iPhone 16 is All About AI & Bigger Cars Mean Bigger Problems
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Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Apple unveiled its new AI-powered iPhone, but is it enough to get you to upgrade? Then, a new 400-page report just dropped warning Europe to get its economic ducks in a row or risk a slow agony. It's Tuesday, September 10th. Let's ride. Let's ride.

Sad news out yesterday. James Earl Jones, a lion of American acting, died at 93. Best known as the voice of Darth Vader, Mufasa in The Lion King, and his memorable role in The Field of Dreams, Jones had this uniquely booming and resonant voice that made everything he said seem like the most profound thing in the world. Has anyone delivered more iconic lines in the history of Hollywood? I am your father, of course.

And then this field, this game, it's a part of our past, right? It reminds us of all that once was good and it could be again. I could go on. What performances? What a legacy. And his legacy won't end here either. Remember two years ago, even before the chat GBT inspired AI boom, Jones signed over the rights to his archival voice work, which allowed this startup that was working with Lucasfilm to use AI to recreate the sound of his video.

Vader voice for some of Disney Plus' upcoming shows. He was pretty much the first celebrity to allow himself to be recreated with AI before his passing. You just have to wait and see what Lucasfilm does with that permission to see how well this AI Vader will be received. But very forward-thinking from Jones, and yes, he will be missed because you can just hear the voice even talking, even saying his name out loud. My low-key thoughts.

favorite James Earl Jones movie though was The Sandlot. Oh yeah. I know. That was first of all I was so scared by The Sandlot but just to see him like as the warm owner of the dog just pretty much an iconic performance.

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Yesterday, Apple hosted another one of its famous events with scary good production quality, a new iPhone, and totally normal hand movements from its presenters. Tim Cook led off his keynote by saying the new iPhone 16 was built for artificial intelligence from the ground up.

but was yesterday enough to convince investors and consumers that Apple has caught up in the AI race to turn around sagging iPhone sales. It was hard to tell. Outside, it upgraded Siri, a cool new visual search feature called Visual Intelligence, and some text summarizing and proofreading capabilities. The event didn't exactly roll out any world-changing new tech that exceeded any of its rivals. That said, the new iPhone 16 did get some changes. The

The joke is always that when a new iPhone drops, it usually just means they changed the camera from the previous edition. But Apple really did change the camera this time, adding camera control, which is this haptic button you can use to take a pic or toggle through different zooms and lens controls.

Apple shares dipped around 1.5% during the event, which is a fairly normal reaction from investors given that most of the new features were already reported on ahead of time. But Neil, how did this event stack up in your eyes? Apple desperately needs people to upgrade their iPhones because the last time they did so in mass was in 2021. Meanwhile, this year for the first two quarters of the year, Apple

The iPhone sales have fallen both times and iPhones account for 50% of Apple's revenue. And they also serve as the entry point into Apple's ecosystem where you can buy more of their products and services. This is the first time that Apple is relying not on hardware,

hardware upgrades for people to buy its new iPhones, but more on software. So that's why they had to tout this new Apple intelligence features. I'm not sure they were convincing primarily because many of the AI features that Apple introduced will not be available when you buy the new iPhone. They're slowly being rolled out later this year and into next year. The up

upgraded Siri is not coming for months. The integration with chat GPT is also not coming for months. So we'll see how many people spring to get this new iPhone, trade their old one in, pay up, you know, pay a couple hundred dollars to get the new one, even without these whiz bang new features that really every other iPhone

hardware, smartphone maker does have. Well, that's the issue is that the fundamental premise of relying on consumers to want to upgrade because of AI features might be flawed because so far Samsung has promoted heavily its latest AI devices. And yet AI was only a minor selling point when you actually talk to consumers according to surveys. So they're betting that AI will lead people to want to upgrade, but that might not be the case. What

Another interesting thing, too, is that I do think that Apple is trying to figure out what its AI vision really is so far. They are trying to make it seem like you have these private models running in your pockets that are helping specifically you. So they showed some examples of using their new –

to edit a text message for tone or something like that or review your photo albums to help you put together a slideshow of photos. So it's meant to feel very intimate, very small, very personalized to your device, very private is another big thing for that. So they're definitely trying to paint a little bit of a different picture from these giant models that the other tech companies are releasing

rolling out, but we'll see if it's actually the right approach to resonate with consumers. Apple did do some cool things, at least in the wearable space. Right. Their AirPods got a little bit of an upgrade as well. One of the coolest parts is that their AirPods Pro 2 can actually reach a level that makes them capable of acting as an over-the-counter hearing aid. So it's literally medically clear to work as...

something that can improve people with hearing difficulties, improve their hearing. So that was very cool. Their Apple Watch actually didn't get a big overhaul. They just released a black satin model, which...

Honestly, judging from Twitter reactions, people are like, yeah, it's kind of enough to make me want to upgrade. Anyway, it's pretty sleek. So the AirPod Maxes just got a color upgrade. Also, it went to the USB-C. So they kind of just did some cosmetic. Probably the AirPods got the biggest overhaul in terms of technology. So again, it wasn't like a crazy Apple event, but it was enough –

truly the camera button was what people started getting really excited about is that again, cameras are just a huge part of like owning a smartphone these days. So having a more sensitive button to toggle through zoom controls, toggle through lens control without having to dive into the camera app itself was actually a big upgrade for a lot of people. So it will be funny that it's,

This iPhone might be remembered for just making it easier to take pictures rather than making it easier to, you know, access their AI models. And need I remind everyone that Apple remains the most valuable company in the world with a $3.3 trillion market cap. So they sell a lot of stuff.

Maybe Google took Bratz Summer a little too seriously. Just one month after a judge ruled that Google maintained an illegal monopoly in search, the company is back in the courtroom for another mega antitrust trial, this time to defend its $20 billion advertising technology ecosystem.

It faces a familiar foe, the DOJ. The agency brought the case against Google Search and now fresh off a major victory in game one. It wants to keep the antitrust momentum going in what has become the biggest legal threat to Google's sprawling business in its history. OK, so what is this Google advertising tech we are talking about?

Essentially, it's the backend system that allows all those annoying banner ads to appear on websites. Google is dominant in this area, owning the technology that determines when and where you see a particular ad. By dominant, I mean that it runs every single link in this operation. Websites use Google tools to sell their ad space, marketers use it to buy ad space, and Google also runs the marketplace in the middle where buyer and seller meet.

But does this amount to an illegal monopoly? The DOJ says absolutely, claiming that Google has abused its market power to jack up advertising prices and block out rivals. Toby, can Google avoid going in an O2 hole? This is tough right now. It's not looking... I mean, it's too early to tell how it's looking for Google, but Google's argument is always that

Of course, the reason why people use our ad tools is because they are the best. Our technology is the best. We've heard that argument from a lot of these big tech companies. But also, they argue that the government's case is based on pretty much an outdated view of the internet. Again, it comes down to how you define the market here. Google says that the DOJ is only focusing on website ads.

But since they rolled out this technology, the market has expanded to include mobile apps, social media, streaming services. There's a lot more places where advertisers can place their ads right now, not just on websites, not just on those annoying banner ads. So they're saying that they are looking at an internet of yesteryear, and they really are looking

laying that on heavy in the opening statement, Google's lawyers said that the government's case likened the government's case to a time capsule with a BlackBerry, an iPod, and Blockbuster video cards. So they're really trying to point the government's case as anachronistic and just not up to date with the current iteration of the internet. Google also contends that the cost of ads has gone down while the number of ads sold is going up.

indicating a healthy market. The market is working. So say Google loses. What would be a possible remedy here? Well, in the search case, it is very confusing. No one knows exactly after Google was found to have an illegal monopoly in search, but the judge is

is going to take until next August to figure out what sort of penalties Google needs to pay or do in order to sort of, you know, make them not a monopoly. But in this case, it's a lot more straightforward. The DOJ is asking the judge to simply break off Google's ad business, which it built through acquisitions of companies

In particular, this ad platform DoubleClick, which the DOJ has scrutinized back in 2008. So in terms of looking at both the search case and then this ad tech one, figuring out what to do about it should Google lose was a lot clearer in this one. You just hive off the ad platform.

Potentially one thing that Google does have going for it as well is that its ad tech division has actually seen declining revenue in the past year. So it's gone from $31.7 billion in 2021 to $31.3 billion in 2023. It's still in the $30 billion range. So I think we're playing the world's tiniest violins here. But yes, this is going to be a long and sprawling case and just is reflective of just the broader situation.

anti-trust scrutiny on major tech companies that we've talked about ad nauseum on this show. In the economic slugfest between the United States and China, a third party has been relegated to the periphery, less and less relevant by the day, Europe. But don't take MBD's word for it. Listen to what Mario Draghi, the former prime minister of Italy and president of the European Bank, has to say. He wrote that the EU is facing an existential challenge and

and needs a new industrial strategy in order to not fall further behind the U.S. and China, according to a new report commissioned by the EU. Draghi's report calls for joint EU funding to support emergency infrastructure and defense, as well as a radical rethinking of the bloc's

aggressive antitrust approach. The price tag on such ambitions is additional investments of $880 billion a year, which comes out to 5% of the continent's combined GDPs. It's a number that Draghi thinks is well worth it in order to maintain Europe's geopolitical relevance as it deals with slow growth and struggles to compete with other superpowers. Neil, this report took over a year to put together. It is 400 pages long, and it is

pretty unforgiving towards the current iteration of the EU. I think it is tantamount to the crisis Europe is facing right now, which Draghi called existential. I want to put that $884 billion a year of investment, that 5% of GDP in context. Remember the Marshall Plan after World War II, which is Europe rebuilding? It's

battered economy following that war. That accounted for just 1.5% of the continent's GDP. This is 5%. So what Draghi is looking at the landscape of Europe and he's seeing stagnation, slowing growth compared to the rest of the world, lack of innovation. He thinks that stagnation

He thinks that $900 billion more is needed in combined funding in order to awaken Europe from its slumbers. Certain truly crazy stats about the tech industry in particular. One of the main challenges he identified was Europe losing its tech competitiveness with the rest of the world and especially the United States.

Right now, only four of the world's top 50 tech companies are European, and then nearly a third of European unicorns, which are companies valued at over $1 billion that were founded from 2008 to 2021. They've left. They've relocated to the rest of the world, particularly the United States. As we were talking about yesterday, OnlyFans is perhaps one of the biggest tech stories of Europe over the past decade. So Draghi,

who has been called Super Mario for saving Europe from the Euro crisis a decade ago, thinks that the EU needs to follow his plan to turn itself around. And OnlyFans Brexited, by the way. It was founded in the UK. So what are the remedies here? How do you dig yourself out of this hole? A lot of it surrounds just unification of several different disparate strategies. For instance,

you get funding on the same page. He pointed out clean energy tech development and said that financial support was fractured across a lot of different programs. He recommended that bring it all under one kind of governing body or allow it to concentrate so you can more effectively manage this investment in this sector.

Same thing goes for financial markets. The idea is to combine a bunch of different regulators into one single regulatory body, kind of like the SEC does for America. He called out that the EU is suffering from this innovation deficit, so they need to

pretty much facilitate this massive investment. So just down the list, he went through every single sector and pretty much just roasted them and say, we just need to put money here or else. That's what I mentioned, slow agony. He said it's going to be a very long, slow descent into having worse living conditions, having worse quality of life if we don't do something right now. And that was kind of like the general thrust of this report. Up next, bigger cars are leading to havoc on roadways.

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The United States has a growing pedestrian death problem. From 2013 to 2022, the number of Americans killed while walking spiked 57% from about 4,800 to 7,500 people per year. Safety officials and researchers have spent years poring through crash data to figure out why the U.S. was such an outlier in this area. Because the fact is, it is more dangerous to walk along American roads than in many other countries.

Now they think they've discovered a key part of the answer. Americans love a fair with huge cars and they're trying to do something about it. Yesterday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposed new rules for the auto industry that would force car makers to redesign their vehicles to minimize the risk of pedestrian deaths and injuries.

Technically, these rules would apply to all passenger vehicles weighing 10,000 pounds or less, but they are squarely aimed at the bigger cars that have taken over American roads. Through August, SUVs and trucks of all sizes accounted for nearly 80% of new vehicle sales in the U.S., and data shows they are far more fatal for pedestrians in a crash

than sedans. But Toby, here is the super interesting part. These new rules aren't focused on the weight of the car. They're focused on another design aspect, the height of the hood. What's the problem with a taller hood? I mean, SUVs, vans, pickup trucks that have a hood height greater than 40 inches are nearly half as likely to cause deaths or 45% more likely to cause deaths in pedestrian crashes than cars with a hood height of 30 inches or less. So there really is this

Very provable correlation between a higher hood and more deaths of pedestrians. And pickup truck hood heights are rising. Since 2000, they've risen 11%. The hood height of a 2017 Ford F-250 heavy-duty pickup truck was 55%.

inches off the ground. That's as tall as the roofs as a lot of cars. What this does is just create a lot of blind spots for these drivers, which makes it more dangerous for pedestrians. Consumer Reports said it measured the visibility for 15 new cars or full-size trucks on the roads today, and they found that some of the blind spots were 11 feet longer than some sedans. So it is a combination of just a bigger force

hitting a pedestrian, then also more blind spots leads to these higher hood heights being a lot more dangerous. And also hitting pedestrians in the torso or the head, which are more fatal. There just has been a growing recognition that all of the bigger cars that Americans are driving are more dangerous, not only for pedestrians, as the safety regulars pointed out in their proposal yesterday, but also for just

other cars. The Economist did a big, big, big report last week and found that when a bigger car collides into a smaller car, the fatality rate is roughly seven times higher when colliding with a heavy pickup than when you collide with a compact car. So not only are they more dangerous for pedestrians, they are more dangerous for people in smaller cars. And cars have just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger and heavier and heavier.

and heavier in the United States compared to the rest of the world. The average new car in America, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, now weighs more than 4,400 pounds compared with 3,300 pounds in the EU and 2,600 pounds in Japan. So this is a uniquely American problem that regulators are trying to get out of. And this proposal wants...

the auto industry in the United States to adopt this international regulation standard for designs of hoods, and it's going to run two separate tests using hoods to try to get them to become more sloped and have a lower sort of impact angle. It's not necessarily consumers' fault either that we are buying these bigger cars because...

Some analysts describe this Cold War-style arms race where if you see all the vehicles around you getting bigger and getting heavier, of course you're going to want to invest in a safer and heavier vehicle as well. And part of the reason that we have these big vehicles too is that a lot of our safety regulations work.

are biased towards the people in the vehicle. So we have very safe cars for the people that are driving them because they are bigger and heavier. But is that worth it to protect the occupant if it causes the risk of other people dying to be seven times higher, to be much higher for pedestrians as well? So that's kind of the question that car manufacturers are grappling with.

You ever hop on a Zoom call for work on a Monday after a big weekend? You make some small talk, ask what everyone got up to, and when the convo swings back around to you, you slip in a little white lie about how you took it easy when that was far from the truth? Well, thanks to Arise and AI startups, you might be called out for that little white lie, and it's these AI lie detectors that I want to talk about on today's edition of Toby's Trends.

Bloomberg profiled this company, CyberQ, which uses generative AI to look through Zoom transcripts to find signs of deceit. The company's former CIA officer founder says it can detect misleading statements with 92% accuracy thanks to its chatbot named Q, trained on hundreds of examples of truths and lies, pulled from everything from OJ Simpson to Enron testimonies.

Even outside a Zoom transcript, AI is wrecking havoc on fibbers. A team of economists in Germany recently developed a tool that was much better than humans at spotting lies, successfully identifying whether a statement was true or false 67% of the time compared to just half the time for humans. Neil, there are a lot of downstream effects to this too when you dive into the implications of letting AI make judgments on whether things are true or not, some of them with very big social implications as well. I suppose the argument in favor of an AI

trying to tell whether you're lying or not is that it doesn't come with the human biases that we have. And it's just a literal automaton that isn't going to care whether the person is attractive and they want to impress him or any other ways that biases could seep into our minds when trying to detect whether someone is lying or not. Apparently, when I try to tell whether you're lying, a human generally is a coin flip. It's basically 50%

And AI, these AI lie detectors have been shown, according to their creators, to be upwards of 60, 70, 80% correct. But just going through the history of lie detecting technology, it seems like we just, we really are bad with developing lie detecting technology. At first, we had the polygraph, which is 100 years old, and that was supposed to show that at 50,

physiological changes like blood pressure, respiratory rate, or sweating were a way of detecting lies. But instead, that just showed anxiety, not necessarily dishonesty. And then we thought in the 60s that body and facial movements could detect lying. So whether you made eye contact with me, if that was an indication that you were lying. But that turned out to be bunk as well. So maybe this next iteration of technology with AI will finally be able to determine whether people are

lying or not through mostly language cues. - I do think too that when I talk about the social fabric of humanity being potentially disrupted by this, it's because normally people tend to assume that someone else is telling the truth. That is why we are so bad at detecting lies.

Early on, if you asked these volunteers in this experiment to determine which statements were lies and which statements were true, they knew 50% of the statements included in the data set were lies. But still, they only marked 19% of them as lies.

We show a bias to trusting each other, which could be very important for forming a society, forming a community like humanity does. So if you start introducing these tools that make you start defaulting towards thinking people are lying, then it could disrupt how humans create our social relationships. So you can go deep down this rabbit hole. It's not just little white lies on Zoom calls. It could be the very structure that supports human community that is disrupted by generative AI lie detectors.

How can we even move on? I have an elevated heart rate, sweating and respiratory cues right now. Okay. Let's go to more mundane things for our final story. Yesterday felt like a throwback in that everyone was once again, talking about Tom Brady's performance on the NFL's first Sunday of the season. How'd he do? Is he being overpaid? Did he live up to expectations, but there's a twist. Brady wasn't even playing football.

He was in the broadcasting booth for his first game as an announcer for Fox, which paid the legendary quarterback $375 million over 10 years to make him the highest paid sports broadcaster in history. It was and is a huge gamble by the network. Brady is known for throwing TDs, not explaining them to an audience. And with Brady sliding into Fox's top broadcasting team, he replaced beloved color commentator Greg Olson, who was demoted to the B squad. So the hype.

and the scrutiny was through the roof. So how did Brady do? Eh.

Reviews, and there were many, scored his broadcasting debut somewhere between a C and a B. He wasn't bad, but he wasn't that good either. There were some awkwardness and a lack of flow, but he did provide some insight and had no major fumbles. The general consensus was this was his first day on a new job, and it clearly showed. The bigger question is, how quickly can Brady improve to make Fox's execs not regret their decisions?

I know. Of course we were going to talk about this because the contract is so big. It is Tom Brady we're talking about, and he really just didn't do that well. So we were debating on whether to talk about it on the show today, but those factors made it so that we just had to. The crazy thing about this story is that it doesn't really matter who is talking during a football game. I mean, it's football. People are going to watch. 93 of the top 100 most watched shows on TV last year were football NFL broadcasts.

It is interesting to think that maybe this investment will just never end up paying off for Fox because people were going to tune in regardless. So it's not even like people are locked into listening to the announcers these days. I mean, you're scrolling TikTok. You're looking on your fantasy team. You're watching Red Zone. So it doesn't matter.

who knows, but I do think Brady will improve as broadcasters of sorts ourselves. You do improve over time. You get that cadence. You get that flow a little bit nicer. So he was going to always have outside scrutiny. We're not sure if he actually lived up to it. And you will see him at the Super Bowl because Fox is calling the Super Bowl later this year. So he's being thrown into the fire. Let's be real. Just like he was as a player in 2001, he is just getting tossed in there at an

a team he's going to be calling the Super Bowl. So I hope he does well. Yeah, of course. I think he was fine, personally. I'm also not the one who wrote the check to him, but I think he was fine, and I enjoy listening to Brady, and I'm not a hater. You grew up in Western Mass. Imagine that. Okay. I understand where these fault lines are being drawn. Let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us, and have a wonderful Tuesday. For any feedback, questions, or questions,

comments on the show, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Also, don't gatekeep and share Morning Brew Daily with your friends, family, and coworkers so you don't have to explain Google's new antitrust trial to them. If you need some inspo, Toby has an idea. I want you to share today's show with someone who hates Tom Brady. There are a lot of you out there, so let the hate flow through you and text this MVD episode to someone who hates him. Don't even think about texting me. I'm not your person.

Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Uchenua Ogu is our technical director. Billy Menino is on audio. Hair and makeup gives so many made-up excuses about missing work, and soon I'll be able to prove it. Devin Emery is our chief content officer, and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show day, Neil. Let's run it back again tomorrow.