of re-evaluate

those features and how people use them and think to themselves, oh, well, we were wrong.

It's sort of like that metaphor where there were two airplanes would come back and the ones

that came back never had bullet holes like the engines or the cockpit or any of that sort.

Same sort of thing, I think.

It is funny like every time Microsoft touches like a core aspect of Windows, people freak

out, right?

It's easy to forget because nobody really loved Windows 11 when it came, but it had some

weird restrictions.

The taskbar was only centered.

So everything was like nicely centered, like the OS X dock, the button itself, like yeah,

you couldn't push it to the left like so many people are used to.

But the thing that annoyed me most is that they turned on by default the automatic grouping

of apps and I will keep harping on this.

So when Windows 11 launched, it would be taskbar and you would see an icon for the app

you had opened, not the specific window.

So if I had like multiple windows of Firefox or EverNote open, you'd have to, okay, I

see that in the taskbar.

Where are my tasks?

I have a 32 inch monitor, I have a tiny bundle of task icons here, oh, I have to click

again.

Okay, now I have to right click to see what window I have open.

That's a Mac mess.

That's one of the things I hate the most about Mac OS and the dock and everything is that

you don't have a full array of everything you have open.

You have to click in, you have to do like a tab click or something else on Macs.

And then eventually they, okay, they're like, okay, okay, we hear you.

You can put the taskbar on the left now, are you happy?

And then later on, even quietly, they're like, okay, okay, we hear you.

You can ungroup those taskbar icons if you'd like and I immediately did that and all of

a sudden it was much more usable because Windows was like Windows 10 again.

But the same thing happened when they replaced the taskbar with the start screen or the start

menu with the start screen Windows 8, right?

Everybody freaked out because it was such a change of pace and it really slowed things

down too.

I wonder if the less Microsoft is learning is like, you have this great core thing, do not

touch that.

Make it better.

We're, we're going to call this some WAGA.

Make Windows great again is kind of what they're going for and they're making Windows great

again by just being boring, which is great.

Be boring.

Be stable.

Don't shove all this other stuff in my face if you're going to slow down what I'm actually

trying to do.

I feel like that's the main takeaway here.

And the funny thing is is that I actually stopped, maybe it was around the Windows 8

time frame, actually using the icons and launch applications.

I just hit the Windows key and then start typing it like Chrome or whatever it might be.

It's just because I just, I don't know, I guess I just got frustrated the whole thing.

I mean, the nice thing about Microsoft is that it does accommodate a variety of users

with a variety of modalities.

I mean, there's a lot of fluff in the, there's a lot of talk in the fast couple weeks about

touch screens, for example, you know, does anyone care about them?

And the answer is probably no, but at the same time, I use them for one specific thing

and that's to do to like rearrange Windows.

If I, like, undock my laptop and things freak out, I just use it, it's just easy to do

it.

But I never actually use it from then on out.

Same sort of thing can apply to various things within the Windows operating system too.

I mean, the start menu and so forth, but, you know, but again, yes, it's just the fact

that when Microsoft messes with an established method of doing things within a habit, that's

what irritates people.

I mean, I'm sure there are some people who are extremely effective in, in DOS and I know

there are people who are extremely effective in Linux because they're simply used to being

able to quickly type out or click on what they want to do and nothing changes.

But when Microsoft again starts fudzing with the way that you do things, yeah, people

get irritated.

Got that test bar thing.

I will never, I will never let them down.

Never, I will never let them forget what they did there.

Well, I mean, a couple of things, yeah, start, start doc, start doc made a whole business

out of it.

I mean, they've been existing for years on start seven and various, you know, various

olithic fences and so forth because of Microsoft's inability to change.

Start doc and window blinds.

Those were the days, a couple of things I should mention here.

This announcement comes a couple of weeks after the MacBook Neo launch and let me tell you,

I reviewed that thing and like, how is this a $600 computer?

What the hell are you doing PC manufacturers?

What the hell are you doing?

Microsoft that you can't make an OS that can actually still run on 8GB of RAM.

It feels like there's some like dark magic going on in the MacBook Neo and what a time

for Apple to release that.

I'm just like gushing over the thing.

I don't know if you spend time with it, but does this feel like, does this announcement

feel like Microsoft saying, hey guys, we see what you're saying and we're going to make

windows better.

We promise, please don't buy a MacBook Neo.

That's kind of what it feels like to me.

Yeah, I thought that there was a little bit of that as to me as well.

I despise Max, so I'm not going to use, I don't, same with iPhones.

I just refuse to use anything at least touch the MacBook Neo.

There's a reason for that, which is personal, which is basically that iPhones use the whole

green bubble blue bubble thing.

My kid didn't have one during the pandemic.

He got really stressed out about the whole thing and so it's just like, hey man, you

made my kid cry.

Forget it.

It's unnecessary.

I will say, though, get your fingers on the MacBook Neo and just take a second to be

like, what the hell are you doing?

Dell and Aces and everybody else?

This thing is $600.

Well, the thing about it is that they own this to look in.

The only operating system, the integration between the two is so solid.

The one thing that you'll notice with the Max to look in is that, and I don't know if

this is, this is still my pet theory and Microsoft's kind of shot it down, but I still think

it's partially true at least, but I mean, the single core performance on the Max to look

on that far outpaces anything to the XC D6 or even Qualcomm can throw it right now.

And usually single core performance, single thread performance is intrinsically tied to

the operating system.

And so I think that that Apple sort of understands, okay, fast performance plus a deeply integrated

operating system just gives you a snappy experience.

The snappy experience is resonated with consumers.

So I think maybe a lot of what Microsoft has done with like 26h1, for example, where

they're really trying to get Windows on arm up to speed, might have some of that in

the background.

Like, hey, you know, my Apple's great on arm.

We can do the same thing, but you know, it's just taking a while.

The Windows on arm thing, again, it also feels like response to Apple and that they've made

great strides with that.

The Snapdragon hardware of the last few years have been great.

But it's the Apple single core performance, like you're saying.

Apple has had the, like, basically, they've had the single fastest core for the last few

years since the M series chips launch.

That's been their claim to fame.

But also that integrated memory, which is something, you know, we only saw in GPUs before

the M series chips, like having the RAMs right there, CP cores are right there.

The responsiveness between them is like insanely vast.

That's something that you cannot easily replicate with like a normal X86 chip.

And I think that leads to the snappiness as well.

Like, I loaded up that MacBook Neo with tabs, dozens of tabs, 4K video, tons of things.

And like, it had a big ass page file.

It was the page file was like 16 gigabytes, but it didn't slow down.

It's still like kept kicking with 8 gigabytes of RAM.

And that kind of made me just look at things in a different way.

I know you're going to have to go soon.

Some of the stress tests for the MacBook Neo I've seen are incredible.

And scrubbing through 4K footage, I'm not sure if I'm confabulating two different videos.

But the thing that I remember is 4K footage, like five tabs of Dune 2 playing all at the

same time.

And then on a separate window, they're also playing Sims 4.

That's memory management, baby.

If you've got fast page files and fast access between the disk and the RAM and everything,

you will not feel that thing here, you won't feel that slow down.

I do have to ask you, Mark, also how much of this response feels like Microsoft prepping

us for like, hey, we also know Xbox is down.

And the future of Xbox is unfortunately Windows.

And we get to prepare Windows to be better as an Xbox thing too.

Because Microsoft is just taking it on all sides at this point, right?

Like the gaming side, hell, complete hell, the PC side.

Like, okay, they've got a certain amount of dominance.

Well, so these chips from Apple are killing at the mech, but Neo is just like whopping

everything on the PC side.

It does feel like they got to make Windows better so that in the future, they can create

this sort of like Xbox console experience that's at least based on Windows that there's

a lot of refinement.

They've been avoiding, I think, for the last few years.

I think there's some cultural shifts coming in Xbox, which they're not willing to talk

about quite yet.

And for those of us who have, I've shattered with them a little bit.

And I don't have enough to publish anything on it.

But I mean, I think they're trying to shift the, again, I think they're trying to shift

the culture around the sort of the console experience and bring that a little bit more

into the PC space.

And we've seen that, of course, with the Xbox app and things like that.

But I don't know, I mean, to this day, I still am an Xbox fan.

I know a lot of people have shifted over to the PS5.

I think they're doing a lot of interesting things.

I think Game Pass is still a success.

I think it's marvelous.

I mean, maybe the publishers don't like it, but I mean, it saves me tons of money.

And it gives me exposure to things like that.

So, yeah, I think there's still a story to be told on the Xbox set of things.

And I think that that's going to be being told by some of the leadership as it comes

out.

But we've got a couple of years to get those things explained as well.

Yeah.

Like the one thing they have on total leadership on is PC gaming.

So it's like, why aren't you doubling down on that?

Why aren't you, to me, the Xbox Series X and S, they should have tried to do this back

then.

They should have been like, wow, we totally screwed up the Xbox One.

Sony really owns this idea of a high-end piece of hardware that is purely a console.

What do we do?

What do we have?

We have windows.

We have an open PC platform.

We have people who already have tons of games on other platforms.

Maybe you should just make it easier to like have that PC-like experience on your TV.

And this gets us back to web TV and all those failed things.

But my goodness, I just reviewed a Falcon Northwest, the frag box, that like little mini desktop

thing.

I was reviewing it on my home theater.

I'm like, this is exactly the same as it was 20 years ago when I connected Windows

to my TV.

All the same issues, all the same like resolution fighting, all the same like, okay, I got

to now have, make sure I have a keyboard handy to jump in and do things.

It's still a miserable experience and I don't know how they just missed out so far.

Anyway, folks, there's a lot of stuff going on here.

Let us know what you think.

Do you think these changes will help Windows 11?

Will you be sticking with Windows and how much more tempting is the MacBook Neo now?

As we see Microsoft Flounder around all this, let us know, podcastinggadget.com.

Mark, where can people find you these days online?

I am at pcworld.com, of course, and you can find me mostly on Blue Sky under my name and

on Twitter, unfortunately, I have to maintain a presence there, which of course we don't

necessarily want to be there, but that's okay.

So yeah, just, it's an easy search, just hit Mark Ockman's social media and you'll

find me.

Awesome.

Thank you so much, Mark.

Thank you.

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Alright, let's move on to the other big news of the week.

Opening eyes, surprisingly, is shutting down its Sora video generation app and I feel

like both these things are like people reassessing the value of AI, although in Sora's case,

it probably wasn't the fact that people were just purely hating on it.

This thing was likely very hard, very expensive to produce.

There were metrics showing that people were not using the app and it likely wasn't making

much money.

So this thing's dead and also that deal, opening eye made with Disney to, you know, to

partner a billion dollars, that deal is also dead.

And from what I'm hearing, Disney was shocked, so like Disney had had no prior knowledge

that this billion dollar deal that they had signed with this young tech company was apparently

completely dead because they didn't know the opening eye was shutting this thing down.

So it kind of goes to show like the sort of instability of this company we've mentioned

this before or of how they just kind of do things.

They have no real strategy.

What we're saying, the quote here is, we've decided to continue Sora and the consumer

app and API as we focus and compete demand grows.

The Sora research team continues to focus on world simulation research to advance robotics

that will help solve a real world physical task.

So okay, instead of fake AI videos, this team will be working on the robot brain stuff.

And hopefully it's going to not destroy us all.

I feel like the entire idea was that maybe by generating video, you would also get

a little closer to AGI, but like there are people who say that like LLM based methods

toward AGI are just a dead end to begin with.

I think a lot of people say that to you and yeah, it's a lot of researchers and this

was some of the most interesting chapters of Empire of AI.

To me, there are several different schools of how to go about AI and it seems that LLM's

just got popular because the transformer model had a step forward and everybody was

like, okay, well, maybe we could, you know, find the promised land through this one.

It is funny.

I feel like I've said this before, but it feels like the entire tech industry, can you explain

with two words, it's sort of like that scene from the wire where they just say the f-word

everywhere going over the crime scene, but the two words are, oh shit, oh shit, look what

the transformer model can do.

And Google is like, oh shit, look what OpenAI did.

And Microsoft is like, oh shit, it made being so much better.

Oh shit, let's get this in co-pilot.

Oh shit will be the best.

And it's like, that's it.

That's everybody.

You can hear everybody muttering that in their heads.

And Sam Altman is like, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

It's that all the way down.

It's that desperation that we've got the shiny thing that they can use to lord over the

technology world.

That's ultimately it.

And if you think about OpenAI and Sam Altman as being a generationally talented storyteller

as Karen Howe describes him, it's possible Sam Altman saw all of the effective altruist

like rationalist folks, like folks that are, spent a lot of time thinking about AI to

begin with and saw that they were very afraid of the possibility of, you know, malevolent

AGI.

And he's like, actually, this is a fantastic marketing scheme here because we have our

evangelists that are all turn key.

And they also, they're very interested in working in safety.

So let's just like bring them in.

I don't know.

Like, that would be very, very well thought out and devious, but hard to say.

Go read Empire of AI everybody.

And also, I don't know if that Sundance documentary I wrote about Ghost in the Machine.

That was the one that drew like the direct line between the sort of like eugenics, inherent

in Silicon Valley and a lot of the tech world and honestly in mathematics.

To meet Gen.

It has talked a lot about that.

Yes.

Yeah.

So that is pretty much it.

I think that makes a strong case.

I'll talk about the AI doc, which is another AI documentary later in this episode.

But these folks are not like some geniuses out there.

These are people responding to market pressures and sort of like surprise advancements that

they've kind of stumbled into.

Sam Altman is not an AI genius.

Sam Altman is not a genius programmer.

These things just happen.

The same was Zuckerberg.

And we see them fail.

We see them stumble.

And occasionally they have some big hits and we see the entire industry kind of building

around that.

So Sora is dead.

Speaking of Zuck.

And while we're talking about like layoffs and cuts, Meta also did several hundred layoffs

at reality labs and for other divisions.

This is much less than we were expecting.

And I mean other layoffs at Meta could be coming like we don't know.

And maybe they don't know.

But it seems like they're trying to shuffle things around and like right now VR and AR

is on the back burner because they just spent so much money on a bunch of different acquisitions

related to AI.

So they have to focus on that and make cuts elsewhere.

But also I don't know.

They hire a lot of people really quickly for you know this one big project.

And then who's actually showing up and who's actually interested in working you know.

Remember those two words folks like when you can you can see when these companies are

going like oh shit oh shit oh shit like what is happening over here.

And the reality labs layoffs which are unfortunate but also directly tied to Zuckerberg's

Metaverse ambitions which nobody wanted.

I don't know if any of you spent time in or let's not forget that they almost completely

pulled the plug on Horizon Worlds and then didn't it's for now they're saying they didn't

I think they're going to it's more like oh we're not going to publicly kill this baby.

We're going to it's here.

It's alive you can still do stuff but they will quietly kill it in VR eventually.

But also what was Horizon Worlds it was an ugly ghost town for like corporate activations

that's all it was I did a target activation in Horizon Worlds I think for Halloween it

was one of the the grimace things I've ever seen online it is exactly it is sort of like

there's the wonderfully an archaic vision of the internet of people coming together and

using this technology to you know form human bonds and relationships and you can see that

in VR chat which is a cross platform VR tool that is very much like second life except

you can be in VR talk with normal people like have like or that's a real metaverse which

is a step above something like fortnight or what's the other stuff like the the stuff kids

I mean Neil Stephenson recently said like meta's glasses are creepy and that's the guy

who literally came up with the term the metaverse I'm pretty sure is still Neil Stevenson

with yeah would totally totally know that like is good to call that out but well I mean

on top of the fact that in snow crash there is a subclass of people called gargoyles that

are just live streaming all the time and nobody wants to talk to them because they're weirdos

hey all of this has happened before and will happen again this has all been predicted but

you could make a connection between that and like the guy who tried to come up to clavicular

I hate that I just mentioned clavicular but like and they had like meta glasses on and so like

somebody in like the looks Maxxers posse tried to show the isis flag to the meta glasses because

they heard a rumor that that would just like immediately get your account deleted but it didn't

but like the structure of that just the beats of that story feels so snow crash the beats of our

reality right now are purely snow crash and Neil Stevenson but anyway remember when people tell

you Mark Zuckerberg is a smart person he is the person who single handedly renamed his computer

after their is company after the metaverse wasted 80 billion dollars trying to expand to the

metaverse and also virtual reality in general um these people are just out there trying to dominate

your reasons that's the only reason he invested in all this stuff so this is all sad this hilarious

and now he's doing it for AI let's see what layoffs these lead to what else is going on with meta Ben

who boy okay so I posted on blue sky earlier this week a live look at what's happening with meta

and it was just like a cartoon fight like you know arms and legs coming out of a dust cloud

because meta has been getting kicked in the teeth on 324 just earlier this week what was that

Monday or Tuesday um meta was ordered to pay $375 million in a new Mexico trial over child

exploitation these are two cases that we have talked about a bit we just didn't know that the

verdicts were going to come in so soon um so after deliberating for less than a day a new Mexico jury

on Tuesday found that meta platforms violated state law in a lawsuit brought by the state attorney

general who accused the company of misleading users about the safety of Facebook Instagram and

WhatsApp for enabling child sexual exploitation on their platforms this grew out of a undercover

operation where a former prosecutor um ran basically like a honey pot situation they put up some

Instagram accounts and tried to see if people sent creepy DMs and oh boy did they send creepy DMs

you can say that some of this is just like human nature and you know society being terrible

absolutely the important thing here is that you're getting kids on their phones in a relatively

like private communication channel versus I don't know like I hear a lot of stories of like

women who were waitresses like before they turned 18 and after they turned 18 and they said that

like there is a marked difference between the way people acted toward them you know when they

were in high school versus when they were in college which is weird on its own right but that's

in public like you can't get somebody alone that way you also can't just like send them a picture

of your anatomy you know this whole case by the way is a reminder like hey people have been talking

about this like you have had lacks lacks controls um basically protecting minors and meta as it was

Facebook spent a lot of time arguing that hey uh Instagram is not really hurting people even though

it had its own um its own studies right that Instagram did affect girls specifically but teenage

users um were often adversely affected by these things these people are out here just trying to

gain users at the cost of like the safety of these services that's all that's all it is

and here's an interesting way of looking at it you know zuck had a big right word shift

I think he sensed where the winds were blowing you saw him wake boarding with the American flag

in 2024 or so you know that was part of his like cool guy rebrand I don't care like um I have

stopped apologizing I won't not I won't apologize anymore like which gave him uh oh yeah that was his

new look right pro man but overall like just a right word shift you know who cares a lot about

child welfare you know who was packing into movie theaters to see the sound of freedom hmm I don't

know wow yeah that really doesn't like track with your new political tag I think there are people

who say things and then you don't always see those belief reflected in who they actually vote for

so I don't know absolutely but if you're going to be courting a certain like political bent you should

at least know what they're like really what they really care about especially what like the rank

and file of folks I think you're going a step beyond the self-interest that is driving Zuckerberg

and a lot of these people they don't care no that would be and that would be another level of

self-interest though because if you're looking to you know get air support political air support for

your projects you would think that you would go in that direction at least like make um more than

cursory like statements in that direction anyway Jeff Horowitz uh a Reuters reporter um said that

there were two separate findings of liability in like 37,500 violations so that's like roughly

74,000 violations with a maximum fine of $5,000 that means that it's $375 million in a state that

contains 0.62% of the US population he's kind of implying that if this were applied to the entire

country that that would be uh hell of a ruling it would be a hell of a ruling and it will it'll

be interesting to see like what this all leads to and there's also the social media addiction trial

where we also saw yes yes yes yes so flashback this was the case in which Zuck testified that he

wanted Instagram to be useful not addictive the plaintiff was awarded six so after like eight days

of deliberation it took a longer time for everybody to figure out whether or not um Facebook and

or meta and um Google were liable because this was mostly about Instagram and YouTube after eight days

they figured yes both companies are liable initially Snapchat and TikTok were also part of the suit

but they settled out of court meta and Google were fined six million dollars but meta is liable for

paying 70% of this ruling YouTube released a statement saying that they disagree on the grounds

that they are a streamer not a social media platform what's YouTube shorts then

TikTok basically like that is a social media platform from Bobby Allen's NPR story um he said

that the outcome of this case could influence thousands of other consolidated cases against social

media companies the litigation has drawn comparisons to the legal crusade that led to industry changes

in big tobacco in the 1990s why are they being compared to I mean it's the big thing is to avoid

section 230 so well I mean okay but it's section 230 and it's also product liability well this is

what this is what I'm saying you avoid the trying to get into the trap of like trying to justify like

how much they're responsible for the products that or how much they're responsible for what people

are posting and just to argue it is a defect of the product you knew this product was defective

you're selling it out there to people and that is the comparison to big tobacco and it seems

like it's a good strategy because I think we have seen we have talked about this many times on the show

we've seen many many examples of meta being aware from its own internal documents that

teens can't switch off of Instagram uh they called Instagram a drug they said all social media

platforms are like pusherers like they're well aware they're not idiots over here but legally

they're trying to argue that they didn't know enough for this to be a problem or that they're not

liable for it we'll see well I mean and there's also a question of like whether or not the product

was designed to be addictive from the get go you know like Philip Morris might have their own

terminology for whether or not cigarettes are addictive but like tech companies very openly talk

about wanting to maximize user minutes and like daily active users like if you were to boil that

down what does that mean other than trying to maximize for addictive this you know it's uh yeah

I think it's impossible to argue that that's not what they were aiming for if you look at social media

companies if you look at any VC backed tech company like that's what it is that's what VCs want to see

they want to see exponential growth to achieve that you need to maximize your engagement with the

users that's why you see garbage ads on a lot of websites that's why you see um lots of weird tricks

to get you to sign up for things or like all these little tricks um I think that was it the

infinite feed of Instagram like which became kind of a thing that's one of those uh for TikTok

I think it's the fact that you can switch so easily between videos and also just like the algorithm

is working to like deliver things you want we built this we built this society and these

companies were like to talk videos are like pringles once you pop it just can't stop these companies

were infinitely rewarded for chasing this and now we're seeing like a modicum a little bit

of consequences here so it'll be really interesting to see like what happens after this yeah so

there's an interesting conversation happening in the chat right now depro 9 says youtube is just

interactive television let's suit television now meanwhile tom roger says it's the algorithm

that they refuse to disclose how it works tv is not broadcast by an algorithm um tv is also heavily

regulated i just i want to point this out depro 9 i love your contributions but i do wonder

when you're getting getting tired of caring water for the tech companies because i see the chats

i see what's going on here it's like oh buddy come on come on um that's it these big differences

are television what a television is regulated by the FCC what happens on tv is so highly regulated

and all these tech companies are just working in ways that our government is not prepared to

directly control and they're working much faster too so it's a shame that that's basically the big

difference of what's happening here yeah yeah so um between these two rulings like meta had a

really bad time this week and i think this spills over once again going back to open a i because

i just saw headline right before we started recording saying that open a i is putting their plans

for erotic chat bots on hold in that that's a Neil Stevenson headline our plans for erotic chat bots

probably not a good idea for reasons that are blatantly obvious to everybody except us apparently

um yeah there was a quote in this financial times article that said uh a i shouldn't replace your

friends or your family you should have human connections says one former open a i senior employee

who said that they left the company as part of that issue um then there's also a question of like

whether or not chat gpt would have remained allowed on like apples app store if it became known as

the on demand sexed app you know like investors were freaked out about this i saw a post online

that said like i hate hyper niche Halloween costumes what do you mean you're sexy suicide coach

that is largely what llm's have gotten to be known as in the last six months if you've been paying

attention to the news it's all so stupid like if you want to look at like the history of opening

eyes to use over the last like a couple years it's just like it's wild stuff like how is this a

real company how is this not just like a thing propped up by vc money and the wishes and dreams

i mean absolutely that's what it is but that's what this is we're freaked out about the possibility

of like going for something that incredibly addictive but it's also propped up by the wish

the hopes and dreams of Silicon Valley the people who are so religiously devoted to the idea of

AI and a g i too like that is a big part of it it sounds weird it sounds like i'm being hyperbolic

i am not there are a lot of people who are talking about this too so that's the weird thing we live

in a world where people also have these like wild beliefs driving their behaviors and it's affecting

reality it's a damn damn shame so anyway add that headline to the list of opening eye crazy things

i mean one more thing to close the loop let's also remember that the xai spicy mode lawsuit just

got started so like there were two bad rulings for meta and like Elon Musk fucking like let's put

teenagers in bikinis or something mode in grok is about to go up in court so there's that they

they haven't even touched the c-sam generation yet so things are just real real bad out here

but this is it's it's a funny funny week of a i related news honestly just like failure after

failure and this industry is just like not quite ready to grow up and be a real boy

that's kind of what it seems like real quick we're gonna run through some other news here because

we've got a bunch of things somebody released the ios 18 dark sword exploit and get hub this is

the exploit that can hack millions of iPhones if you're not fully updated this is a pretty serious

one because it seems like it gave people direct control over iPhones update your shit this is a

big reason why when you see security updates if you hear about stuff like this in the news update

your devices as quickly as you can you're probably not vulnerable like you're probably not i mean

target but also it is very easy for somebody to get hit with a unsecure hardware it's very

easy to lose money it's very easy for for these things to hurt you you know you're probably not a

target unless you're living in Ukraine because this was found on like a lot of Ukrainian phones but

like that would make sense because the entirety of Ukraine is just like a target for like Russian

cyber operations for sure for sure but these things are usually created for one purpose and then

once they're out in the wild like they are now yep you can do whatever then it's a great way to

just steal money from people if you have ios 18.4 through 18.7 you should have update right away

lots of sad news going around this week too epic is laying off more than a thousand workers

citing a downturn in fortnight engagement fortnight by the way a successful metaverse a totally

successful metaverse but also they also cannot avoid the the specter of layoffs they can't

avoid like economic downturn unfortunately i have no other feelings about the other men it's

terribly sad it doesn't really say anything about fortnight what it does say is that these

companies especially the big gaming developers even if you have one of the most successful products

in the world doesn't matter doesn't really matter right if there is a slight downturn up for live

service games is really difficult people are constantly demanding new things and you need quick

reaction teams to consistently update things but if people get even a little bit less interested

in fortnight and a little more interested in something like arc raiders then all of a sudden

you can't pay your mortgage or or epic former epic employees can't pay their mortgage it's crazy

it's it's just awful this comes after epic laid off 830 employees in 2023 that was 16% of its

workforce at the time this is a big chunk of people it's just terribly sad it's we're going to

see this too like it there have been massly off throughout a lot of tech companies but it's only

going to get worse too like as we face rising energy costs and a lot of bad things happening as

result of the stupidity in the world right now so sit tight folks it's it's not going to be a great

time Honda and Sony also killed the afeela ev no shocking nobody by the way this was Honda and Sony's

the Sony Honda mobility joint venture they showed off this like really tech focused EV several years

ago since like 2022 I believe it was a dumb idea from the from the beginning because Sony doesn't

know what's like to build a car and Honda is not a great per not a great company when it comes to

engraving the brand the latest new tech and anything and I think the story we're seeing right now

from Tim Stevens who used to be in gadgets that are in chief and is now writing a lot of car

related stuff for us Tim Stevens says the afeela one came too late and now it is gone too soon

RIP to the PlayStation car it was an interesting idea when it was initially announced but EVs have

evolved so quickly over the last few years that this thing feels ancient and they were going to

try the sell this is like a premium EV in the era where even Tesla is like having a hard time

where there's so much EV competition and you can get a great EV for under $50,000 now

this thing just never made any sense so I'm not surprised this died and this is also a Honda

I killed some of their EV concepts to a couple of weeks ago so that's a real shame that's a real

shame nobody will miss this thing but it's really weird how Honda and Toyota are totally like

screwing up in the EV world do you want to talk about the Elon Musk thing Ben misleading

investors ring his Twitter takeover yeah it was basically like remember in man was it like 2022

now when Elon Musk said oh buy Twitter no actually I won't buy Twitter too many bots too many bots

there are too many bots like I don't think I want to buy Twitter there are people who are saying

hey you messed around with the stock price if you intentionally mess around with the stock price

that securities fraud it went court and it was actually deemed to be securities fraud

because if you are coming in as one of the richest people in the world and you say that you have

financing from a whole bunch of different people including Saudi Arabia they're always coming up

recently that is like a real credible thing that would get people in the markets excited

but then if you play around with it if you just say oh actually you know maybe I don't want to

or like he was almost walked out on the deal at one point yeah I mean it's you could credibly say

that he was messing with the stock price and maybe trying to get a better price for the eventual

purchase it also seemed like the whole deal almost seems like the result of a direct trip or

something to you like the result of like oh he had this crazy idea and like people are

possibly is he coming down right now as he's realizing the magnitude of what he's done and it

I mean this is also kind of connected to the thing from years ago before the pandemic when he said

that he had funding secured to take Tesla private when stock price hit 420 like there was a time when

the SEC actually said we need someone to babysit you when you were on Twitter remember that I do

remember that they talk about everything is securities fraud Elon Musk is walking securities fraud

that's kind of where we are well I mean yeah when people say that everything is securities fraud it's

usually like you know again if we use the case of Elon Musk if Elon Musk said something about like

the fact that he didn't disclose like a health issue or something and the fact that like the value

of so many of his companies is tied up in everybody being interested in Elon Musk the person then

there would be an idea of like oh well you didn't disclose this this was securities fraud I'm going

to bring a lawsuit against you that is you know kind of squishy and the idea of like everything is

securities fraud in big quotes but it seemed like Elon Musk did actual securities fraud here he's

done it multiple times will he face any consequences we will wait to see we should say that there have

been appeals on all of these court cases of course so we'll see how much actually ends up being paid

out of the 375 million and the 6 million and possible billions that Musk could have to pay for

this securities case all right let's round out the rest of the news this week arm has released

its first in house chip metas its debut consumer it's an AGI CPU that's what they're calling it

anyway because it's built for running AI inferencing and data centers this is not really consumer chip

this is just arm building its own thing it is wild though because arm is a chip design company so

arm has been you know basically licensing its chip architecture to apple amazon google and

did yet everybody when you hear about arm chips it's because somebody is taking their designs and

then proceeding to add stuff to it and then get it manufactured so that is kind of wild also

reminds me that in video tried to buy arm several years ago and the British regulators did not allow

it and thank goodness thank goodness yeah dang that was really smart of them in video already was one

of the biggest AI companies in the world and certainly one of the biggest chip companies in the

world that's where regulators stepped in was like we cannot let you have control of all of this

stuff like this baseline architecture of so much of the world right now so yeah arm is still its own

thing and now they're building their own chips and this can be interesting moving forward perhaps

even more interesting because we heard like Microsoft is trying to design something and all the other

companies this is going to be interesting because arm actually knows what they can do with their

hardware so we'll keep an eye on that stuff all right let's get to some listener mail as I promise

Brandon from San Luis Obispo says they're a casual photographer looking to jump into professional

work and the next logical step is getting a good display and the correct hardware for it they're

really interested in the M4 and M4 Pro Mac mini they're not going to be doing much video editing but

maybe on occasion it's mostly intense photo editing is it worth waiting for the Mac mini M5 or go

on for the M4 M4 Pro right now and also do we have any recommendations for color accurate monitors

under five hundred dollars I will say I don't have an immediate monitor in mind for this one so

you've got a lot of options out there definitely if you are trying if you were thinking about getting a

Mac mini if you can hold off like three or four months I think you will be I think you will be

pleased because right now Apple just updated all of its hardware except for the iMac I believe

and the Mac mini to the M5 chips and I think like the rumors are pointing to something maybe around

June or July maybe more likely around June when we'll see that new hardware also Apple I think has

been having trouble keeping the Mac mini in stock because a lot of people have been buying them to be

little AI machines like people have been using them to run their own local AI models and just

doing all sorts of stuff I love the Mac mini's quite a bit and if you need to get one right away like

yes sure the M4 Pro or M4 will be totally fine and honestly like Apple like these things last

long time even if you're doing it professionally if you get a used M3 was it an M3 Mac mini if you

get a used older Mac mini as long as it has the M series chip it'll still be pretty great for

professional work probably wouldn't do the M1 right now that one's getting a little old but the M2

to M3 are still like fantastic things you can get some good deals used sit tight if you want a brand

new one and yeah let us know folks like do you all have any recommendations for color accurate

monitors under 500 bucks I want to know what the actual pros are using I have to do more research

on that one personally I also don't know whether or not you could find like a really good color

accurate monitor under 500 dollars it depends on the size well yeah you don't want a teeny little

thing too though I'm thinking like 27 inches is the baseline that a lot of people are going for

but some people are totally fine with 24 inch monitors personally I think if you're doing a desktop

type thing like you want at least 27 inches when you go much bigger that's where it costs a lot

more but you probably get a decent one for under certainly under a thousand dollars at 27 inches

I'm not sure how close to 500 you'll get it all right let's move on to our pop culture picks for

the week do you have anything Ben you want to shout out I actually don't and this is a sign for

me that I need to like take in more new information per week so I have something to talk about

because I've just been listening to podcasts and listening to like really thick kind of densely

written nonfiction books and playing ball x pit and I mean it's not really pop culture but like

hey guys did you know that if you have too many cool like big vinyl stickers that you can just get

like magnets caught around the vinyl sticker and now your sticker is a magnet that's what I've

been doing but that's not really pop culture so Dev tell us about what you've been watching you're

you're just living that random like creative things that Brooklyn hipster suit like you're just

living that life yeah that's great that's great love it I do want to shout out I mentioned this

before the AI duck or how I became an apocalyptic I saw this movie a couple of weeks ago I'll be

writing review for Engaget's directed by Daniel Rower and Charlie Tyrell a Daniel Rower won a

documentary for his documentary or won a Oscar for his documentary Navalny so this is a guy who

was like well known in the world of documentaries this is an interesting film I wouldn't say it's

particularly revolutionary to me but it's because I I'm in this news I'm following the AI industry

and everything so this is movie made for normal people who are maybe not aware yeah there was a

question in the chat asking if the AI doc was something that would uncover some new information

if they're the sort of person who listens to this show I think it's worth watching it is worth

watching because you get to hear some of these people including Dario Amade and you get people

on the pro AI side you have people on the AI critics side just speaking to the camera and

trying to answer the questions that Daniel Rower is posing and the real like framing of this is

that he is expecting his first child and he's thinking like what world am I bringing my kid

into because these pro AI people say it's going to be perutopia these doom and gloom people say

it's the end of civilization this feels pretty bad as an expecting parent so he's trying to navigate

that whole thing while also trying to get a sense of like what what is AI what is all this mean

I think it's a really well-produced documentary maybe a little over directed at times it's one of

those movies that can never like just let a moment linger there's always like a little animation

a little something like just active trying to move and make you interested in what what's going on

here I think the conversations are fine um he did get a lot of people here like he got Sam Altman

for a bit um Mark Zuckerberg never replied I believe to their thing to their request and then

it was a Elon Musk said he would he would like be interviewed for it but never showed up to his

interview apparently so it's funny like who is here and you get to hear these people just like

say the wildest things you know um the I mean they also got like Yodkowski which is you know

kind of a big get but also like he literally wrote a book called if anyone builds it everyone dies

yes and you've got an extremist like them which are maybe like maybe just uh chill out buddy like

maybe you you have also no one founding to predict the total doom and catastrophe but there's a lot

of good researchers and a lot of like good commentary here I would say it is worth watching for

everybody it is mostly meant for people who have not been following this all super closely

because it's kind of leased out the framework of where we are in the AI world and what we're worried

about and the whole idea you know it's not a spoiler but like it's in the title how I became an

apocalypticist is this is this idea of trying to confront a world that you will likely know will be

very bad but maybe maybe we can try to make it better if we work together and use our voices and

critique these things as they're happening and don't let AI be the inevitability that a lot of

these companies say it will be so you have the power humans that's it like speak up around the

stuff uh I don't think Microsoft would be pulling back and copilot if people didn't keep telling them

what dog shit it was you know and this keeps happening so we keep up keep shouting folks because I

think it does make a difference uh this movie is worth watching I'd say even if you're following

the news it just won't be as revolutionary I think for a lot of folks um that other one I talked

about ghost in the machine I don't know if that has distribution yet but that's kind of interesting

because I don't think people are fully aware of the sort of like easy line you could draw from

eugenics to where we are now to the accelerationist to these people building a thing that they assume

will be smarter than humans and will make life better for humans the question is make life better for who

and that's not something the AI doc answers very much I wish I wish I had more time to do that to talk

about like all these AI proponents say it's gonna make the world better but they're not really saying

who that's for and what will happen to everybody else I feel like it could have been a little more

critical there but is it is like worth a watch I mean anytime when you start talking about

intelligence and like how to measure intelligence and who and what is intelligent you get really

muddy really quickly anyway check out the AI doc if you'd like in theaters this weekend or

it's probably gonna be streaming soon like within a couple weeks or something so it is worth

watching I just wish with it pushed a little harder we are trying to get an interview with Daniel

Roer on this podcast so we will see if that's gonna happen in the next few weeks so stay tuned for that

that's it for the episode thanks so much for listening our theme music is by game composer

Dale North our outro music is by our former managing editor Terrence O'Brien the podcast is

produced by me Ben Elman you can find DaVindra online at at DaVindra on Blue Sky and in podcast

about movies and TV at the filmcast at the filmcast.com post literally any like recommendation for

good media because obviously I need to see more things you can send that to me at Hey Bellman

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Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI they already deployed one

it's called chat concierge and it's simplifying car shopping using self-reflection and layered

reasoning with live API checks it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love it helps schedule a

test drive get pre-approved for financing an estimate trading value advanced intuitive and

deployed that's how they stack that's technology at Capital One