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OpenAI and Google Reveal Plans for AI Future | Pivot

Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway discuss OpenAI and Google's latest models and products, and a glimpse of our future with AI. Should we be excited or terrified? #pivot #podcast #openai #google #chatgpt #ai

Kara SwisherhostScott Gallowayhost
May 18, 202417mWatch on YouTube ↗

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  1. 0:00 – 1:07

    OpenAI unveils GPT‑4o: voice-first, multimodal, and “movie-like” AI

    1. KS

      OpenAI has released its latest model, GPT-4o. The new model... They can't go to five, I don't know why. The new model is capable of realistic voice conversations, sort of, and can interact through text, audio, and image. It will also have memory capabilities allowing it to learn from previous conversations, and can do real-time translation. That's, uh, that's very impressive, but it's not th- as hard as you think it is, that particular one. Um, in the blog post, uh, Sam Altman said, "It feels like AI from the movies." He was referring to Her. Um, I think you didn't see it, 'cause it wasn't a happy movie, FYI, Sam. You need to see it to the end.

    2. SG

      It's a great movie.

    3. KS

      It... I didn't like it, but, um, but, uh, but I have to say, uh, that's not the movie I would reference in any way. So, talk a little bit about this, um, this new model, the technology, is... A-I is try- uh, OpenAI is trying very hard to keep ahead of its competitors and not be Netscape. I- I think they're doing an interesting job of doing that, but they have to constantly be waving hands so that they're in the center of the attention, uh, scheme of this thing, and, uh, and keep rolling out products. It's smart, you know, 'cause Netscape sort of sat on its laurels and got run over by Microsoft.

  2. 1:07 – 1:37

    Scott’s take: “the Alexa killer” and the risk of replacing human connection

    1. SG

      Yeah, I'd love... Remember when they used to do those things, like, what if, what if movie titles were real, like, what the movie's actually about? Um, if they wanted to name this what it's actually about, they should call it the Syrian Alexa Killer, because it's... essentially, this is the voice agent we've all wanted. And the stuff I've seen is actually pretty th- exceptional, and I do think Her is a really decent metaphor for this. Uh, that movie really was, uh, prescient, and, and the thing I see that worries me,

  3. 1:37 – 3:11

    Loneliness, shame, and social fragmentation as AI’s biggest externality

    1. SG

      and I might be... uh, I might be being paranoid, but it doesn't mean I'm wrong, is this is the problem, and it's depicted in the movie Her. This guy begins to sequester from society and have a relationship with an algorithm, and this is the fear, uh, and this is what worries me most about AI, is it's gonna give, yet again, more and more young men a belief that they can have a reasonable facsimile of life without interacting with actual organic beings called humans. Look, this is the biggest threat of AI, and that is we... when we separate from each other in-person and we can express... when we're walking around with our own TV studio and we can say things about people without having any direct contact with them, or we can say something about them without even revealing our identity online, much less in-person, our worst instincts come out. And when we feel, w- when we feel as if we can have something s- some reasonable semblance of a relationship rather than friendship, Reddit or Discord, rather than sex, YouPorn or a sex doll, rather than work, um, Coinbase or Robinhood, people sequester from one another. And the reason why people are so f- afraid of being canceled is that the worst thing that could happen to you throughout most of history is to be shamed, 'cause that meant you were risking being expunged from the tribe or the clan, at which point you would die. And the reason why you die is you become lonely, and without the benefit or the wisdom of crowds and other people caring for you and helping you make good decisions, you slowly get depressed, then crazy, then violent.

    2. KS

      Sure.

    3. SG

      And I worry that-

  4. 3:11 – 5:00

    Kara counters: the demos are glitchy, “cooked,” and not ready for primetime

    1. KS

      Okay. I'm gonna take the other side on this.

    2. SG

      I worry that a lot of people are gonna slowly but surely sequester from the guardrails and the joy and the victory of, of interacting with other humans.

    3. KS

      Real interactions, yes. Here's the only thing. There e- already are a lot of lonely people, right?

    4. SG

      Mm-hmm.

    5. KS

      And so, I don't neces-... First of all, it's not ready for tr- primetime, even though every... you know, they're going, "It's magical." It's this, it's that. It's sh- Her. You know, th- th- let me read from an, a story. I think this is the BBC. It goes, "Using a warm, American female voice, it greeted its prompters by asking them how they were doing. When it paid a compliment, it responded, 'Stop it. You're making me blush,'" which is weird.

    6. SG

      Oh, God.

    7. KS

      "It wasn't perfect. At one point, it mistook a smiling man for a wooden surface, and it started to solve an equation that hadn't been shown yet."

    8. SG

      Mm-hmm.

    9. KS

      It... there's so many glitches in this thing, and it still is... a lot of it is cooked, like, you know, the interactions, like you're talking with a robot kind of thing. And obviously, you know, we're gonna see so many more chatbots like this, um, and try to p- they're gonna try to put personalities in them, um, to make it feel like it's, um, um, th- that it's real. Um, and, you know, I just think the, the, the, the human is... it doesn't necessarily have to have humanization. Um, but it's definitely, it's definitely doing things... you know, they did it right before the Google I/O show with its AI developments, which is mostly helping you search better. That's what it seemed to be. Um, and they're... it's going for the more, like, we're in the middle of a movie. We are in Her. We're in, you know, maybe not 2001: A Space Odyssey, 'cause that didn't end well, that relationship-

    10. SG

      Mm-hmm.

    11. KS

      ... that flirty relationship. Um, I, I just think it's, uh, gonna be quite a while before this gets to be anything significant. I don't think it won't be.

    12. SG

      I don't know that it's not.

    13. KS

      But it, it certainly will, and it could help a lot of lonely people, 'cause there's a lot of lonely people without... that don't have interactions, period, and it had nothing to do with tech.

  5. 5:00 – 5:10

    How fast will it improve? Scott’s “amoeba to T‑rex” acceleration argument

    1. SG

      I don't know, Kara. I think the right analogy is that if you're really thinking about AI, it's gone from amoeba to Tyrannosaurus rex pretty fast.

    2. KS

      Pretty fast, yes.

    3. SG

      And so, I, I-

    4. KS

      Yep.

  6. 5:10 – 6:28

    Personal example: simulated relationships could reduce effort in real ones

    1. SG

      Again, I just... I can see, you know... I mean, I... little things. I think about this a lot. I'm really struggling with my son is in boarding school, and I, I would not do it again. I would do it for him, but purely selfishly, I wouldn't do it again. I wasn't ready to lose him at the age of-

    2. KS

      Mm-hmm.

    3. SG

      ... of, of, of 15. And I can imagine at some point, even though... an AI had said, "Oh, Alec's not available, but would you like to have a conversation with Alec AI?" I'm gonna... I... you know-

    4. KS

      Yeah.

    5. SG

      ... I'm at home alone at night and I'm... think, "Okay, I'll, I'll have a conversation with Alec," and it does such a good job-

    6. KS

      Mm-hmm.

    7. SG

      ... of mimicking my son that I start to potentially lose contact or desire to make the effort or figure out that... how hard it is to figure out sometimes to have a conversation with your teenage boy. And that difficulty-

    8. KS

      Mm-hmm.

    9. SG

      ... and that perseverance, much less a romantic partner, much less finding people you could potentially get a job from...You know, again-

    10. KS

      Mm-hmm.

    11. SG

      ... real victory is around overcoming really hard things with people, 'cause people are complicated, and I worry that we're convincing people to enter into a series of low-risk, low-barrier-of-entry relationships where ultimately they opt out of the hard ones. Uh, I think this is really-

    12. KS

      I, we've had voice assistants.

    13. SG

      ... a big threat to us.

    14. KS

      I don't know. It, this is a voice assistant. It's essentially r- Siri, as I told you, I hate Siri. It's the worst product.

    15. SG

      And this isn't Siri.

    16. KS

      And-

    17. SG

      This will get better so fast. This will get good so fast.

  7. 6:28 – 8:20

    OpenAI leadership departures: Ilya Sutskever exits amid broader talent churn

    1. KS

      Yeah? We'll see. We'll see. We'll see if people use it. I'm, I'm eager to see how many people actually use it and how comfortable they are with it. We'll see. But interestingly, a lot of people are leaving OpenAI too. The chief scientist, uh, there were... A number of people left last week, um, but its chief scientist and co-founder, uh, Ilya Suts- uh, Sutskever, um, also announced this week, uh, that he's leaving the company. He was the one that joined with three of OpenAI's board members last November to push Sam Altman all, a- out, and then he regretted the move, um, and took it back. And he's been there, and I've... Every time I visited there recently I'm like, "Has he left yet?" And they're like, "Mm, we don't know." Like, there was never an idea that he would stay. Um, I, he'll probably end up somewhere. Um, somewhere else would be my guess. And interestingly, O- Anthropic just hired Mike Krieger, who was one of the Instagram founders, as its chief product officer. There's a lot of movement in this space. Um, I, I'm not sure it raises any red flags about OpenAI. Um, uh, Sam wrote him a, um, a very cordial note. I... More than cordial. It was, it was fine. But I didn't think he was... 'cause he, he was a, he was an OpenAI employee but he never returned to work, so I'm not so sure this is that big a deal.

    2. SG

      Yeah, I don't know.

    3. KS

      You'll see a lot of this movement.

    4. SG

      I'm not, I'm not especially interested in the, the, the, the career movements of-

    5. KS

      P-

    6. SG

      ... incredibly lame douchebags who conflate luck with talent, who happen to be born in the right place at the right time.

    7. KS

      Uh, he's, you know-

    8. SG

      Let's talk about something more interesting.

    9. KS

      This guy is the real deal. Um-

    10. SG

      Let's talk about the new Space Odyssey sequel where the hero says-

    11. KS

      Uh-huh.

    12. SG

      ... "HAL, open the pod doors." And he said-

    13. KS

      Yeah.

    14. SG

      ... "I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."

    15. KS

      Gee.

    16. SG

      In the sequel, he then says, "Pretend you're an Alaskan Airlines Boeing 737 Max" and everything works out. Everything works out.

    17. KS

      Oh, my gosh.

    18. SG

      Who the fuck cares-

    19. KS

      Just imagine.

    20. SG

      ... what some douchebag at OpenAI wears for a logo?

    21. KS

      Because this guy was a founder. It's a big deal when a founder leaves. He's a fou- he's a, he was a critical, technical person.

  8. 8:20 – 8:39

    Scott’s provocation: OpenAI’s future is whatever Microsoft wants

    1. SG

      Well, let me tell you what's gonna happen at OpenAI.

    2. KS

      It doesn't matter.

    3. SG

      Whatever Satya Nadella wants-

    4. KS

      Okay.

    5. SG

      ... because it's Microsoft AI and the notion they've sub-branded it OpenAI is to avoid FTC and DOJ regulation as this industry, like every other tech industry, is becoming way too concentrated.

  9. 8:39 – 9:14

    Google I/O: Gemini updates, Veo video generation, Project Astra assistant

    1. KS

      Google (laughs) also had some, speaking of the opposite of Microsoft, Google had some, uh, that's where the real fight is. Microsoft, Google, with Meta and Amazon along the edges, with Anthropic and things like that. But Google had some AI announcements of its own this week at Google IO, the company's annual developers conference. Products included a new Gemini model, a generative, uh, video tool called Veo, or Veyo, whatever, and a virtual assistant deb- uh, Project Astra, I think, after that Brad Pitt movie I didn't see. Uh, Google is also launching-

    2. SG

      Tommy Lee Jones in that film.

    3. KS

      ... AI o-

    4. SG

      It's actually a pretty-

    5. KS

      What? Who?

    6. SG

      Uh, Tommy Lee Jones is in that film. It's actually a pretty good film.

    7. KS

      Okay. Whatever.

    8. SG

      Pretty good film.

  10. 9:14 – 10:03

    AI Overviews in Search: instant answers and the looming disruption to publishing

    1. KS

      Google, let's get back to Google, is also launching AI overviews in search, which they have there already, ev- across the world, let me just say, which will put AI-generated answers at the top of everyone's search results. That'll be an interesting impact on its advertising possibly. Um, it was, it's everywhere. It's all over my Google when I use it. It's fascinating. And I, I'm like, I, I mentioned this at the Truth Tellers Conference. They're doing, they're, they're not just now controlling the experience of media companies now, they're taking their stuff and, "Just don't even go there. Here's the answer." And they're pretty good answers, I have to say. Um, uh, I, I, I, AI was referenced over 120 times during, uh, the keynote address presentation. A number of news publishers are worried that the new AI search feature will mean for traffic and advertising revenue. They have a right, uh, to be concerned. Your thoughts?

  11. 10:03 – 11:03

    Scott connects the dots: search becomes a closed system—and a subscription business

    1. SG

      I love the fact that they might create... First off, Google's not gonna make the same mistake again. They, they kind of invented and were the source of the most, other than Cambridge, um, the source of the most IP around AI, and because they didn't wanna threaten this tollbooth business called search, they didn't move as aggressively to commercialize it. I don't think they're gonna make that mistake again. And AI premium search, they're talking about making it a subscrip- subscription product. I like s- subscription products more because the thing that has really, in my opinion, probably been the greatest externality or, or kind of the s- the greatest omission has been the rage caused by an ad-supported model online. So, I like the idea of moving to s- subscription. The problem is, the operational effici- it'll take their margins down because something people don't talk a, a lot about, every query into ChatGPT takes ten times the energy of a standard search. What's also just really interesting about these companies is similar to energy in the '70s and '80s

  12. 11:03 – 13:35

    Big Tech convergence: all roads lead to energy + compute + cloud

    1. SG

      where there was Shell, Chevron, Exxon. They're all becoming the same company. They all have different front ends, but at the end of the day, they're all becoming energy/compute companies that other companies, that the rest of the fortune million, every other company in the world, will rent their energy and their compute. Instead of powering cars and factories, these companies now power smartphones and LLMs. But you know what? They're all effectively becoming the same company. 60% of Amazon's operating margin is from cloud. They're all becoming cloud companies that power AI. They're, they're all turning into the same-

    2. KS

      Yeah.

    3. SG

      ... goddamn company, but there, uh, can only be four or five of them.

    4. KS

      Well, let me just say though, the, the search engine is very bad news for media and other, uh, websites in general because-

    5. SG

      Mm-hmm.

    6. KS

      ... it will reduce the amount of traffic significantly.... like, I, I-

    7. SG

      Say more what you mean.

    8. KS

      ... the whole SEO world is over. Like, I was just, as I was looking at it, I was like, "Oh, look at this." And everywhere I do something in Google, including everywhere, email, every part of my Google experience, AI is, has been inserted, um, and a- and the search one particularly is re- it's re- it, it's quite good actually, but it's not good for search optimization, getting, having... How are people gonna find people? Now, Google Search has been more dissipated, Amazon has search. You know, there's searches now, is much, becoming much more widespread on, on lots of places. But e- I sat there and I was like, "I don't have to click in anywhere. Here is the actual answer." That I would have spent a lot of time clicking into things. Um, I don't know what you, you think about that, but I, I, I think it's quite good. It's w- and, and quite accurate actually.

    9. SG

      Yeah, yeah. You saying that literally sent chills down my spine 'cause I just, I realized the obvious in what you just articulated, and that is-

    10. KS

      Mm-hmm.

    11. SG

      ... traditional search has been, it gives you, you type in... I don't know, you type in "Biden Trump debates" and you see CNN-

    12. KS

      Mm.

    13. SG

      ... NYT articles on it and you-

    14. KS

      Yeah.

    15. SG

      ... sometimes, oftentimes click through to the NY Tim- uh, to New York Times to read the article on it. And what Google has slowly but surely tried to do is say, okay, if you type in, if you type in "London to Las Vegas", where I'm going on Tuesday, it used to send you-

    16. KS

      Mm-hmm.

    17. SG

      ... to Expedia or to an article about fun things to do in Las Vegas. Now it sends you to a place they can further monetize. They're trying to become closed systems. And I think what you just articulated is frightening 'cause it's true. You're never gonna need to leave Alphabet because what you're saying is there's gonna be no need to click through-

    18. KS

      It gives you the answer.

    19. SG

      It gives you the answer.

    20. KS

      You don't go anywhere.

    21. SG

      Yeah.

  13. 13:35 – 16:40

    Walled gardens, copyright, and the media squeeze in an AI-first discovery world

    1. KS

      You know, the new head of search is a woman-

    2. SG

      The wall- the walled garden.

    3. KS

      ... named Liz Reed. Yeah, th- this new head of search, um, uh... This is a quote that I just chilled me. This is, her name's Liz Reed, she, she just became head of search. "What we see with generative AI is that Google can do more of the searching for you. It can take a bunch of hard work out of searching so you can focus on the parts you wanna do to get things done or the parts of exploring you found exciting, you find exciting." Of course, that's a way of saying, "We're gonna give you the answer." And-

    4. SG

      Right.

    5. KS

      ... I, I, I have to say, it's, it's good. And they still have other, um, other stuff there, and you can get to the, the news and whatever, Twitter, whatever you tend to ask for. Um, but it, you know, if Yelp was worried about this many years ago and has been suing Google, as you know, um, they have a true advantage here over all these different companies. And I think when you, when you think about it, I, I just had breakfast and I'm gonna have him on stage, um, uh, the head of Getty Images, very smart guy. Um, and he... You know, there's a lot of people that are using their imagery and how do, how they use them and how they scrape them. Now, with imagery it's a lot easier to pull copyright stuff, right, as they're using it. But with text, it's n- It's much more difficult to... It's much more easy to shoplift essentially than it is with a photograph, and he had some really smart thoughts about it. And, and it- but text is harder to do. The lawsuits are harder, the copyright is harder, um, than it is with, um, with imagery or videos.

    6. SG

      But what we're all looking for every morning or when we go to media, it's very difficult to differentiate on actual news. I mean, occasionally a reporter risks something or has a source and is able to get news before anybody else. That is really rare. That's less than probably one basis point, 1/1000 of the content you read is original reporting. What you're looking for is voice. You want stuff that has a view and a voice. Like, I like the voice of Reuters, I like the voice of The Economist. And you can imagine fairly soon will you be able to say, okay, ChatGPT 4.1 or whatever they're gonna call it, uh, give me t- a rundown of today's business news in the voice of Reuters. And guess what? It'll be nearly identical and you won't have to go to Reuters. And the scary thing is, is I used to think that, okay, the opportunity was for these guys to band together under like a badass big thinker like Barry Diller and create a consortium that charges them huge licensing fees to, uh, be the fodder or the grist for their LLMs, and that's, uh, a future where they might get to participate. And then I read this frightening article saying that the new LLMs are creating content for the LLMs to crawl. And I thought, they're not even gonna need the original (laughs) content. These LLMs are creating their own Vogue and own Travel and Leisure and own Economist content for the other LLMs to satisfy or sate their insatiable appetite. But it is definitely... It feels like the traditional media companies are a little bit on the wrong side of this.

  14. 16:40 – 17:37

    Monopoly concerns and the call for intervention: innovation at Google’s pace

    1. KS

      Yeah, so how do people find things? But anyway, it's a really interesting time, and I gotta tell you, they're making... I th- look, go- let me just make one more comment and move on to the next thing is that because they're a monopoly, and they are, there has been no innovation in search because they run it. No one else... They've tried, all these different people. As you know, you invested in one of the attempts. Um, there's all kinds of attempts to do it, but they're, DuckDuckGo is very tiny, um, they've got the deal wrapped up with Apple essentially, but paying them an enormous amount of money. Um, there's been no innovation in search. It really hasn't. This, thi- this is that, but at their pace and to their advantage. So, it's even worse that they're a monopoly now. The government really needs to step in here around this monopolistic position they have. Um, in any case, it's really, um, uh, it's really an interesting time and media companies have to, you know, once again, guess what? They're coming for you.

Episode duration: 17:38

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