(Preview) Today’s Internet and Tomorrow’s AI Innovation, Progress Reportedly Slowing for New LLMs, The Vision Pro as a Productivity Device
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Hello, and welcome to a free preview of sharp tech.

Hello and will go back to another episode of sharp tech. I'm Andrew sharp. And on the other line, ben thomson. Ben, how you doing?

Do okay and do how are you?

I'm doing alright. It's nice to be back. You know, no male bag on monday feels like it's been too long, so it's good to see you again.

Yes, there is actually an oddity. I mean, first of happy veterans day to to any veterans in the audience. But the category calendar follows the stock exchange calendar.

So when the stock exchange is close, that's when I take a day off and veterans day is odd. And that I think it's the only federal holiday that is not where the stock market is open. And so like so I mean, you're in dc, you care about the federal government. I'm online, I care about the financial markets because you said, oh, you know, this can be a holiday we're going to do something is okay when we take off my god, of course and then I like, why am I writing? Oh, that's why.

So I wonder the same yeah no. I mean, there are certain people who are working on monday, certain people who weren't.

That's a fun bit of tribe at the top fuse. Go back and look at out. I did.

I not have this schedule as a day off. I was. I have to. I have to do the days off in the federal holidays because i'm a maniac and then I would just feel guilty.

It's like a forcing function like you have to actually take some days off. Um and so I like why by working today? H that's why. That's why. So there you go. Yes.

new everyday. Well.

the big question discuss is why is the stock mark not on our veterans? That's the question people asked.

A great question, something for the audience to ponder for the remainder of the week here. You know maybe write your representatives and let's be the change that we want to see in the stock market going forward. But for now, we have three very different topics as we return today. We're going to start with A I we're fixing the vision pro in the middle of the show and then at the end will hit a few elon emails.

But we'll start with benny, who writes, what if the internet itself, between nineteen and ninety and twenty twenty, with web one point o, web two point o and mobile, was the bubble or frenzy phase in carlota per rees model? And what IT brought us for the future was not cleaner, cheap energy in the form of new nuclear plants, but training data. Honestly, most B2B sas is kin d of rel evant wit h que stionable pro fit out look, even after a decade observe acta.

But what IT brought us was cloud infrastructure at scale, which the A I factories. On top of that, most youtube content is irrelevant. But IT brought us video data at scale.

Most social media is irrelevant. But again, training data, most blogs are irrelevant. But training data, you get the idea. So what do you think of the internet economy is merely a boot loader infrastructure for A I.

That now leads the foundation for a jump back into tech, transforming the, quote, quote, real economy with tesla AI robotics intelligence space al AI materials design, biological manipulation of proteins eta. So then I like that email and I recognize that line of argument because it's an idea that you throw out in the midst of a digression at some point in the last month. Two, what do you think of that possibility?

Yeah, I mean, yes, I have thrown that idea. I think that's something me and Daniel have talked about in our sort of A I series at points about the internet being a boot loder for A I. I think this email gets a little too cute about the concept. And there is a difference between lots of companies leveraging sas applications and the question of like sas company valuations in the serb era versus now like the reality is, is A A relatively small company, we pay lots of ash providers because they make our job easier and useful services.

And uh youtube uh I think youtube pretty compelling and pretty relevant and and like this is the shades of the old, like like the long run, like all the reasons why it's been facebook has been such a useful company for satellite is that only have I been able to write about IT. But people are just have I like where are the reasons people have always been inherently skeets ticals about the company is because there's just say, what's the actual utility here? Well, IT turns out the utility is talking to other human, which is like the most important thing to us that actually extremely imported valuable.

So there's a sort of deductible est to this argument that I think it's it's kind of like a you know I do you know is benny college student and how potent is the weed or perfect. So I just getting ready, but you can like get these theories and spend them up and everything's point point. So I sort of reject that point.

And I don't think that computers or the internet have been a bubble, right? Has the car industry been a bubble just until we got to like self driving guards, like when we get to tell portion was everything just a waste time until then? So yeah so I I sort of push back against the promise of the question.

The reality is, is there has been real value created. And even with this a eyes stuff, this something that's being built and funded, it's being built off of real cash flows, off of real businesses that that's not a bubble. Um and even the productivity measurements there are productivity gains theyve tended to lag.

Like there's a big question, the eighty nineties, where is the I T productivity and what they showed up and took a while and a sort of a similar thing with internet. And there is all these sorts of things about the access consumer value that sort of hard to measure. Entertainment by a large and access to all information is free.

How does that actually show up in GDP? And yet IT does sort of exist. There's lots of my technical questions you can get into about this, but I think it's going too far to say that it's all you fake. So okay.

fair. I mean, I liked IT for two reasons when I think it's a good quote to the conversation in a couple weeks ago about mental AI and the potential downsides for the human experience and what the next fifteen or twenty years might look like because there are also all these possibilities in the quote, quote, real economy, as he describes IT with A I teslas and robotics and you biological manipulation of proteins, like all of that stuff, excites me more than the possibility of A I content and integrated into my feed without me even realizing IT.

So I like that his focus was there. And then also, I mean, I do look around at where we are now and it's like there are some pluses and minister to the transformation that we've all undergone over the last thirty years. It's plausible to me that we could look up in another thirty years and look at this recent phase as being sort of a transitional phase and the real leaps forward that like improved the world and improve everyone's quality of life happened with AI being adapted for the real world and transforming how we live in interacted on a daily basis. Where, as I think, a lot of the transformations in terms of how we live in over the last fifteen or twenty years, things i've gotten not necessarily like definitively worse, but certainly more complicated in terms of how humans interact with technology. So I like this glass half full outlook for us.

Well, I mean, even just you want take a glass, have full sort of looking backwards. Yes, stuff is different. I think it's overstating IT to say that there's just been we've talked money on this podcast about the sort of complications and issues of online.

And we both, I think, kind of agree that right now is not the ideal state of affairs like so it's not index on the way things are right now. But at the same time, there is a lots of things right now that are that are pretty great. Now I always hesitate to go here personally because i'm obviously in the unique situation being half fly across the world. But I would say us sitting here, twelve times zones apart and recording a podcast which people over the world are going to listen to and hopefully feel that their life is Better, even if it's just in enjoyment .

becoming my friends, us becoming business partners, us talking all day long, all of this is facilitated by technology that didn't exist twenty years ago.

for sure. And I think a lot of the intervening stuff is a lot of his own sort of Morris, right? Uh, we were in a group chat conversation yesterday. You are sort of bemoin the loss of I D old twitter, where people would have actual sort of covert me with someone else else.

We agreed that version of twitter is overnight and may have never really existed. IT may have existed for like a year too.

But yes, race from blogs, mouse in your pocket, IT of IT absolutely existed. Like early twitter, like to two thousand, you know, seven to two thousand, thirteen, fourteen or so, actually even ported to twenty fifteen. There are absolutely real conversations on.

You would go out there and you go back and forth and people would be observing, people would try in. And IT was like the world's largest group chat, and that was absolutely the case. And IT was a great experience. The reality of the internet is the scalability of everything because of the zero marginal cost nature.

Sort of accessing these services means that does the less you have a tragedy of the common sort of effect where you're going to get all the troll, you going to get all the people in interpreting stuff in bad faith, you're going to get people that want to version for to attack people for other reasons, maybe real world reever IT might be and yeah, that version of twitter definitely does not any longer exist. But no, I will push back one hundred percent IT did exist. IT was great. And reason i'm going .

to push back on your push back IT was overstated IT was fine um but people have been complaining about twitter for literally .

like fifteen years twitter .

two thousand .

nine just what I was like a celebrity back in the day but yes, what no twitter was fine.

I understand what you're saying, but I think install gic to the discussion that a sort of allied some of the toxic aspects of twenty twelve twitter.

yeah, that might be the case and also might be the case that this was different areas where in different cases, I think there is a bit where the sports arena has always been pretty toxic, like even whether i'm thinking more like take twitter back back in the day. But I think we have come to common ground here. Sports online cover tary has always been extremely toxic. So I think that was probably.

Back the day.

that's right. Yeah so no, okay, I see where you are coming from that that big. That was your primary ground. So fair of and but I I think that was definitely the case on tech twitter anyway that he was very collegial, very interesting and I can absolutely understand on people missing that. And it's inevitable that it's sort of went away.

All right. And that is the end of the free preview. If you'd like to hear more from benni, there are links to subscribe in the show notes. You can also get a sharp tech F M. Either option will get you access to a personalize fee that has all the shows we do every week plus lots more great content from protector and the protector plus check IT out. And if you've got feedback, please email us at email at sharp tech dot at them.