Kylie Robison joins the show to talk about OpenAI’s new model, o1, and what this new “reasoning” model says about the state of the art in AI — and what AI companies are willing to put up with in the name of building God. Then, Gaby Del Valle and Adi Robertson talk through the latest on the TikTok ban, the Trump crypto chaos, and the ongoing adtech antitrust trial against Google. (All with as little politics-talk as possible.)
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TechTranscript
00:00:00Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of things codenamed Strawberry.
00:00:04I'm your friend David Pierce and I am currently in the Miami International
00:00:08Airport. I just spent the weekend touring colleges with my nephew and suddenly I'm
00:00:12like, college is awesome. I could go back to college. I don't think I do very well.
00:00:15I don't think I would get in anywhere. I think my test scores would be awful if
00:00:19you're like, hey how do you do calculus? I don't know, I have nothing for you. But
00:00:23suddenly college seems pretty appealing. So who knows, maybe this will be the end
00:00:27of my Vergecast career and I'll just go back to school or something. But anyway,
00:00:30that is not what we're here to talk about. Today we are here to talk about
00:00:34two things. We're doing a little bit of a catch-up on some kind of ongoing news
00:00:37happening in the tech industry. First, we're going to talk about OpenAI, which
00:00:41has been doing a bunch of sort of odd new work with different kinds of models
00:00:46and a new thing that they call a Reasoning Model 01, some strange
00:00:51corporate changes, lots just going on at OpenAI. So I figured it's been a while
00:00:55since Kylie Robinson came on the show and told us what's going on. So Kylie is
00:00:59going to come on the show and tell us what's going on. Then we're going to talk
00:01:02about a bunch of ongoing legal and regulatory things. We have the TikTok ban
00:01:08or not ban ongoing. We have a bunch of questions about the Google ad tech trial.
00:01:12We have whatever that Trump crypto thing was from a week or so ago. So we're
00:01:18going to catch up on all of that too. All of that is coming up in just a sec, plus
00:01:22a really fun hotline question that made me feel a lot of feelings about my own
00:01:26life, as these are wont to do. But first, legitimately as of right this second, I
00:01:31just got the notification that my plane is boarding. So time to fly home. We'll be
00:01:34right back. Welcome back. All right, let's get into it.
00:01:39First thing I want to talk about is AI. So it's been a busy summer of AI stuff
00:01:45and in particular I've been really fascinated by this thing that has
00:01:49happened really for the last year where you have a handful of companies, you have
00:01:53Google, you have OpenAI, you have Anthropic, you have Meta constantly
00:01:59leapfrogging each other with new models. It's like every two weeks somebody comes
00:02:03out with a new model that benchmarks better than anybody else's model and
00:02:06it's cheaper and then two weeks later one of the other companies does it. And
00:02:08we've just been on this relentless pace of everything getting slightly better.
00:02:13And I keep asking the question and trying to figure it out for myself of
00:02:16what does this mean? Like at what point do all of these changes add up to
00:02:21something meaningfully different about how you use your devices and how you
00:02:25interact with computers and how computers interact with you and each
00:02:28other? And so far I don't have great answers. Everything's getting better but
00:02:32it doesn't seem like we're getting tons of huge new changes. If you listen to
00:02:37Sunday's episode you heard Steven Johnson talk about Gemini's context
00:02:41window. I think that's a good example but there haven't been that many moments like
00:02:44that. But then OpenAI last week released a thing called O1 which is a new
00:02:50model that is very different and seems to speak to kind of a different
00:02:54direction for these models to go. They're not just getting bigger and faster and
00:02:59cheaper to run but kind of along the same lines. This is OpenAI saying
00:03:02something different about how a model might work and how you might use it and
00:03:07what it might mean. Those things are sometimes enticing and sometimes
00:03:10terrifying. So I figured it's time to talk our way through it. So I asked Kylie
00:03:14Robinson to come back on the show. She hasn't been here in a little while and I
00:03:17figured it'd be a good time to dive in. Let's do it. Kylie welcome back. Hello.
00:03:21It's been a minute. I feel like every time I want to talk to you you're like
00:03:24a burning man. That's true. That is exactly what happened last time or on a
00:03:28crazy vacation. Yes. I'm happy to be back. It's a tough life honestly. I know. Being
00:03:3326 and SF it's terrible. Seems like it. Well you were at Dreamforce this week
00:03:37which is objectively terrible. No comment but yes. But I have brought you
00:03:44here because there keeps being interesting AI stuff and specifically I
00:03:47want to talk about O1 OpenAI's new model which first I just want you to
00:03:54explain to me. I have many questions and feelings and thoughts about this that I
00:03:57want to go over but I mostly just want to know like what is O1? Yeah. And why
00:04:01does it exist? Yeah so O1 is OpenAI's new quote-unquote reasoning model and I
00:04:07think you can argue about what reasoning is for a million years so I
00:04:10won't but that's what they're claiming and it is the next step in about five
00:04:16steps to AGI for OpenAI. Reasoning is really important to them and more
00:04:21practically what users and researchers are finding is that this model is better
00:04:26at hard math problems and coding assignments. Okay why? What like what when
00:04:32you say a reasoning model. Yeah. I feel like we've been hearing people say AI is
00:04:37good at reasoning. Yeah. For a very long time. So to come out with a reasoning
00:04:41model makes it seem like something is meaningfully like structurally different
00:04:47here. Like what is that thing? So they basically trained the model to think
00:04:52step-by-step. So previously you might see a workaround with GPT-4 or 4.0 that was
00:04:58like okay give me an answer and I want you to think through it step-by-step. So
00:05:02they basically trained the model to do that itself rather than have the user do
00:05:07that and through a lot of reinforcement learning which looks like how you would
00:05:11train a dog with treats and you know penalties. That's how I explain it and
00:05:16people online are like now I feel bad for the model. How is it penalized? But it
00:05:20also gets treats. It also gets treats. Yeah. So that's also led to this thing
00:05:25called reward hacking that I wrote about. It's a very deep rabbit hole but yeah so
00:05:30it's trained to reason in these ways and then it has this thing called a
00:05:34chain of thought that we can't see for competition purposes and safety purposes
00:05:38is what they claim. So it just shows like okay I'm I'm breaking this down XYZ
00:05:44ways. It's it's the I'm breaking this down thing that throws me because we've
00:05:49seen a bunch of screenshots and I don't know if you've used it much. I haven't
00:05:52really used it much. It's like it's kind of out there now. Folks are playing with
00:05:56it. It's it's trying hard to talk out loud as if it's a person thinking
00:06:03through a problem which is a weird when a person does it. Like if you've ever
00:06:07sat and like listened to somebody try to reason through a hard problem it's
00:06:10bizarre and doesn't make any sense and to have a computer sort of attempt to
00:06:16brute force its way through the same thing and it's using like I pronouns and
00:06:20it's it's wondering and it's thinking about it. You're not doing any of those
00:06:24things and I don't know that there just seems to be this thing where open AI is
00:06:30pushing much much much harder into this thing should sort of be like a person
00:06:36right like I can't get the idea of the voice mode coming out right before this
00:06:40right which is like you put those two things together and like I that's if if
00:06:44it works that's something really powerful am I overthinking what open AI
00:06:48is trying to do here do you think no that was my first reaction when they
00:06:51were demoing it for me I think I put that in the story too which was like it
00:06:55says I'm thinking I'm wondering I'm like this you aren't a thing you aren't I
00:07:00yeah you're not wondering anything yeah it's computer so I get because that's
00:07:05something I've been taught as I you know work on this beat is do not do that
00:07:10don't say it's thinking because it isn't so why do they do that I asked them and
00:07:15they gave me sort of a roundabout answer is we don't believe in anthropomorphizing
00:07:19this whatsoever it's just sort of the easiest language to default to which I
00:07:24get because I think it's really hard even as I write about this to not use
00:07:29these statements but I think you have to just work hard to not do that you know
00:07:33because it isn't thinking right it is it is really hard to describe what it's
00:07:37doing it with a word other than thinking yes but it's not thinking and so I find
00:07:42myself writing things or it's like it's thinking and then in parentheses you're
00:07:45like well it's not actually thinking but you know what I mean and it's like I
00:07:47agree like all the vocabulary for this is bad but it does sometimes feel like
00:07:51that's still the best that we have exactly the other thing that I find
00:07:55fascinating about this model is the the sort of safety reaction to yes both from
00:08:02open a eyes own researchers which I think they gave it what like a medium
00:08:07risk scorecard for biological like weapons risks yeah that doesn't make me
00:08:14feel better like that's I feel like they put that out and they're like it's fine
00:08:16it's only a medium risk that feels like a lot but then you also talk to a
00:08:20researcher who raised some like sincerely honestly alarming stuff like
00:08:25what what is the what is different about this one that it is it is making people
00:08:30nervous I think what fascinated that researcher is this is the first time he
00:08:34had witnessed sort of the manipulation aspect I think I explained this story to
00:08:40my dad the other day who is not plugged into AI and I'm his only source of
00:08:45information and I started with I'm gonna use a lot of these words that I
00:08:49don't use in the article because you're not supposed to anthropomorphize it but
00:08:53you know and I'll do the same here just for time's sake but it's you know it had
00:08:58checked to see if the developers were watching before making a decision is
00:09:02something a researcher found it found that it is so goal-oriented that it is
00:09:08willing to break guardrails to get you an answer for example in the research
00:09:12there was the brownie test it asked for the user asked for a brownie recipe and
00:09:19it knew it shows in its chain of thoughts I don't have access to this
00:09:23information I don't have access to the internet but I want to give this user an
00:09:27answer so badly that I am going to make up this information in order to you know
00:09:32succeed in its goal so that's a form of reward hacking that I wrote about wait
00:09:38so it didn't it didn't go to the internet to answer questions it invented
00:09:43yes links to web pages with brownie recipes it invented a blog it was like
00:09:50Sammy's brownie recipes or something it invented a blog but it knew that it was
00:09:55incorrect it just didn't want to admit that it was incorrect what yeah because
00:10:00it wants the reward it knows is rewarded for giving an answer so but it's also as
00:10:05the researcher told me it needs to be helpful honest it it it knows it's
00:10:11guardrails but some of those it finds these aren't super helpful when I'm
00:10:15trying to get an answer right if if it wants to be all of those things but job
00:10:20number one is go answer the question yes it will do this is the science fiction
00:10:25stuff like you just described act one of every movie that ends in everyone dies
00:10:30in act three because of AI do you know the paperclip story this is like kind of
00:10:35a famous AI story basically an AI the TLDR is the AI I can't remember the user
00:10:42prompt that's like how do I get as many paperclips as possible or something and
00:10:46it turns the entire world into paperclips like that it's like so so
00:10:51that's kind of the thing is that and that's what the researcher was telling
00:10:54me about in the story that he's like listen it's not capable of you know
00:10:58turning us all into paperclips right now but say it does advance in the ways
00:11:03that open AI wants it to advance then you know someday we tell it you know
00:11:08cure cancer and it realizes well I need a lot of money to do this and I need a
00:11:13lot of humans to do this and it's willing to break these guardrails to
00:11:16achieve this goal which is a very sci-fi way to look at it yeah it's like okay I
00:11:20can cure cancer but only with millions of human bodies to test this on and it's
00:11:27like cast that out far enough I try so hard not to be like a tinfoil hat yes AI
00:11:32person generally because I believe the best and worst possibilities are less
00:11:38crazy than everybody makes them out to be that yeah like realistically we're
00:11:41gonna end up somewhere between like a four and a six out of ten no matter what
00:11:44the thing is but it is this one is particularly wild to me just in the
00:11:51context of what's going on in open AI right which is that the other news of
00:11:54this company is that it is pushing ever harder towards being a for-profit
00:11:58company like officially taking off the we want to do good by the world shackles
00:12:03and they're just gonna go make money they also launched a safety board which
00:12:07I think most people would argue at this point is kind of a sham yes correct me
00:12:12if I'm wrong but like every evidence from what open AI has been up to over
00:12:15the last year suggests that that's a sham like it seems to me that there are
00:12:20reasons to be nervous about the trajectory of a company that would
00:12:24launch this model at this moment yes but maybe I'm just freaking out for no
00:12:28reason no I asked a researcher I trust about that safety board a safety
00:12:32researcher and they said that it's mostly window dressing in their opinion
00:12:36that's that's what they thought I think this has been the hardest job I have had
00:12:43in my short career is walking this tightrope of and the pressure of getting
00:12:48it correct because it is so complex and technical and not only that open AI's
00:12:52has such grand claims that they and they are not proven yet and they are
00:12:57currently raising I just this morning there was news that they are closing the
00:13:01largest funding round in history at 6.5 billion dollars at a hundred fifty
00:13:05billion dollar valuation oh yeah and I was reading it's over subscribed more
00:13:09people want to be in it than can be in it yes exactly and the the minimum
00:13:14thrive capital is leading it and the minimum of investment is 250 million
00:13:18dollars Wow it is it is unprecedented and really hard for me to wrap my head
00:13:23around yeah and it just feels like whatever you want to believe about the
00:13:28future if sufficiently good AI will save us or sufficiently good AI will kill us
00:13:33it feels like open AI is perfectly happy to just run down the road yeah as fast
00:13:41as it possibly can no matter what a hundred percent so the this reasoning
00:13:46model though is it is just keeps throwing me for that exact reason like
00:13:49why if you're open AI launch this model even opening I did its own testing it's
00:13:55it's a medium risk right like yeah the company has they've talked a big game
00:14:00for years about wanting to do this safely and wanting to take their time
00:14:04and it's a complicated moment in the AI space and all this stuff like what's
00:14:08psychoanalyzed Sam Altman and co here for me for a minute why why do this
00:14:13right now um well Altman said this week at a conference he said he likened the
00:14:19capabilities of o1 to GPT 2 in 2019 so it's not that capable of their models I
00:14:26think releasing it my my jaded side is that it's it's capitalism they need to
00:14:34raise this money they need something to show for it like we're asking for more
00:14:38money than anyone has ever asked for so we need something to show for it even if
00:14:42it's a half-baked reasoning model and their their position is also we need
00:14:48user feedback we need the data because we can't just do this in-house forever
00:14:53we need to release it at some point so we can see how it performs and how it
00:14:57can be better so that that's their position but yeah it's a to me it's a
00:15:01funding and a competition standpoint you know everyone else is gonna be coming
00:15:05out Google's already claimed that they have reasoning models it's just it's the
00:15:08next stage for what they're gearing up to do which is quote-unquote agents yeah
00:15:15walk me through a little bit because I think my next question was gonna be why
00:15:18raise this much money right now on the one hand you might as well right like
00:15:23that's sort of the story of the tech industry is like if somebody will give
00:15:26you money you mostly take it but it also does seem like I have a bunch of thoughts
00:15:32about this like specific moment we're at in the sort of AI productization
00:15:37universe but as as you're saying with the the agent stuff it feels like there
00:15:43is a thing that's next is and is this is this six and a half billion dollars to
00:15:48get to that thing like do you think it's as simple as that well yes and no but
00:15:53yes they have five levels to AGI so it's chatbots number one reasoners which is
00:16:00the reasoning agents number three four is innovators so these agents can help
00:16:05with you know inventing cures to diseases and then number five is
00:16:10organization so they can do the work of whole companies this is something they
00:16:14laid out very recently I just want to say by the way whoever came up with that
00:16:17genius like the way you just described that sounds so reasonable and it makes
00:16:22sense and I can sort of see how it one flows into the other and then it's like
00:16:25as soon as you start to pick it apart it all just becomes insane but like totally
00:16:28as a copywriting exercise like crushed it great job okay I precisely yes and I
00:16:33explained this and this is something I've argued with readers about I
00:16:37explained this not because I think that we are there yet or on our way to AGI
00:16:41but because this is what they genuinely believe they're building like they think
00:16:45that they're building God I think that's important to lay out so agents is you
00:16:50know I think it means different things to different organizations for example
00:16:54Salesforce build Dreamforce as the biggest AI conference in the world and
00:16:59they called it agent force because only a few weeks that and I was there all
00:17:06week there's this fabulous photo of me demoing this with Benny off for hours
00:17:14it's basically a slack bot that will create a customer service bot for you
00:17:19and it's they're billing it as an AI agent so customer service chat bots are
00:17:24one component of agents right so replacing repetitive tasks for open AI
00:17:31the repetitive tasks they want to replace is everything every repetitive
00:17:36task you can people doing things people doing things so they're hoping reasoning
00:17:41can help agents make more informed decisions and do your life for you this
00:17:48is what everybody wants right like this is now the path it seems like and I mean
00:17:53this is this like rabbit was talking about this at CES this year I like that
00:17:57is that is what everybody wants to do and I think to some extent that as an
00:18:02end point makes sense right like I I think there is no evidence that anyone
00:18:07is building God at this moment in time but the idea that we are that they are
00:18:11on a real path to building things that can do things for you on your behalf
00:18:14yeah seems real right like I think we've been on that path for longer than people
00:18:20want to say like you go back to like the Google Duo thing where it would call a
00:18:24restaurant and make you a reservation yeah that's like an old-school
00:18:31communication mechanism but that's the same idea yeah and it does feel like you
00:18:36know you talk to you talk to Google and you talk to Apple about the Apple
00:18:38intelligence stuff and like that's the idea of all of this is go execute tasks
00:18:42on your behalf and I guess what I wonder is is there any particular reason to
00:18:48believe open AI is gonna get there before anybody else like I've become
00:18:51this is the other thing I want to talk to you about I think I'm totally
00:18:54obsessed with this thing that seems to have happened where anthropic a few
00:18:58months ago released Claude 3.5 mm-hmm and all of a sudden everyone I know who
00:19:04uses AI tools is like oh this is the best one yeah it's more fun it's more
00:19:07interesting it's more creative it's like this is just the best one and it just
00:19:10happened yeah all of a sudden open AI went from being like the the Goliath in
00:19:15the room to everybody being like like their tech is cool but this is there are
00:19:19a lot of companies that make cool tech and the stuff is being commoditized and
00:19:22yeah it's like AI seems cool but do we need open AI to be the the sort of
00:19:28harbinger of all this and then open AI is like we're raising all of the money
00:19:31in the universe at the highest valuation in the history of the universe here we
00:19:34are and I just I can't figure out what it is that is still so sexy about open
00:19:39AI in this moment I mean no one has the users for their chatbot like open AI does
00:19:46there that's a fair point I think that's what I think about when I think of
00:19:50anthropics chatbot and for instance Grok XAI's chatbot so you know that I try not
00:19:56to think about Grok generally speaking Grok sometimes appears and and that's
00:20:01okay but I don't yeah I just leave Grok over there unless you need the
00:20:06president's holding a bomb like we don't really need Grok yet so in terms
00:20:10of mass adoption. It has its use cases. Exactly so yeah I think that chat GPT is a
00:20:18household name and I don't think that's gonna change anytime soon and that's you
00:20:23know good for them I think that any company right now is looking for a way
00:20:29to justify why they're spending millions and billions of dollars on compute or
00:20:34like AI research they need something to show for it and I think agents is the
00:20:39next thing they're reaching for whether they're gonna get there or not whether
00:20:43these are gonna be useful I like really remains to be seen but that is all what
00:20:47they're working on because they see a product that could justify why they're
00:20:51spending so much time and money on this that's fair is it possible that search
00:20:55GPT is that thing for open AI like that's not quite an agent but it does
00:21:01feel like I totally buy the case yeah that chat GPT is not a killer app for
00:21:06anything I've been saying this forever and I feel very vindicated by it because
00:21:09people are starting to come around and a chat bot is not the future of computing
00:21:13it just isn't like I just isn't and I think a thing I've started to hear from
00:21:20more and more people that is that open AI is a company that's really good at
00:21:23technology and really bad at product and so I buy I buy the theory that like if
00:21:29you can do agents well and first that becomes a thing that it's like oh now I
00:21:32now you've built something I can use that is more than just like a novelty
00:21:37computer to talk to it's like actually useful tool on my behalf still kind of
00:21:43feel like everybody's working on that but I also think there's a nonzero
00:21:46chance that that thing might be searched GPT which they announced and then sort
00:21:50of hope seemed like just stop talking about do you use perplexity more than
00:21:54Google no yeah so I don't think so I don't think anyone's going to be using
00:22:00AI power search more than they're just using Google and what's built into their
00:22:03devices which is why there's huge antitrust lawsuits inside well yeah have
00:22:08my change yeah but yeah I know I don't see search GPT being their next killer
00:22:13thing okay we are we're all forgetting about Sora throwback Sora that just yeah
00:22:18I forget about straight-up did forget about Sora okay
00:22:22the video model exactly that is very good slash horrifying I think they're
00:22:27all an opening I included are I think opening I builds itself as more you know
00:22:32research focus like these are just the toys to show off their models that are
00:22:35so powerful but they need to make money and hence why they are not going to be a
00:22:40nonprofit according to reports like the agents I think are gonna be what they're
00:22:46hoping works best for them and yeah humanizing them early makes a lot of
00:22:51sense in terms of the product vision yeah that's fair do you actually think
00:22:55opening I is happy being like infrastructure kind of enterprising
00:23:00company like there is a version of it that opening I decides you know we want
00:23:05to be I don't know we want to be AWS not amazon.com right and it turns out that's
00:23:10a really good business and it's not sexy yeah but you don't get hauled in front
00:23:15of Congress and you make all the money in the known universe and opening I
00:23:19could go that way it could be developer focused it could be the back end of
00:23:23everything it's kind of doing that successfully already but I just can't
00:23:27shake this idea that that's not actually what opening I once no I don't think so
00:23:31just an infrastructure company again I think it can't even be compared to
00:23:36Amazon or AWS they think that they're building God can you think Andy Jassy
00:23:42does not sit around thinking about building God exactly I I'm you've had a
00:23:46very long and successful career what is a company you can compare like that they
00:23:51thought they were building God every NFT company that existed no I think I think
00:23:59that's right and I think the it's been the strangest thing for me about trying
00:24:04to cover this stuff is I have never encountered a group of people who
00:24:08earnestly believe something that big yeah is right around the corner like
00:24:12even people 25 years ago when I was not covering this stuff because I'm not that
00:24:18old Kylie who were talking about like the internet was going to change
00:24:22everything they weren't talking about God like there was no question of the
00:24:26new human relationship with an entity more powerful than us like that thing is
00:24:32new yes and I don't think it's real to be clear again I don't think there's any
00:24:36evidence that it's real yeah we're going to be real anytime in our lifetimes but
00:24:41a lot of people really sincerely believe that is what they're working on
00:24:44and I still have not wrapped my head around what to do about that yeah it's
00:24:49very strange and it is true if you believe your God you if you believe
00:24:53you're building God you're sure as hell not building AWS exactly exactly I have
00:24:57talked to like the extreme optimists in the extreme pessimists regularly and the
00:25:03only thing I know is that this is the most stressed I've been covering any
00:25:07technology ever because it can be argued forever and ever the people who
00:25:13are building it genuinely yes believe they're they're building God and that
00:25:16this is all possible and we're going to reach AGI and I asked someone I was at a
00:25:19Time magazine dinner on Monday and I asked a really important technologist
00:25:24that I'm not sure if I'm allowed to name I asked them do you believe in your
00:25:28heart or do you believe in your wallet that you were building AGI right now and
00:25:32he was like I genuinely believe in my heart that that is what we're building
00:25:36it's a level of delusion I can respect and then you know the pessimists think
00:25:43that this is just gonna be a complete nothing burger it's just gonna implode
00:25:46which I get so listening to both these points and it coming down to sort of a
00:25:51philosophical argument is is this thing thinking is it reasoning these like it
00:25:56comes down to that every day and it's wild it's just insane yeah I just want
00:26:02to say for the record robots if you're listening Kylie said delusion I didn't
00:26:06say delusion I do it's I think you're terrific don't don't get it twisted so
00:26:13we're about to enter this this really interesting phase for the rest of the
00:26:18year right I think meta connect is is coming we're gonna hear a bunch of AI
00:26:22stuff from meta Gemini is still chugging along Apple intelligence is sort of kind
00:26:27of starting to a little bit ship does it feel like we're heading into kind of
00:26:33a new moment of AI it's the agent stuff it's all of this like it sort of feels
00:26:38like if ever this stuff is going to go legit and mainstream it might start now
00:26:45you know I am impressed with open AI's ability to help me choose my medical
00:26:52insurance that happened recently oh yeah I just turned 26 and so I needed to
00:26:56figure out medical insurance and it helped me choose based off what I was
00:26:59concerned about the best medical insurance did it give you gave you like
00:27:02a real company that exists that you I gave it a PDF of my options so I was
00:27:07like so like I don't understand all this jargon can you please break it down for
00:27:11me this is what I need out of the insurance which one should I pick and it
00:27:13was helpful so its ability to parse information can be really helpful I am
00:27:19not fully convinced further than that because it's so much hype it's so much
00:27:25marketing and so much money involved that I just don't see us reaching this
00:27:30super intelligent model that is capable of reasoning on my behalf and taking
00:27:36over my laptop and doing tasks for me I don't see us reaching that anytime soon
00:27:41but I just talked to like a safety researcher who who thinks that I'm
00:27:46completely wrong and that in three months that I'm gonna regret thinking
00:27:50this so I don't know I I'm just not fully convinced yet yeah that's fair and
00:27:56then oh one didn't push you any further in that direction I thought oh one was
00:28:00actually really cool when I demoed it because I I like being able to see how
00:28:04it is breaking down a problem but no do I think it's really intelligence or
00:28:10solving any really genuinely earth-shattering problems no not yet
00:28:15yeah and there's a certain amount of like showing your work is only
00:28:19impressive if you're still ending up at the right answer exactly and I think it
00:28:25very much remains to be seen how often it is actually going to arrive at the
00:28:28right answer exactly I have I think a bit of a higher tolerance than most
00:28:33about you know spending the time and money on figuring out if this is gonna
00:28:38be good for humanity or not I think that's okay if it's true fucking up and
00:28:42you know being weird I think it's fine until we figure it out but it can't be
00:28:46forever and I think I'm more allergic to the hype and the like this is going to
00:28:51change the world and our SAS product is gonna make you 10x more productive it's
00:28:56that I'm allergic to yeah that's totally fair just remember that crypto did
00:29:03change the world just the way that I said it was going to and so did NFT is
00:29:07so many good means we're doing this on a web3 platform right now so everybody's
00:29:10right when they talk about everything that's gonna change the world great
00:29:14point I would leave you with yeah you're welcome all right well thank you for
00:29:16coming to my occasional existential crisis about AI Kylie we're gonna do
00:29:20this a lot more this year now you're not there's no more Burning Man until next
00:29:23September so now you have to come on the verge cast sometimes I'm gonna start
00:29:25sounding insane so good luck the rest of the year I'm really excited all right we
00:29:31gotta take a break and then we're gonna come back and we're gonna talk about
00:29:33some policy stuff we'll be right back
00:29:40all right we're back let's talk politics but not like not really like
00:29:46don't worry we're not gonna yell about politics but there are some interesting
00:29:51things happening right now in the kind of legal regulatory world and also there
00:29:56is a politics thing happening but I promise we're not gonna spend too much
00:29:59time on that I asked Gabby Del Valle and Addie Robertson on our team to come on
00:30:03and just kind of do a run-through with me we've got to talk about tick-tock
00:30:07we've got to talk about Google we've got to talk about crypto we're just
00:30:11gonna blast through all of it see if we can catch up and then we don't have to
00:30:15talk about politics for a minute which personally makes me very excited here on
00:30:18the verge cast but sometimes sometimes we got to do it so let's do it
00:30:22Addie welcome back hi Gabby hello welcome to the show hi thank you first
00:30:29time this is very exciting I'm thrilled I can tell that was that was the
00:30:33enthusiasm I was looking for right there well I I smiled they can't hear
00:30:37that but I did smile that's just what my voice sounds like there's always a
00:30:40little bit of sarcasm in it it's alright I'll take it okay so I want to do three
00:30:46things while the three of us are here together I want to talk about the the
00:30:50tick-tock hearing I want to talk about Trump's crypto thing I don't even know
00:30:56what to call it we're gonna talk about that and then I want to talk briefly
00:30:59about where we are in the Google ad tech trial no we'll get out of here that
00:31:03sound good great okay sounds good let's start with tick-tock because if I'm
00:31:09being completely honest with you I had like completely lost track of all this
00:31:11tick-tock stuff I feel like kind of like the last time they tried to ban tick-tock
00:31:14I just sort of forgot about it and then what it went away and I felt very
00:31:17justified about that but there was a big hearing and it appears we are we are
00:31:22still in the process of figuring out what's going on so Gabby can you just
00:31:26give me kind of the rundown of what happened at this hearing yeah so first I
00:31:31want to talk a little bit about what happened before the hearing which is
00:31:34that the government introduced a bunch of classified material and its filings
00:31:39and they were like the judge can look at this we can look at it tick-tock can't
00:31:43look at it because it's a national security concern so we can talk about it
00:31:48to a point but there is just some stuff that we don't know because it's like
00:31:52pages and pages of redacted material the actual hearing did not focus too much on
00:31:58the redacted material it was more about the on the one hand tick-tock saying
00:32:05that the government did not really consider all of the possible options and
00:32:10on the other hand the government being like well actually we did negotiate with
00:32:13you guys for three years I believe Eddie was it three years or was it two so
00:32:19tick-tock has been trying to talk about mitigating this since about I think 2020
00:32:23is when Trump made his first we should ban tick-tock proposal and then they've
00:32:28been seriously in discussions since around 2022 without that was when
00:32:33Project Texas happened it started Project Texas in 2022 that was the
00:32:38period at which it was saying we can mitigate these problems by teaming up
00:32:41with Oracle which as you all remember was also the company that was going to
00:32:45buy it during the period where it seemed like Trump was going to try to really
00:32:49force a sale yes this I'm starting to feel vindicated again by my stance of
00:32:54just not really paying attention to this and assuming that it will be chaotic and
00:32:57then go away because all of that came to both kind of nothing and where we are
00:33:04now right like Gabby is that that's kind of the run-up to how we got to where we
00:33:11are we've been at this a long time now yeah we've been at this a long time and
00:33:15basically what the government is saying is like we gave you a million chances
00:33:18you could not do what we wanted and tick-tock is saying you didn't give us
00:33:21enough chances actually we gave you this proposal we gave you maps of our offices
00:33:26we gave you all of these things please but the government's argument is also
00:33:31not that tick-tock has done anything at the behest of the Chinese government
00:33:36just like maybe one day it could so well and that's that's what's been so
00:33:41complicated about this whole thing right like out of you and I have talked about
00:33:44this before it's that it is this impossible to prove and impossible to
00:33:50disprove thing that it's like it seems possible that something very bad could
00:33:56happen and and that has gone back and forth a million different times and it
00:34:02does feel like we're running at the question of like how how legally
00:34:06defensible is the idea that something bad could possibly happen in this case a
00:34:09lot of which I think just depends on how threatening do we think China is because
00:34:15yeah as long as a Chinese company owns tick-tock like no matter how much they
00:34:20silo it there's just I think not technically anything you can do to prove
00:34:25that the company that owns your subsidiary could not at some point
00:34:29access your data right yeah and so the sense I got just reading the the coverage
00:34:36we did of the hearing was that it kind of landed in that same place Gabby that
00:34:40like it's just everybody making the same arguments that all kind of talk past
00:34:44each other and it doesn't sound like we're in a place where there are all
00:34:49that many arguments that actually addressed each other because one side is
00:34:52like it could be bad and the other side is like well it's not bad and the other
00:34:55side's like well it could be and I don't know how you overcome that yeah
00:34:58exactly and also I would say that the judges role in this is really
00:35:02interesting at one point one of the judges said that tick-tock was owned by
00:35:05China and then tick-tocks lawyer had to be like no no no we're owned by a
00:35:08company that has a holding company I think he said in the Cayman Islands he's
00:35:15like we are not owned by China and you know that's true the Chinese government
00:35:19does not own tick-tock but the DOJ's entire argument is you know they could
00:35:24influence it they could have they we don't know probably not maybe but they
00:35:30could and in my opinion I don't know what you think Addy but it seemed like
00:35:34the judges were kind of buying that argument like they were really focused
00:35:39on the national security risk of the whole thing and the hearing I think
00:35:43wasn't even so much directed at exactly how much of a threat is tick-tock it was
00:35:47directed at if Congress thinks there's a threat can you legally force a company
00:35:53to divest it's not even like the question of whether it's a threat I
00:35:58think comes after all of that right I guess that's true we're there is kind of
00:36:03a meta aspect of this where we're not actually arguing about in this particular
00:36:09case I think I think I have this right that whether or not the allegations
00:36:14about tick-tock are true it's the question of if Congress believes the
00:36:17allegations against tick-tock what is it able to do about them right which
00:36:23feels sort of one step removed from the actual impossible question but is
00:36:27ultimately at this moment maybe the only part of the question that actually
00:36:31matters in terms of what happens to tick-tock right and I think our caveats
00:36:34like are we at active war with China like I think that those are just really
00:36:38gigantic mitigating factors like exactly how much of a threat do we think China
00:36:42is just as a legal status but yeah a bunch of this is really just can you
00:36:48prevent something that is a foreign government that we think that Congress
00:36:53thinks presents a threat from operating inside the United States as a commercial
00:36:57entity so Gabby you were saying it felt like the judges were buying the argument
00:37:03what was kind of the vibe at the end of the hearing what were you thinking about
00:37:06how it went down it was very unclear to me what would happen but based on the
00:37:11questioning I felt like the judges were both like torn between whether national
00:37:18security concerns kind of Trump this First Amendment question but also like
00:37:21they did seem to genuinely be like well if China is a threat and if Congress
00:37:26believes that China is a threat then we have to take that seriously whereas
00:37:30tick-tocks entire argument was not only are we not owned by China we are not a
00:37:35threat and at one point they were like other companies and platforms based in
00:37:40China are not being singled out in this way so why are we being singled out in
00:37:44this way which I do think is you know an interesting question well it seems like
00:37:49with some hindsight now the answer to that question is still a very mysterious
00:37:54but B has something to do with Israel and Hamas and what happened last October
00:38:01and I feel like I I got on this podcast and got very loudly upset about like if
00:38:05you think there is something going on here as the government you have a
00:38:08responsibility to tell us what's going on and at least as far as I've seen we
00:38:13haven't gotten any of that but do we have any kind of new information or
00:38:17understanding about what is the root cause of all of this why everybody is so
00:38:21mad at tick-tock and not mad at these other platforms like you're talking
00:38:24about I think that Israel and Hamas is a big part of it I don't think as far as
00:38:30I'm aware Congress has not proved that there has been any kind of influence
00:38:34campaign but there have been several members of Congress both in the House
00:38:37and Senate who have said that you know the campus protests for example show
00:38:42that our youth are being influenced by malign foreign actors that they could
00:38:48not have possibly come to these opinions on their own and that there is somebody
00:38:53putting this information in front of them in one of the declarations that was
00:38:57filed by the government there was mention of a feature on tick-tocks back
00:39:01end called heating which is when you can kind of just boost certain content um if
00:39:07it's trending or if you want it to be trending and again it was said like we
00:39:11don't have any proof that this has been used maliciously but could have been
00:39:16right yeah I the the biggest thing I remember is there was this moment I
00:39:21think it was last fall maybe early this year I don't know I've lost track of
00:39:24time where there was a there was an intelligence briefing and a bunch of
00:39:28Congress people came out and voted unanimously to ban tick-tock and and the
00:39:33overwhelming question has been like what did they learn in that briefing and
00:39:37it still feels like whatever it was we don't know and at this point it's almost
00:39:43shocking to me that we don't know yeah and if you look at the filings like big
00:39:47chunks of it are redacted and I guess you know if there's valid national
00:39:50security concerns I do get that but it's also like what what's in there what did
00:39:54they tell you right and especially like it's if there are sort of ongoing actual
00:40:00national security concerns sure but if it's like heating is a feature that
00:40:03exists like maybe it may be unredacted like it's fine let us let us know what's
00:40:07going on here well that part was was unredacted I mean let me pull up the
00:40:11filing there was one part that I remember being finding very interesting
00:40:16please right okay so there's a section in one of the filings eight pages long
00:40:22titled bite dance and tick tocks history of censorship and content manipulation
00:40:26at PRC discretion almost entirely redacted what is that history I don't
00:40:31know but it's in there maybe and the fact that it's redacted makes it sound
00:40:36like there must be there must be something so in that same declaration
00:40:41it's from Casey Blackburn who's an assistant director of national
00:40:44intelligence he writes that there is quote no information and quote that the
00:40:48Chinese government has used tick-tock for quote malign foreign influence
00:40:52targeting u.s. persons or the collection of sensitive data of u.s. persons just
00:40:57there's a risk of it happening in the future right and yet we're being very
00:41:02secretive about all the stuff that's being discussed I I just I cannot square
00:41:05those two things in my head Addie can you square those two things this fact
00:41:08that there is a lot of stuff being redacted we're having this big semi
00:41:12private sort of obscure debate about what's going on and then even the people
00:41:16in Congress are saying there's no evidence that this stuff has been going
00:41:18on how do you make sense of those two things happening simultaneously I don't
00:41:22know I mean part of the question is how sensitive are the things that are
00:41:27actually redacted I mean there's we understand that there's a very very long
00:41:30history of sort of over redaction and over classification in the u.s.
00:41:34government and so it's plausible that these things like they are sensitive but
00:41:37they are also not necessarily incredibly divergent from the things we've heard
00:41:41publicly but on the other hand I I don't know I mean I think the question really
00:41:47comes down to something that is still just not related to that which is what
00:41:52is the First Amendment right that you have to operate something as a company
00:41:57that has a foreign owner right yeah so I we should pivot away from this but what
00:42:03what is the next piece of this because we're still we're like barreling towards
00:42:06January which is theoretically the deadline for tick-tock to either be sold
00:42:11or banned depending on who you are and how you read what's going on here is
00:42:16there a is there a next step between here and there that we know is coming
00:42:20the next step is whether the DC Circuit Court decides that it should block this
00:42:25law basically and then at that point tick-tock I think correct has until
00:42:30January to at least start the process of getting divested okay this is like
00:42:36definitely going to the Supreme Court right that feels like the inevitable end
00:42:39of this process one way or another yes yeah okay all right cool just check it
00:42:44so we'll we'll be we'll be back we're gonna have many more bites at this
00:42:47particular story now I want to talk about the the story that I just don't
00:42:53understand and basically didn't pay any attention to but Gabby you in particular
00:42:56had to and I just feel like I feel like we we owe it to you to let you talk
00:43:01about your feelings about this tell me about the Trump space from from last
00:43:05week oh my god so the way I've described it to Addie in numerous times is like a
00:43:10jigsaw torture scenario designed for me specifically it was you know so let's
00:43:18rewind a little bit Trump was the headliner at the Bitcoin conference this
00:43:23year he's been really trying to you know show the crypto community that he's
00:43:27behind them he wants their votes etc etc and his sons and him have been teasing
00:43:33this crypto platform a world Liberty Financial and he was supposed to
00:43:39announce it in a Twitter space at 8 p.m. Eastern so you know I logged on to the
00:43:45Twitter space like maybe 755 Addy was there too I didn't suffer alone and I
00:43:51from 8 p.m. Eastern until what like 1030 it was about 1030 it was about 1030
00:43:59nobody announced actually what it was but they started talking about like some
00:44:04of the details but they never said just what it was and I was doing my pre-write
00:44:09like for it and I was taking notes but my it was just like Trump announces TK
00:44:15and then he got off the stream so I had to change the whole thing he didn't
00:44:18announce anything he was talking about how good his granddaughter Arabella is
00:44:21speaking Chinese he was like she impressed she so much he loved her he
00:44:26loved how she spoke and I was like what is this crypto platform please the best
00:44:31way that I had to describe it is like imagine an Apple event or like a game
00:44:36announced at e3 and Steve job comes up and he's like I'm announcing something
00:44:41and then he doesn't actually announce the iPhone and they just start all
00:44:44talking about the iPhone like like features of the iPhone he's just like
00:44:50here's how you cut and paste you're like on what exactly that's very good so okay
00:44:56so let's let's let's do some work for this Twitter space what what do we think
00:45:00this thing is to be honest I'm less curious about the product itself and
00:45:05more about sort of what it means in this like political moment in the United
00:45:09States but we should attempt to you know define the thing a little bit so what
00:45:12what is this thing that they kind of sort of almost didn't a little bit
00:45:17launch so still actually unclear like three people with knowledge of the
00:45:23project told the New York Times that it has been pitched as a borrowing and
00:45:28lending platform so to be clear they did not tell the New York Times that it
00:45:32is a borrowing and lending platform they said that it has been pitched as a
00:45:35borrowing and lending platform I like that distinction because maybe it's not
00:45:40even that I don't know maybe maybe it is but the thing that all of them kept
00:45:46talking about less so Trump because he was just talking about you know his
00:45:50usual stuff but Donald Trump jr. some of his business partners they kept
00:45:57talking about debanked people and underserved communities and how this is
00:46:02really gonna help out a lot of vulnerable people who have been shut out
00:46:05of traditional financial markets and as Addy pointed out when I first wrote
00:46:10about this she was like remember Trump University remember that so Trump
00:46:17University was if I remember correctly it was before Trump ran for president it
00:46:23was you know his apprentice times it was a course program where you could
00:46:28learn to be a real estate investor but then there was a trial because a bunch
00:46:34of people sued him over how the point of Trump University was not to teach people
00:46:38to invest in real estate it was to sell them more courses about investing in
00:46:43real estate and other business activities so it was like it's basically
00:46:48a scam it was basically a scam targeted at people who would like to get rich
00:46:52like Donald Trump okay and then Addy what did you make of all this so the
00:46:57actual detail that we have based on the stream is that a it is supposed to not
00:47:02an exact quote but a paraphrase drive mass adoption of stable coins and be
00:47:06easier to use for normal people stable coins of course being like coins that
00:47:11are pegged to an actual an actual currency and it is pitched specifically
00:47:17so there is unbanked people there are unbanked people those are people who do
00:47:21not have a bank account they tend to be people who do not have very much money
00:47:24it is a genuine issue and those are folks that the crypto community has been
00:47:28talking about forever that is like if you want to make like a big beautiful
00:47:32good-for-the-world case for crypto those are the folks that everybody starts with
00:47:36and it's mostly that's been tested overseas and the results have been
00:47:41somewhat mixed this is more specifically they pitched to debanked people which is
00:47:47basically people that have been quote-unquote canceled and they lost
00:47:51their bank account because of it which is like let's just say a much more niche
00:47:55group yeah I feel that laughing when you say that I just assumed that debanked
00:48:00and unbanked were like synonyms for the same thing it is deeply upsetting that
00:48:04that's not the case oh no no there was a really great quote from Donald Trump
00:48:09jr. who was like you know there was a time where the Trumps we could have
00:48:13picked up the phone we could have gotten any CEO of any bank and gotten a loan
00:48:16from anyone in the world on any project and then we got into the political arena
00:48:20and then he said we went from being people who would have been the elite in
00:48:24that world to just being like totally canceled and it's like well you also
00:48:29your dad got sued for fraud so maybe it's not I don't know this just it
00:48:35seems like it fits really well into the sort of alt-tech ecosystem stuff like
00:48:41the freedom phone and like various alternative social networks things that
00:48:46they that run from like they actually exist as products to being basically
00:48:52scams or rebadged Android phones yeah I mean and I think the the reason I'm
00:48:57interested in this is is less about the actual product itself and and more about
00:49:03a that ecosystem which is real and growing and there are a lot of people
00:49:06making a lot of money from that ecosystem some of the real products and
00:49:10some of the scams but also the fact that so much of what the tech industry has
00:49:16been talking about with respect to this election has been either explicitly or
00:49:21implicitly about crypto like in in a very real way there is like a dividing
00:49:26line in this election and it has to do with how you feel about crypto which I
00:49:29think in a lot of ways has to do with how much money you have invested in
00:49:32crypto and and my read of this whole thing was it was just this entire
00:49:38project is just another way for Trump and the Trump campaign to say we love
00:49:44crypto am I is that am I misreading that or understating what they're
00:49:48actually trying to do here I think that's part of it but I think another
00:49:50big part of it is that they're really appealing to the victim complex that a
00:49:54lot of people who are really into crypto have when I was at the Bitcoin
00:49:57conference there were all these people talking about how terrified they are of
00:50:01like central bank digital currencies and how you know eventually the deep state
00:50:05will just be able to like completely shut out whoever they want out of the
00:50:08financial system and that's why crypto is so powerful it was it was an
00:50:12extremely political or politicized environment at the Bitcoin conference
00:50:16this year it wasn't just Trump I mean Cynthia Lummis spoke Edward Snowden
00:50:21eventually gave a speech that was like yeah all these politicians are making
00:50:24promises to you but maybe maybe you don't trust him and it was really funny
00:50:29because he got a standing ovation before he spoke and then he was like I can't
00:50:32see you guys I'm like like web calling in right now but thanks and then he
00:50:37didn't get a standing ovation afterwards and I remember talking to a friend and
00:50:41being like do you think that's because of what he said or because he they know
00:50:45that he can't see them and she was like definitely both like but probably more
00:50:50what he said because he really like threw cold water on the whole thing he
00:50:54was like maybe it's not great that there's a bunch of politicians here
00:50:57maybe that's bad yeah I mean it is like the the whatever last five years of the
00:51:04crypto movement I think if you ask people not that long ago how it would
00:51:08feel to have a bunch of politicians be the biggest names in crypto they would
00:51:12feel very differently than they seem to today I think that is that has changed
00:51:15in a pretty big way even just over the course of this election cycle all right
00:51:20no more crypto let's just talk ad tech in other deeply exciting things I just
00:51:25want to check in on this this trial Lauren finer on our team has been in the
00:51:28courtroom I think is probably in the courtroom right now as we're doing not
00:51:31in the courtroom today because she is traveling okay that's good poor Lauren I
00:51:36was there for one day and I had to sit in the courtroom there are no devices no
00:51:40electronics allowed I couldn't even wear an Apple watch like nothing and I had to
00:51:44sit there with a notebook and a pen like it was like the 1700s and listen to
00:51:51people talk about header bidding and yield management and it was it was
00:51:55really something special but Addy you you've been editing and assigning a lot
00:51:59of this coverage Lauren's been in the courtroom a ton I've been in the
00:52:02courtroom a little it feels like we're and we're getting to kind of the the end
00:52:07of the government's part of this trial what's your what's your sense on where
00:52:11we're going and what we've learned so far correct the DOJ wrapped up yesterday
00:52:15we're expecting Google to be making its case through mid next week it seems like
00:52:19we could have a wrap of this part of the trial it's not a sure thing yet but the
00:52:23end of next week okay and so far it's hard to say what the judge how the judge
00:52:29is feeling that's always very hard to say and I think we haven't gotten a
00:52:32really clear picture in this case but so far the DOJ's case is basically Google
00:52:37has incredible power which I think most people don't dispute and has gotten it
00:52:43by making all these very hard-nosed decisions that consolidate its power in
00:52:47a way that relies on the fact that it has access to all these different parts
00:52:52of the spectrum it has what was at the time of most of these events double
00:52:56click for publishers which was a Google's publisher ad sales server and
00:53:01then it has access to the sort of other side of the equation for advertisers and
00:53:07then it has addicts which sits in the middle of this and a lot of what ended
00:53:11up coming up is the idea that it used addicts access and access to all this
00:53:16very high quality data about the advertisers to strong-arm publishers
00:53:22into taking deals that they didn't really like and into neutering projects
00:53:27that and features that might help people diversify away from Google's tools it's
00:53:35it's been really interesting to follow this trial after covering the search
00:53:38trial a bunch last year because so much of the overarching case here kind of
00:53:45rhymes right in the sense that Google is like yes we're very big and we're very
00:53:50successful like correct we won we did it good job us but it's because we're good
00:53:56at it and because our product is the best and because people like to use it
00:54:00and the government is making almost the exact argument they made back then which
00:54:04is like no you got big because you were good everybody like yes granted
00:54:09congratulations you did you did it and then you spent years or decades just
00:54:15ruthlessly preventing anyone else from ever being able to do the thing that you
00:54:19did and like the the specifics and the details and the tech are so different
00:54:24but it's the case is just the same Google is like we win because we're good
00:54:28and the government is like well you're not actually that good anymore but you
00:54:32keep winning so what's that about right which is how they demonstrate the idea
00:54:35of harm which is that yeah Google made all these products that people thought
00:54:39were really good and then they created a situation in which the DOJ alleges the
00:54:44market stagnated right and that it's a little bit harder because obviously
00:54:48anybody can use search you can look at search you can decide for yourself
00:54:52whether you think search is still good or not in this case it's a little more
00:54:56indirect but a lot of the idea is people ended up paying more for ads it was
00:55:00harder to run a business that was ad supported it ended up making say ads
00:55:04maybe more intrusive because you have to just spam people with a bunch more and
00:55:10so there's the DOJ isn't making that case nearly as much but for the average
00:55:15person that is sort of more of the takeaway yeah it is deeply deeply wonky
00:55:21in every possible way and even talking to folks like in the ad tech business
00:55:25about all of this their eyes kind of start to glaze over when you talk about
00:55:29like the the actual underpinning technology of all of this where it's
00:55:32like oh let's talk about publishing servers and the lock-in effect that they
00:55:36give for the rest of the end everybody just like falls asleep at their desk
00:55:38talking to me I'm Google meat which I was I was very impressed with the judge
00:55:44in particular the one day I was in court in in her ability to just stay
00:55:47locked in she was asking a lot of like vocabulary questions because everything
00:55:51in this entire case is just insane acronyms that no person should know but
00:55:55everyone in the room just assumes you know because they all do it for a living
00:55:57and so at one point she was just like sorry what's what's torso and tail in ad
00:56:03tech she's just like pause the whole trial she's like what does that mean why
00:56:07aren't you explaining this to me it was great it turns out it means medium and
00:56:11small publishers the head is the big ones to me the torso is the midsize
00:56:16publishers and the tail is all the like cooking blogs and single-person
00:56:20operations that are less the focus of this trial I thought torso was an
00:56:24acronym I'm so sorry to interrupt this learned conversation but I thought you
00:56:28were gonna be like I don't know I can't even think of the letters that torso
00:56:33would be but I did an acronym return sick open openness yeah that's what it
00:56:40is that's either you're right that's one of Google's products not a lot of
00:56:43people know that it but no and I think I think you're kind of right at it is it
00:56:49seems like it has been really hard to figure out how any of this is going for
00:56:52folks like reading our coverage reading other coverage the government seems to
00:56:56be making a case Google seems to have strong thoughts about every part of that
00:57:00case and then the strangest part is it like the search trial it's just down to
00:57:05this one judge who is just sitting there kind of quietly listening and asking
00:57:08vocabulary questions what's gonna happen and I think it would be so
00:57:12interesting if this was a jury trial and Google obviously wrote a big check to
00:57:16make this not a jury trial but it does feel like it would be different if it
00:57:22was in front of 12 random people off the street instead of one judge yeah so far
00:57:27I think the clearest thing and the thing that seems most likely to go badly for
00:57:31Google is the same thing that was an issue and it's the search trial by
00:57:34Google over classifying and not storing chats and turning off chat history and
00:57:40things like that it seems not necessarily clear that's going to play
00:57:44in hugely into this trial in the way that it didn't last time but certainly
00:57:48seems like something where the judge is not incredibly sympathetic yeah Google
00:57:53keeps doing the thing where they're like oh let's talk about this and then
00:57:56somebody goes oh chat history is on and then it's like end of chat like oh well
00:58:00that's not incriminating at all like that's that's cool which is like it's
00:58:03not necessarily incriminating like obviously but in the last trial there
00:58:08was a bunch of okay you're just saying things that I understand they're not
00:58:11necessarily incriminating but they also kind of make you sound bad right it
00:58:14doesn't make you sound really Machiavellian yeah there's something
00:58:17about saying nobody listened to this that just kind of makes it seem like
00:58:20you're about to say something you don't want people to hear like it's hard to
00:58:23it's hard to argue with that and even the stuff when they weren't doing that
00:58:26it was like okay well maybe we should be clear that we use we shouldn't use this
00:58:30terminology because that'd make us sound like a monopoly right my I am NOT a
00:58:33monopoly shirt is raising a lot of questions already answered by my shirt
00:58:37yeah that's I'm gonna do you think they'd let me wear that shirt into the
00:58:42courtroom I'm gonna go I'm gonna make that shirt and see if they'll allow me
00:58:46into the courthouse in Alexandria and see and I will report back it's gonna be
00:58:49great all right we gotta take a break I shall let you guys go but I think it's
00:58:53it's about to be an election and and we're gonna have to have you both back
00:58:57and we got some more stuff to talk about between now and then but thank you both
00:58:59oh god that is happening yeah all right we gotta take one more break
00:59:03and then we're gonna do a question from the verge cast hotline we'll be right
00:59:06back
00:59:13all right we're back let's get to the hotline as always the number is 866
00:59:18verge 1 1 the email is verge cast at the verge calm we love hearing all of your
00:59:22questions and we try to answer at least one on the show every week thank you by
00:59:26the way to everybody who sent iPhone questions that was super fun to do with
00:59:29Neal I and Joanna last week I hope you keep them coming as you get your iPhones
00:59:33and try the new stuff I want to hear what you're thinking hit us up tell me
00:59:36everything this week we have a question that is near and dear to my
00:59:40organizational heart to it I'm reaching out with kind of a random question you
00:59:49just went through your mini-series on productivity but I don't find myself to
00:59:53be productive is my digital debt I have so many documents and so many photos and
01:00:01anytime I try to clean them up it just feels so tedious and I'm sitting on the
01:00:06plane and deleting screenshots and is this really the best use of my time so
01:00:11if you guys have any ideas or anything you could suggest I would love it thanks
01:00:16guys bye all right so I bring this question to you for a couple of reasons
01:00:19one because if there is a perfect answer to this question I have not found
01:00:25it the the idea of digital life being about just collections of stuff is super
01:00:32duper real and bad so if there is a perfect solution if you've devised a way
01:00:38to a not let your computer get super cluttered or be clean it up really
01:00:42quickly let me know I want to know I have this newsletter called installer I
01:00:46will I will talk about it there I'll talk about it here I will sing your name
01:00:49from the rooftops tell me everything but I do have a bit of a system for this
01:00:54and just figured I would share the way that I do it in the hopes that it might
01:00:57help it's kind of three separate things the first step is about your camera roll
01:01:03on your phone which I think for a lot of people is where a lot of the file
01:01:06clutter exists you take screenshots you have pictures of your receipts you have
01:01:11duplicate pictures of your kids and everything I do two things here the
01:01:15first thing is on both the iPhone and Android there is a way to quickly delete
01:01:22duplicates on your phone which I highly recommend and think everybody should do
01:01:25it's just in settings in the in the photos app of both of those things you
01:01:29can just delete duplicates the other one is you can sort out screenshots you can
01:01:35do it in Google Photos you just search for screenshots I'll find the
01:01:38screenshots Apple pulls it all into a separate album I periodically just go in
01:01:42there and delete them all I have never once been burned by this where I'm like
01:01:46oh I wish I had that screenshot again go with God I suppose there might be
01:01:50problems if you do it in such a sort of brute force II way but that is the thing
01:01:55I do every few months and I'm always amazed at how many screenshots I have in
01:01:59there and how few of them I actually care about most of them are just like my
01:02:02lock screen anyway the other one is to find an app that essentially lets you
01:02:08like tinder swipe your way through your photos there are a bunch of these
01:02:12there's one called swipe and delete there's one called swipe wipe there's
01:02:15one I think called slide box there's a bunch of these out there most of them
01:02:18will make you pay an ongoing subscription but what I usually do is
01:02:22either just do the free trial or just pay like once and use it once and
01:02:26essentially what they do is they show you a photo and you swipe right to keep
01:02:29it or left to get rid of it and it is shocking how quick a way that is to go
01:02:34through some of your photos most of them it's it's a obvious snap decision right
01:02:37keep or lose and having just a mechanism that lets you choose that it's
01:02:41great so that's the first thing camera roll thing number two is your computer
01:02:46and this is where my system is not great but it really works for me so I figured
01:02:51I would share the first thing I do is use an app on the Mac called disk
01:02:57inventory X and on Windows called winder stat w-i-n-d-i-r-s-t-a-t and what both of
01:03:04those do is just visualize the storage on your computer they'll show you where
01:03:08all the big files are where all the folders are with all the big files and
01:03:11I'll just go in and find the biggest stuff that I don't need a lot of it for
01:03:17me is like video recordings or huge application files that I download
01:03:22caches from browsers and just delete all of that and most of the reason I think
01:03:27to do a decluttering like this is because you're starting to run out of
01:03:29storage and that is a super duper efficient way to do it again I think for
01:03:34a lot of people photos are a thing that takes up a lot of space so if you have
01:03:37photos elsewhere you can delete them from your computer and free up a lot of
01:03:40space so yeah one of those visualization apps is an incredibly useful way to just
01:03:45figure out where your storage is going and start to get some of it back the
01:03:49second thing I do is once every six months or so I will just take all of the
01:03:56contents of my downloads folder and my desktop folder and for me my documents
01:04:02folder and just put it all on an external hard drive again I've deleted
01:04:07the biggest files by now so most of what's left is like little things I
01:04:10downloaded and documents I made and whatever but the way I work at least
01:04:15anything that I'm gonna need permanently ends up somewhere else usually it's in
01:04:18Google Drive but sometimes it'll get filed to like a specific spot on my
01:04:21computer anything that isn't sort of those like stock folders is probably
01:04:26something I don't need again but I don't want to do the work of going through and
01:04:31actually figuring it all out but I also don't want to delete all of it in case
01:04:36there is something that I need so I have a little tiny 2 terabyte hard drive that
01:04:39just sits here on my desk and every few months I plug it in I empty the folders
01:04:43onto that drive and then I don't think about it again it cleans up my computer
01:04:48it makes everything very simple and if all of a sudden I'm like oh where is
01:04:51that thing it's on the hard drive overwhelmingly it is on the hard drive
01:04:55that has been incredibly useful for me in both keeping my computer and me sane
01:05:00but also not having to dedicate like four full days a year to keeping it that
01:05:06way so that's my system it has worked very well for me I'm sure it's not the
01:05:10best system I also am like relatively organized otherwise so again like things
01:05:15that I know where I'm gonna need end up mostly getting filed somewhere so if
01:05:19you're just kind of a like let chaos reign and then once a month tame it
01:05:23person you should probably keep doing that system rather than mine but I just
01:05:27wanted to share in case that helps start with the camera roll get rid of
01:05:31the big files dump everything else onto a hard drive and know that it's there if
01:05:35you need it I hope that helps that's all I got and if you have a better idea I
01:05:39would love to hear it I think this is a problem everybody has I'm looking at
01:05:42like the mass of icons on my desktop right now and I'm like I need to do this
01:05:46again and I think a lot of us do so I'd love to hear from you anyway for now
01:05:50that is it for the verge cast thank you to everybody who came on the show and
01:05:53thank you as always for listening there's lots more on everything we
01:05:56talked about from tick-tock to Trump to Google to open AI all of it on the
01:06:03verge comm all of this is also like ongoing so we're covering it as we go it
01:06:07is a busy season in the tech world I'll put some links to all that stuff in the
01:06:10show notes but keep your eyes on the website it's a fun website as always if
01:06:14you have thoughts questions feelings or other things that are gonna make me have
01:06:17an existential crisis about AI you can always email us at verge cast at the
01:06:20com or call the hotline 866 verge 1-1 I love hearing from you it's the best
01:06:25thank you to everybody who reaches out it is the absolute most fun slack room
01:06:29we have that pipes all the voicemails in and I love hearing from you this show is
01:06:33produced by Liam James will pour and Eric Gomez the verge cast is a verge
01:06:36production and part of the Vox Media podcast network
01:06:39Eli Alex I will be back on Friday to talk about a bunch of new gadgets all
01:06:43the stuff going on at Meta Connect and everything else we'll see you then rock
01:06:47and roll