OpenAI and Google Reveal Plans for AI Future | Pivot

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   OpenAI has released its…

   1. KSKara Swisher0:00

      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. SGScott Galloway0:34

      It's a great movie.

   3. KSKara Swisher0:34

      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.

   4. SGScott Galloway1:07

      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, 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.

   5. KSKara Swisher3:09

      Sure.

   6. SGScott Galloway3:10

      And I worry that-

   7. KSKara Swisher3:11

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

   8. SGScott Galloway3:12

      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.

   9. KSKara Swisher3:20

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

   10. SGScott Galloway3:25

       Mm-hmm.

   11. KSKara Swisher3:25

       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.

   12. SGScott Galloway3:45

       Oh, God.

   13. KSKara Swisher3:45

       "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."

   14. SGScott Galloway3:52

       Mm-hmm.

   15. KSKara Swisher3:52

       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-

   16. SGScott Galloway4:41

       Mm-hmm.

   17. KSKara Swisher4:41

       ... 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.

   18. SGScott Galloway4:50

       I don't know that it's not.

   19. KSKara Swisher4:51

       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.

   20. SGScott Galloway5:00

       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.

   21. KSKara Swisher5:08

       Pretty fast, yes.

   22. SGScott Galloway5:09

       And so, I, I-

   23. KSKara Swisher5:09

       Yep.

   24. SGScott Galloway5:10

       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-

   25. KSKara Swisher5:25

       Mm-hmm.

   26. SGScott Galloway5:26

       ... 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-

   27. KSKara Swisher5:37

       Yeah.

   28. SGScott Galloway5:37

       ... 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-

   29. KSKara Swisher5:42

       Mm-hmm.

   30. SGScott Galloway5:42

       ... 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-
2. 15:00 – 17:37

   But what we're all…

   1. KSKara Swisher15:00

      text is harder to do. The lawsuits are harder, the copyright is harder, um, than it is with, um, with imagery or videos.

   2. SGScott Galloway15:08

      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.

   3. KSKara Swisher16:40

      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