Techlash 2: The Return
Apple Opens Siri • Meta Churns • DeepMind History • RIP Mac Pro • Colbert's 'Lord of the Rings' • Siri App • RIP Sora
Another "techlash" is upon us. And this one might be a far bigger deal as it’s coming just as the backlash against AI is picking up…
🚭 Big Techbacco
The growing risk that these companies are viewed as a cancer...
I Note…
🗣️ Apple Will Open Up Siri to Other AIs
As I understand it, this is less significant than the actual lobotomy Siri is undergoing (complete with full Gemini distillation rights for Apple!), as it mainly just means you can swap in your AI chatbot of choice where ChatGPT now resides within Siri (that is, as the fallback option). This move has been rumored since that integration launched two years ago at WWDC — most notably, with Apple confirming talks with Google about Gemini at the time. One thing that will make this more significant is if you’re able to pick your default AI for Siri. That is, replace Siri with, say, Claude. That would be pretty great — especially if it included all the system-level integrations that Siri enjoys (we’ll see, I’m pretty skeptical of that). Still, this should help upsell various AI services (and help Apple’s Services narrative), perhaps in a way that OpenAI was never quite able to, because ChatGPT seemed so buried within Siri. And because there will now actually be an app for that! [Bloomberg 🔒]
🌀 Meta Churns
It’s honestly hard to keep up with all the reports coming out of Meta. They’re doing yet more layoffs while at the same time, publicly announcing massive new pay packages for top execs. I mean, read the room — the conference room? And those are tied to the some wild incentives, all the way up to achieving a $9T market cap — just as the actual stock is currently dropping fast, almost back at $1T, back behind Tesla. Speaking of, the incentives are arguably more aggressive than the ones Elon needs to hit to get his own trillion dollars. All of this is setting up for many at Meta to be heavily incentivized to grow in some pretty unnatural ways… What could possibly go wrong? One of those leaders, Boz, is now leading up efforts to make Meta "AI Native" whatever the fuck that means. Meanwhile, his old group at Reality Labs are now "AI Builders" whatever the fuck that means. The new titles sound almost Scientology in nature. Will AI thetan levels be measured? There’s also some new small business org? Meanwhile, the hackquisitions continue. Dreamer seems like a relatively small one, likely aimed at bringing Hugo Barra back on board, as well as Stripe’s former CTO, David Singleton. More of a hackquihire situation? [NYT]
💰 When Larry Met Demis (at Elon’s Birthday)
A fun read from what seems like it will be a fun book about DeepMind. From Larry Page using Elon Musk’s birthday party — complete with samuris and sumos! — to pitch Demis Hassabis on building his company with the resources of Google, to the dinner where Mark Zuckerberg tries to make the counter-pitch, which fell flat because Zuck was too excited about VR and everything else — i.e. he wasn’t taking AI seriously enough. That led directly to the hiring of Yann LeCun and the cycle started anew… The most wild part is the haggling over the price, which was $650M, which would be a seed round for such a startup today — and a modest one at that! A lot can change in a decade. Thanks in no small part to DeepMind! If it were still a startup, what would DeepMind be valued at today? With the OpenAI and Anthropic IPOs on the horizon, you’d have to imagine we’re talking about the "T" word… [WSJ 🔒]
🖥️ RIP Mac Pro
I hardly knew ye, because I never actually owned ye. Nor was I particularly ever tempted. Which is perhaps less surprising when you learn that I can do all of my workflow on a MacBook Neo. Obviously, exactly no one is surprised by this move as it was such a low volume product that Apple kept having to be jolted awake to even recall at times. They kept saying they were going to do it right, this time — "can't innovate anymore, my ass" — but their heart was clearly never in really it. And the Mac Studio was the stake in the heart. We’ll always have the laughs over those $700 wheels though. [9to5Mac]
💍 Colbert of the Rings
Honestly not sure what to make of the news that Stephen Colbert’s post-Late Show gig will be writing a Lord of the Rings movie with his son. I mean, what?! He is a noted J.R.R. Tolkien fan and expert, but that obviously doesn’t make one a screenwriter — let alone one trying to adapt some of the most famous/beloved material in history. His son is a screenwriter, but not with the must illustrious track record in his young career. It just feels a bit… off. But here’s hoping for the best. Because they’re gonna need it if it’s not any good. Obviously Philippa Boyens and Peter Jackson will help, but we also all saw The Hobbit ridiculously stretched into three films. At least we’ll get more Tom Bombadil I guess? Who is directing? [Variety]
I Quote…
"I could bridge the gap between the people who created technology — the engineers, the bits-and-bytes people — and the people that use the technology."
— Paul Brainerd, the founder of Aldus Corporation, which most famously created PageMaker, one of the early pieces of software that helped sell the Mac.
He named his company, which would end up being merged with Adobe in 1994, after Aldus Manutius, a 15th-century Venetian printer who standardized typefaces, invented italics. Brainerd passed away in February at age 78, though the NYT just ran his obit last week. Well worth the read.
I Wrote…
📱 Apple Realizes There Should Be An App For That
Siri Edition
📹 So Long, Sora
An OpenAI Code Red? More like a Code Dead...
Asides…
With "side quests" officially on hold at OpenAI, the ChatGPT sexy time feature — "Citron Mode" — seems on the chopping block next to Sora. This always just seemed like a silly distraction to try to match Elon in market anyway. [FT 🔒]
Anthropic seems to have inadvertantly revealed not just a new model, but a new model tier in the form of "Mythos" which may reside above "Opus" on their AI food chain. It seems like "Capybara" was the codename, but it’s all not entirely clear and clearly they’re not ready to fully talk about it! [Fortune]
OpenAI though, seems ready to talk about "Spud" any day now. Unless they’re worried it will seem anticlimatic versus the "step change" Anthropic is going to launch? [Information 🔒]
If Anthropic is aiming to raise $60B in their IPO, and SpaceX is looking at $75B, how much is OpenAI going to try to raise? They just did a $120B private round so… [Information 🔒]
Speaking of SpaceX’s IPO, which could be filed any day now, targeting making 30% available to inviduals investors to try to memestock it up from day one? [Reuters]
Another week, another cofounder leaving xAI. But this leaves just one (besides Elon Musk) left. One. From Eleven! [BI 🔒]
Another week, another private credit pause on withdrawals. [NYT]
The FCC trying to bring call centers back to the US when it’s the most clear cut business set to be upended by AI is… something. Trolling? [WSJ 🔒]
Nintendo is going to start charging more for physical games, which is just interesting since their making of game cartridges for Hudson back in the 1980s is what led to the 70/30 split which even Apple famously now uses despite not actually making physical methods to deploy apps, of course. [VGC]
Meanwhile, they’re apparently cutting Switch 2 production with sales a bit sluggish. A few things going on here including how much they frontloaded to meet initial demand which may have tricked them into extrapolating future demand — it’s like the superhero movies which open huge then quickly fall. But really, they just need more games? [Bloomberg 🔒]
Is Finn rejoining the Star Wars galaxy? John Boyega is at least talking to new Lucasfilm head Dave Filoni. Interesting… [ScreenRant]