2024 In Review, 2025 Predictions — With Casey Newton
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- Let's look back at 2024 and predict what's going to happen in 2025 in our annual episode with Casey Newton of "Platformer" and "The Hard Fork Podcast." That's coming up right after this.

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Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Well, it's January 1st, so as we do every year, yes, we're doing this for the fourth year running, we're going to look back at the previous year and predict what's going to happen in this coming year in 2025. And joining us, as always, to do it is Casey Newton of Platformer and Hard Fork. Casey, great to see you. Welcome to the show.

Alex, let me be the first to wish you a happy new year. Happy new year, man. Here we are, 2025. Wonderful to be here in 2025. I know. I mean, we're recording this in 2024, but it is very cool. Don't tell them that. They don't need to know that. But we're manifesting the future together right now. We're manifesting. We are. Looking back at 2024, it is interesting because...

It was a year of tremendous progress technologically. And we spoke on this a little bit last year about how we're starting to see some real tech progress as opposed to like repackaging or, you know, new things that we talk about on social media that aren't actually technological advances. So we saw big tech progress in 2024.

And that is, of course, in the world of AI, first and foremost. But I think I've been surprised when I think about the big picture of 2024, how difficult it still was for people to make use of that technology. We're still talking about what the ROI is of this more than two years after ChatGPT was released. And towards the end of the year, you also did a piece talking about how

The people who say AI is fake and it sucks aren't really correct. Look what it's doing. But actually that they have a leg to stand on sort of says something about where AI has gone, which is that the tech has been cool, but we still don't really know exactly what to do with it when you think about the totality of dollars invested. So I want to get your perspective when you look back at 2024. Does that seem right? And why do you think that happened?

Yeah, I mean, I agree with some stuff in there. You know, my starting point is that just over two years ago, ChatGPT didn't exist. Recently, OpenAI told us that ChatGPT had 300 million users a week. So to go from zero to 300 million is really impressive and wonderful.

almost never happens, right? And along the way, they've started to generate huge amounts of revenue. And there are those who say, well, but they're not profitable yet, Casey, and therefore they probably never will be. And I just find this answer very naive and sort of ahistorical. You

You know, you look at the history of Silicon Valley, and it is a story of companies that were deeply unprofitable for a long time that are now some of the biggest companies in the world, right? I never thought Uber was going to turn a profit. Uber is now a profitable company. Some people will say, well, they still haven't made back the money that they took in from investors, and like, fair point, but I think they're probably going to get there.

So when I look at AI, I see something that, yes, is very expensive to train. But when you look at the fact that it's a general purpose technology and that we are finding more and more things to do with it, I do believe that at least one of these companies is going to make a massive amount out of one of these large language models.

Right. So I would say if I had to put a bow on what you're labeling 2024 as maybe the year of continuing to figure it out. I don't know. I know it doesn't have a catchy slogan style ring to it, but that seems to be what you're saying.

Yeah, I mean, I also think that we saw real progress on the technology side. What we did not see was the sort of leap in capabilities that we saw from GPT-2 to GPT-3 and then GPT-3 to GPT-4. And I think...

Something that grabbed a lot of people's attention this year was the fact that what are sometimes called the scaling laws, which is the ability to improve a large language model just by increasing the size of the model, the amount of data that you run through it, and the amount of computing power that you put through it. That apparently started to see some diminishing returns. And some people said, "Aha! The whole thing is a house of cards. It's about to collapse."

But along the way, people started finding all these new, what they call scaling vectors. So for example, you can take the model that you already had and you could say, hey, why don't you think a little bit longer before you give me an answer? Turns out that greatly improves the result, right? So just because one of these sets of scaling laws has started to diminish doesn't mean that there aren't going to be others.

And it's why over the long term, I'm bullish on the idea that, again, at least one of these companies is going to figure out the right combination of things to deliver something really powerful. And that's 2024. So let's go on to 2025 and start our predictions. And we're going to talk about AI, but we'll also talk about a bunch of different technology and we'll talk about antitrust. So if you want to hear about what's going on in those areas, stay tuned. But

In context, thinking about the fact that, okay, we had that year in 2024, some progress, some questions. Do you think we're going to see a giant leap in 2025? Like you talked about those step changes when we thought about what happened last year. Is that coming? So...

Based on the conversations that I've had with executives of the AI labs, it feels like people are trying to set expectations for more linear progress next year. I do think we are going to see one really notable set of new capabilities in what they call AI agents.

So an agent is essentially a computer that is using itself. Anthropic was the first of the big labs to put out a demo of this. Google put out their own demo the week that we're recording this. And I expect that OpenAI is going to, you know,

released their own pretty soon. If you look at the demos that have been released so far, they're like pretty janky. Like the computer is still figuring out how to use a mouse. The computer is still figuring out like how to navigate a web browser. It's kind of like watching an eight-year-old try to learn to use a computer. But our experience with these same sets of technologies in other contexts has been that they learn very quickly.

And so, you know, my prediction about like what is next year in AI, it is all of the big labs and platforms showing off what their agents can do. Businesses trying to figure out, is there anything in there that is powerful and reliable enough that we can actually use it to start automating some processes inside our company? And that's going to lock some stuff.

I don't think it is going to feel like AGI. I think it is going to feel like unnecessary, difficult, but ultimately impressive extension of what AI is already doing today.

So I'm also putting together my predictions and I think my big technology story will also be out about this by the time this podcast goes live. I'm not fully committed to this, but one note that I've written down is that AI agent buzz fades and it's,

I can't tell you why exactly I believe that. It probably goes counter to what all these research houses are saying. But I think in a nutshell, the reason why I would make that prediction, and I'm open to the fact that I'm going to be wrong, is that the use cases are tough to find. It's sort of like, what do we trust the computer to do for us? And now in an area like a B2B software company, when it comes to like fetching things or, you know, moving one job from one system to another, maybe we see some Asian progress there.

But my hunch says the hype around them fades. What do you think? Well, I mean, let me give you some examples for what this thing could do, right? Let's say that you gave Gmail, you put some sort of agent inside Gmail.

And you said, okay, Gmail, find every invitation in my inbox from the last month and show me those. And then from there, I'm going to tell you which of these things I want to go to and which of these things I don't want to go to. And you write the acceptances and the replies. And I just click send.

That's actually possible with the technology that we have today. Nobody has built the product, but we already have that. That would be hugely useful to me. If I had that agent go through my inbox and say, "Show me everyone who has asked for a response from me about something."

That would be very powerful, right? So I just think that there are some core productivity use cases that people are really going to like. I already use AI as a kind of thinking partner. There's a kind of classic thing that happens in tech reporting where...

maybe you're writing about a new paper that's coming out, or there's a new product that's being released, and the company that you're talking to will send you some materials about it. I now upload that directly into a chatbot. I essentially interview the PDF before I interview the person. After I do that interview, I'll say like, hey, I'm actually going to talk to these people in a couple hours. What are some things to talk to them about? Some of the questions are awful and I would never ask. Some of them are

good but mostly it's just like a great first draft right now I'm putting a lot of like intention and effort into doing that but like you can imagine a world where it's a little bit more on rails and I say like hi agent I'm writing a story about this here's the pdf you know all the questions I usually ask like you know the kind of stories that I write give me a little bit of a template for this and like essentially prepare a briefing document for me about the story I'm about to write

Again, we already have the technology for all this stuff. We just really need to build the product. So I predict next year you're going to see...

technological progress. But the question mark is like, how effectively are these people able to productize these experiences? Yeah. And I do something similar. Uh, I should probably start where you start, but oftentimes when I'm writing something, I'll write the story and then I'll drop the finished story in with all the primary sources and be like, what did I miss? Like, here's the transcripts of the interviews I did. Yeah.

there must have been some points that I didn't include and it can pick it out pretty well. - That's great. Yeah, it's getting really good at that sort of thing. And like the reason I really liked that example is, you know, we're talking at a time when I've been besieged by haters calling me a shill. And the thing that they'll often say is like this stuff, like it just does not work. It constantly hallucinates. You can't rely on it for everything.

And if the way that you want to use it is as a search engine to do all your fact checking, you're absolutely right. It's gonna be a terrible fact checker. You cannot rely on it. You have to go elsewhere to like verify your facts. But...

Most of it, particularly people like you and me, Alex, who are like solo entrepreneurs, we don't have a newsroom full of colleagues to help us think through every angle. This stuff is actually really good at that, right? You're not relying on it for the facts. You're saying, help me think about this thing. And if you don't see the value in that, well...

I don't know what to tell you, brother. Yeah, no, it's valuable. I also think it's pretty nice for grammar correction. Like I canceled my Grammarly subscription and now I use Claude. Oh, but can I give you a prediction? Grammarly dead by end of 2025. How does that company still exist? I don't know. I don't know. And honestly, it's also a company that makes its product worse every year, but we could go on and on about that. Wait, how do they do that?

They had a great browser extension and they I think, you know, it's always about what the company prioritizes. And I think they wanted you to go to Grammarly.com. So instead of being able to work inside your docs, you copy and paste it for a more robust service. So they killed the browser extension that was really useful or they didn't kill it. They just diminished it. And it's like, what am I doing here? You know, it's a step I don't need.

But Claude, I'll be like, just tell me where my usage is weird. And I'll be like, you wrote exits instead of exists, which by the way, I do in every story I write. And I'm like, okay, great. Well, I'm going to put exists now.

So that's helpful. Yeah, I do that too. Now I will say, I also asked Claude to edit my column and if it gives me six suggestions for like, you know, spelling or grammatical mistakes, three of them will be fake. They will like, it'll say, it'll say you did this thing. And then I go back and I read the copy. I was like, no, I didn't. So I, you know, I always want to acknowledge like that we haven't finished building any of this yet. Some of it is like really crappy, but,

It is just in my nature to look for the ways in which it works as opposed to the things that it is not good at. It's a true gaslighter. That's the truth. And I think that that might never change. Yeah. If I had a wish that I would put under the product building tree, I don't know if that actually works as a metaphor, but I'm going to roll with it. It would be that the people building AI built for more normal use cases and not for like

Tim Cook's use case. Like that's my number one complaint with Apple intelligence or like I pick up my phone, it's summarizing my text messages and my emails as if I, I mean, I'd get a fair amount, but I'm not getting like Apple CEO level. And I could see Tim Cook being like, you summarized a hundred emails.

That is amazing. That is incredible. Whereas for me, it's like, you know, summarizes two or three and it takes all the personality out of a text message. So if you want a year in review, a thought for me on that, what I would say is Apple intelligence flop of the year. Oh my gosh. But, but honestly,

I love it. This is not mad. This is not me being mad calling the flop. This is me celebrating what a flop it is because I, you know, I mean like a very active group chat and you know, the boys are sending me the memes all day long and it used to be in the little preview window. I would see the meme. I would see the tweet. I would see the joke. Now four times a day I get my little summary and it's like link shared to x.com meme disgust.

And I'm like, I truly cannot imagine a more worthless addition to my life, but it makes me laugh every single time. So Apple intelligence, you are a complete flop and I hope you never change. I mean, to me, one of the funniest things about Apple intelligence is just how mean it could be. Uh,

Or like someone gets a breakup text. It like goes, this is something that people have been circulating on Twitter. It just goes, well, she's not interested. Or like, yeah, even when I get an email where someone's like, sorry, I can't do the podcast. It's like invitation rejected.

I'm like, come on, Apple intelligence. Do you think there's a second life for this product in 2025? Or is it sort of. Oh, sure. I mean, they're not going to give up on it. Like presumably they also know it sucks because they use it. You know, I think it was interesting. They, they did a big sort of sit down with wired, like all the sort of Apple C suite in December and,

And the point of it was to convey the idea that, hey, look, we're not behind on this. We were just very patient. We were biding our time. And when the moment was right, we struck, right? And now we've really nailed it. And it's like, that's a lovely idea, but it's not true. You can just use this stuff. It's like, you know. So I think...

where they're right is that the mainstream is either like not ready for this, doesn't care about it or hates it. Like some combination of those three things. They're right about that. And that's actually like a perfectly valid reason for them to be going slower than everyone else in AI.

But if you're like a tech nerd like we are and you want to live in the future and you want to use tools to improve your life, you would not be using any of the Apple intelligence stuff because it truly is aimed at somebody who is two years behind the state of the art. Yeah, we talk about this on the show all the time. It still can't do basic things like pull a flight out of Apple Mail and tell you when it's leaving. Yeah, shame on them. Shame on them. I'm just kidding.

I'm not. I'm going to take it one level further. Take it further. Say something really offensive. Let's say disgrace after disgrace because... Disgrace, yeah. Yeah. I'm going to go for the second disgrace, which is Vision Pro. Oh, yeah. You predicted last year that the Vision Pro was going to usher in a moment where people are going to take mixed reality a little bit more seriously. Did I say that or was my voice deepfaked? We're going to have to look into that. Let's go with the deepfake. What happened there?

So this was an interesting one. I was wrong in my prediction. Basically, my prediction for this year was that...

Vision Pro would not be a runaway hit, but that they would sell enough to justify continued investment in the device. And the most recent projections are that they were going to sell something like 420,000 of them this year. That puts them at close to $1.5 billion in revenue. That is a rounding error for every other Apple product. And so you could see that as it being a complete flop. On

On the other hand, if any other company exploring a new category released a product that generated $1.5 billion in revenue for the first version, that would be enough to justify continued investment in it, right? So on one hand, yes, not a runaway hit. I think where they really failed was to nail a daily use case. But by the way, everyone else who has built a headset has failed in this if the use case is not playing a game.

Um, but the hardware is really cool, man. They did some cool stuff. The eye tracking, very cool. The visual fidelity of the display, very cool. Would I enjoy watching a movie in it? Like probably. So they did a lot right. And I think like the version of that thing that, that exists five years from now probably will be super compelling. Yeah.

I am going to admit that every now and again, when I have a visitor that comes into Brooklyn, I say, why don't we go to the Apple store? There won't be a line. Let's try out these vision pros. And they're blown away every time, but they're just like, I would not buy that. Wow. I want to come visit Alex Cantor. And he's like, what can we do? We're in New York city. What can we do? I'm taking me to the top of the empire state building. You're like, no, we're going to the Apple store. I need a light. No, we don't have fun here. We can go on a slack line.

in mixed reality that's even more exciting than the building itself this is great i'm excited they are planning smaller cheaper devices next year do you think those hit or is it more of the same so this uh i'm i'm somewhat skeptical about this because like i don't actually think the problem with the vision pro was that it was too expensive like apple customers are rich apple customers were ready to spend 3500 on it um obviously like you know i i

Yes, there are many people that just cannot and will not spend $3,500 on a device. But like...

If you look for like adjusted for inflation, how much an Apple laptop cost in the 80s, like the Vision Pro is not actually that expensive, right? So the reason people didn't buy this thing was that there was just nothing to do with it, right? It's like the Oculus headsets. Like you buy it, you try it out, and then you're like, this thing's kind of a hassle. And there's really nothing it can't do that I can't do more easily on my laptop. Or to the extent that it can do things that I can't do on my laptop, I don't really care about those things that much.

And so you put it in a drawer and never think about it again. So if you told me like, hey, great news, they're making a Vision Pro that is exactly as good as the one that came out in 2024. But now it's going to cost half as much. It's going to be $1750 plus tax.

I'd be like, that's actually not that compelling because it still just can't do that much stuff. So they really need to work on the let it do more stuff. And I would note their relationships with developers are really bad right now. They can't even get freaking Netflix to make an app for this thing. So there is a lot they need to do on the business and partnership side.

Um, but you know, I'm somewhat skeptical that they're going to do that because they love their app store monopoly and they would just rather just live off the fat of the app store than like rebuild those relationships with developers. Yeah. It's amazing what so many years of a 15 or 30% tax just to exist will do to your relationship with developers. Yeah. Yeah. It, it, it really is. Um, and it, yeah, I don't know. I'm curious if we ever see a reckoning for that. Like I imagine at some point that we will, and it'll be like very satisfying to observe, but man, is it taking a long time in coming?

So there are some other AR platforms that we started to see this year. You and I both got a chance to try the Meta Orion device, which is a pair of glasses that you put on your face and, you know, will take you into mixed reality without the big headset thing. I mean, this probably isn't a 2025 thing. Maybe it is. I don't know. Do you think that we're going to see these things get any traction this coming year?

So my understanding is that the Orion headset is like multiple years out and that when it arrives, it won't actually even be as good as the glasses that we tried on this year, because in order to make the cost work, they're just going to have to like rip out some of the components. So that is super unfortunate. And, you know, I mean, yeah,

So AR glasses has been like, one of the first Snapchat spectacles come out like a 2013 or something. Um, I truly feel like I've been waiting so long for these things to get good. And like, I'm going to be close to retirement before like Orion actually like arrives. But all that said, and I said this to the meta folks when I was there, um,

Orion is what I wanted the Vision Pro to be. Very high fidelity visual display, very easy to wear. It doesn't make me nauseous the way a VR headset does. Had had obvious utility. You could just sort of walk around the world wearing these things on your face. You could take a video call and sort of, you know, see the person in the lenses of your glasses.

It was cool. Again, you know, the whole conversation we just had about the Vision Pro is about what it can't do. When I think about the Orion glasses, I think about what it can do and how enjoyable it was to use. So I think they've really got something there. The problem is just that the glasses are like extraordinarily expensive and they cannot deliver a consumer version of that for multiple years.

Now, another one of your predictions last year was that Google catches up with OpenAI on the foundation model game. We're going to give that a ding. That worked out well and a good day. Yeah.

It has been interesting watching the way that Google has caught up and even surpassed OpenAI in a number of different fronts. In the AI world in 2024, they've released Notebook LM, which is a great product. They had a bunch of releases towards the end of the year, including Gemini 2.0 and this research assistant that can look at

dozens of different sources and compile research reports. And by the way, their foundational models are pretty good. They, of course, have search as a, I think, a continuing liability where people will try the perplexities of the world. Maybe they'll try chat GPT search. And then you're like, well, what's going to happen to the bread and butter of the Google business?

So I think that sets it up for a very interesting year in 2025, where it's the narrative coming in to last year might have been Google's behind, Google's screwed. Now it's like Google's competing. Google might be in the lead by the end of the year. But what exactly is going to happen to the company? So what do you think is going to happen this coming year? Yeah, so I'm like...

I, of course, feel good that I actually managed to get a prediction right. Like if you look at Chatbot Arena, which is this site that measures the performance of the large language models as we record this, the Gemini models are at the top. So that's a sort of win for them. On the other hand...

The quality of the models does not match my experience of using Gemini in Google products, right? The three big models that I use and pay for every single week, some of them every day, some of them many times a day, are ChatubyT, Claude, and Gemini. Of those, I would say Gemini has clearly been the worst.

It had some really rocky launches this year. The launch of imagery where it was mostly refusing to draw white founding fathers was this huge black eye and they had to remove image generation for months and months and months. They had the notorious launch of AI overviews where they were telling people to eat rocks and put glue on their pizza. And so there's just this disconnect where...

The models perform very well on benchmarks and the products kind of suck. So that is the circle that they need to square.

And I don't... I mean, I think that they can do it. It's really notable to me that Notebook LM, which is by far the best and most interesting of the AI products that I think that they have released so far, was made by a Skunkworks team in a forgotten corner of Google that struggled to get a lot of support and then went viral because they managed to create something really cool. And then as soon as it went viral, most of the founding team of Notebook LM quit to go do a startup. So it's like...

That's like Google's real problem. You know, if I were them, I'm like, I would just go find the best product people in the world and just be like, go nuts in Gmail and Google Drive. Like make some stuff that is truly fricking useful to people because if they could do that, that is when I would feel like they were sort of recapturing the lead. Because as far as I'm concerned, all the cool stuff in AI is happening at OpenAI and Anthropic.

And with the AI models being good, but the products being bad, is that just like a post-training thing? Or like, how do you end up in that situation? That's hard to do. Well, I have a conspiracy theory, which is, you know, kind of not great to be sharing on a podcast, but I'm going to do it anyway, which is I think Google is teaching to the test.

You know what I mean? Yes. Like, I think that they know what the benchmarks are and they train the models to be really good at the benchmarks. And then they, they train the models and they come out and they say, look, it does really well on the benchmarks. And then you just try to use it for other stuff. And it kind of sucks. Um,

You know, on my podcast, Hard Fork, in December, we had a conversation about what my co-host Kevin Roos calls the cult of Claude. And if you look in Chatbot Arena, Claude is not the number one model. But people have started to develop this very warm, humane relationship with it because of the way that it responds to questions, the things it notices, the probing questions that it asks you in return.

And to me, that's the difference between like teaching to the test and making a great product is like, you know, Google's really good at the former, but just not at the latter. Yeah. I'll confess. I have that sort of relationship with Claude. Yeah. Like,

What are you using it for? I use it for so many things. I mean, like all the writing applications that we spoke about, but also it's become my diet coach where, and listeners of the show will know this, but I speak with it every day about the diet plan. I've given it some rules to, um,

help steer me, it grades me every day, it counts calories, it gives encouragement. My wife talks to Claude on her spare time and is like, all right, I'm thinking of cooking this. Do you think it aligns with these values and just decides what to do and then adjust recipes based off of it? And it's working. That's great. Not to the point where I'm going to write a story yet, but it's definitely working. There's progress there. So-

I think that's like really powerful stuff. Like that is powerful. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. Yeah. I think the craziest thing that I did was I ran out of space in the chat and was like, well, there goes that because all that memory. I'm going to start again. But I just copied the chat and then I put it in a new cloud chat and was like, this is your memory. Let's pick up. And it was able to, which was unbelievable. So you could end up with these, I guess, endless memories.

and this is a months long relationship with the bot. And I look forward to speaking with it in the morning when I do well, I look forward to bragging to it. When I do poorly, I'm like, well, it's gonna let me down easily. So I'll tell it anyway. And it's been cool. - And can you imagine having that same conversation with Gemini? - No, definitely not. - Yeah. - There you go. - This is what I'm talking about. - All right. So we've done Apple, we've done Google,

And let's talk about OpenAI Microsoft. Do you think that relationship is still, I mean, it's obviously still consequential, but I guess there's all sorts of question marks about where it goes in the coming year. What do you think is going to happen with those two? I mean, my like possibly contrarian take is like they just kind of muddle through. Like that's kind of what I think that they're going to do.

OpenAI needs Microsoft for the compute, the data centers, the infrastructure of making AI. They're not going to go out and build all of that next year. They can't go as fast as they want to if they don't have Microsoft in their corner. And Microsoft needs OpenAI for the tech and the product. The Microsoft stuff that is being done independently...

is okay. Maybe Copilot seems to be good if you want to write code. Outside that, it kind of just feels like they're nowhere to me. So they're going to continue to look to OpenAI and tout this partnership of like, hey, look, we have, by many estimates, the leading AI lab in our corner, and we're using their stuff in 365 and all of our other consumer products.

I think they're just going to find a way to work together. Now, are they also going to be betraying each other continuously throughout next year in ways big and small? Like, yeah, probably. So I think it's just going to be a fun story. But I think they both need each other. So I'm thinking through again what I'm going to write in this prediction story. And one might be that Mustafa Suleiman, who runs AI at Microsoft, leaves.

And there's already been some reports of clashes between him and the OpenAI team. And I think you're totally right that Microsoft needs OpenAI for the models, the products. And if that's what you need, you actually kind of need less of a strong leader. You need more integrators than visionaries.

Yes, I think that is right. You know, you can read about some clashes Mustafa Suleiman had at his previous companies. This person seems to leave a bit of drama in his wake. So yeah, that's like a good medium confidence prediction, I would say. Okay, so now I'm thinking about Meta and...

Usually what we predict is like what's going to happen with Meta products, threads and stuff like that. Maybe we can get to that. But I think the big question for Meta is actually about a competitor, which is whether TikTok actually gets banned. And there's like varying degrees of confidence. And I think this is going to be in everybody's 2025 prediction list, especially because in 19 days there may be a decision to ban it or not. But what happens to TikTok to me is going to be a very interesting story.

earlier in the year. What do you think? Yeah. I mean, you could just sort of see it in the stock price when the, uh, court ruling came out in December, investors were like, Oh yeah, TikTok is going to get banned and, uh, the spoils will go to meta and also Google for YouTube. Um, uh,

It would be like a shift in the culture. You know, TikTok is an engine of culture in the United States is where memes are born. Legends are created. It drives music consumption for all of that to just disappear overnight. Like that energy is going to want to go somewhere and it's going to primarily go to reels and shorts. Maybe there are some crumbs left for snap, which, you know, offers a similar product. Um,

But that's like really big. And it is just free money for Mark Zuckerberg. So yeah, I'm sure that's what everyone at Meta is asking for for Christmas. This is my hottest of all takes, which is that the app stores are forced to ban TikTok on January 19th. And then Trump day one says put it back. So it's gone for like a half hour.

Yeah, could be. You know, when he was, as we record this, the last time he was asked about it, he essentially gave a non-answer as to whether he would save it or not. But, you know, as with basically all subjects, I would believe literally anything when it comes to Donald Trump. Okay. Well, I want to talk about what's going to happen under his administration with antitrust and then some cutting edge technology that we might see next year. So why don't we do that right after this? I'm Jesse Hempel, host of Hello Monday.

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And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast. We're predicting what's going to happen this year. Happy New Year, everybody. It's 2025. Can you believe it? We're here with Casey Newton of Platformer and the Hard Fork Podcast, which you can find in your app of choice. Let's talk about antitrust, everyone's favorite topic. You

You know, I can already see like sort of like the listener statistics start dropping off here because it tends to be like the biggest news. But I do think that everybody should hang on for a moment because we might actually see some really interesting changes in the coming year, especially with the new administration. Let's just start with acquisitions. I sort of think that that's going to be the thing that we see the difference most prominently on most quickly because we're going to have a new head of acquisitions.

the FTC and all of the acquisitions that might have been prevented over the past four years might start to get going. So is that do you think what do you think about that? And do you think that's going to be the primary difference between Trump and Biden on tech?

Hard to say. You know, this Andrew Ferguson character says a lot of the same things that Trump's other agency appointees do about tech. So it's a lot of like...

I will end the censorship of conservatives, you know, and we will. Yeah, that sort of thing. And there's even been some buzz that Biden's like folks were actually pretty happy with the pick of Andrew Ferguson because they felt like he was mad at Google and Apple, too, and was not immediately going to just end every antitrust investigation into them.

So I think there is a world where things look weirdly similar under Trump 2.0 as they did under Biden. Of course, don't forget that the Google Entry Trust lawsuit, or at least one of them, was filed under Trump. So I do think that there's going to be some continuity there.

And my expectation would be that if Trump is happy with Google or Meta or Apple for whatever reason, then maybe he will allow an acquisition that Lena Kahn would not. And if he's not, he won't allow the acquisition. And so you'll just see a lot of sucking up and effectively open corruption among the companies who are already donating millions of dollars to his inauguration in the hopes that they will be allowed to make those acquisitions.

But I can see another world where he's just kind of like...

mad at them or decides that he doesn't want to do them a favor and he will deny them the chance to make those acquisitions. But we'll allow acquisitions for stuff outside of the tech sector. So, you know, two grocery chains want to get together or two wireless carriers want to get together, whatever, like maybe he'll just sort of give those a pass. So that's kind of what I'm looking for. And we haven't talked about Amazon yet. And I wonder if you think Amazon is going to be happy or upset with this new administration decision.

I'll tell you two different ways that things could go, and I'm curious what you think. One is that the competition that they have from Xi'an and Timu, I'm sure at some point is going to be examined. We know the de minimis threshold, which allows these companies

these e-commerce companies from China to ship things under, I think, $600 or $800 without tax, like that's probably going to be closed. But do they potentially get banned? Do they have higher taxes put on them? That could be a benefit to Amazon. The other side of it is that tariffs are really not going to benefit the company that's trying to sell you the stuff at the lowest cost. So where do you think Amazon fits in here?

I don't know. You cover Amazon more closely than I do. Everything that you've described is very interesting, but I don't know what's going to happen to all of it. I wish I had a better answer for you. My basic thought is always like, whatever happens, Amazon will be fine. People love Amazon. They love their Amazon Prime. There's very little that really could happen at Amazon that would lead most people to cancel their Amazon Prime.

you know if tariffs happen prices will go up and you know maybe that creates some opportunity for amazon if you know the situation that you described among you know timu and sheehan happens but i just kind of don't know what do you think is gonna happen

I think that Timu and Sheehan are going to face some action, whether it is those higher taxes or a ban. And I would not be surprised by a ban. So to me, I think Amazon will be thrilled at that. They've kind of stumbled trying to compete with them. I think we had some Black Friday statistics that we cited on the show this year, which is that those two retailers, Timu and Sheehan, were

made up about 50% of Gen Z's Black Friday purchasing. And so that is, you know, if you think if I'm at Amazon and I'm doing long-term threat planning, that's front and center. And yeah, I might send Bezos who, you know, pulled the Kamala Harris endorsement from the Washington Post into the White House and be like, you know, Mr. President, there's something you need to know about what China's doing to take over our retailers, our American retailers and

you ought to take some action and that could be successful. Yeah, maybe it could. All right. It'd be really interesting to see like Jeff Bezos, like legitimately become friends with Donald Trump. Like stranger things have happened. Oh, I think it's going to happen. Especially the way that he spoke about him at the deal book conference. It was like, Oh,

It could happen. All right. I want to get into experimental technology before we head out. I love talking about the experimental technology that we're going to see over the next year. So let's just hit a couple of them. The breakthroughs in quantum computing are the I think 2024 was the first year where they actually caught my attention.

I want to talk about them more in the show next year. I don't fully know how to because I'm still trying to wrap my head around the technology. I'll be forthcoming about that. But it seems like there's momentum around quantum going into this year that there hasn't been in the past. What do you think about that, Casey?

I think there's some, you know, I recently interviewed Julian Kelly who leads the quantum hardware division at Google about some recent advances they've made. They have a new quantum chip.

Quantum computing is just very technically difficult to do because you have to keep these chips at close to absolute zero. And so there are these very strange devices that are enormous by the standards of other computers and essentially have enormous refrigerators attached to them. And they're also just kind of at this...

Kind of like early, more scientific stage of development where we had a proof of concept in 2024 where this Google computer was able to solve a very, very difficult math problem. And it was like very technically impressive, but it was also years removed from being able to have a more practical application.

So the sense that I'm getting from Google is like progress is being made here and it is exciting and fun to consider some of the applications, but don't expect too much to happen in 2025. Okay. And how about self-driving speaking of Google projects? I mean, in 2024, the field of self-driving was, I don't want to say seated to Google because Tesla's still in the game, but, um,

I mean, Waymo really cleared a lot of the competition out. You know, at the end of the year, Cruise was disassembled at GM. Do you think that this technology continues to pace? I mean, I do think 2024 was a watershed year for this and to the point where it's like almost becoming regular to see these in some cities in the United States. What do you think about in terms of this technology and its expansion potential in 2025? I

I think it's huge. I think Waymo is the best consumer technology experience that most people have not had. I think that when you get inside a Waymo, you will understand what is going to happen as AI improves in a visceral way that you will not understand until you have been in a self-driving car.

And the good news is that more people are going to have this experience in 2025. So Waymo is expanding to Atlanta and Austin. It's also going to be in Miami in 2025. It recently expanded to LA. And so I just think you're going to see more and more people, frankly, just enjoying Waymo. I've talked to so many people who after they take a Waymo, they say, if this was available in my town, I would never take another Uber.

Like if I could take this everywhere, I would never take another Uber. There's just something about the experience that is really, I mean, there's like the, there's a technical aspect of it. You know, there's the fact that it drives better than a lot of humans. There's the fact that it doesn't ask you about your politics at 4.30 AM on your way to the airport. Right. So these things just have a lot of benefits. And I think in 2025, people are going to start testing that for the first time.

Yeah, I'm really excited about the technology as listeners know. And you're right, it's the you get in and you definitely don't want to take an Uber again. The braking is amazing. That's what I think is the number one thing is just the braking is so smooth.

And yeah, you could do whatever you want in there within reason. I mean, they're watching with video camera people. So be respectful. But we turned the, I mean, I think the lights are already off. We turned the lights off and we put on some EDM at full blast and held a dance party in one of them. And you can do that. I mean, I feel bad for the safety employees that were like, please put your seatbelt on. It was like, not now, we're having a party. But it is amazing. Yeah.

All right, one last one for me. You're going to lose your Waymo privileges, Alex. Yeah, well, I mean, living in New York, I doubt they're going to be here within the next couple of years, but maybe five years. I don't know. It's a tough city to drive in.

It is a very tough city. Yeah. No, it's like I, until they're in New York, like, I don't know. I feel bad for people who live in New York and like, don't have access to Waymo. Cause I really do think that it just like, it, it, it's, it makes it harder for you to understand the future. I mean, I, I really, I eagerly anticipate New Yorkers reaction to self-driving cars hitting the streets and,

Some people will love it, but some people, they will be spray painted every day, I guarantee you. And we'll definitely see some videos of people crossing the street looking at the Waymo and being like, hey, I'm walking to you. That's my 2025 prediction. I like it. All right, one last one for me. I think 2025 is going to be the year of the brain-computer interface. I think we could end up seeing dozens of Neuralink patients in 2025.

And I think when people start to see what this technology can do, they will be similarly blown away by the technological miracle. Of course, Neuralink isn't the only one doing it, but they're the loudest.

Yeah, I had a chance to interview Nolan this year, the first Neuralink patient, and was so inspired by his story and how his life had changed after he'd gotten the Neuralink. You know, calling 2025 the year of Neuralink feels bold. I think it's going to take more than dozens of patients to really get people's attention. And, you know, I do worry about the, you know,

the longterm for some of these patients, you know, even when we were talking to Nolan, some of the sensors inside the Neuralink, it's sort of already gone dark. So I want to kind of see how durable and reliable those things turn out to be before I declare it the year of Neuralink. Okay. All right. What am I missing? Any, any other big predictions you have for the coming year? Do you think somebody is going to buy snap? Oh, that is interesting. Who do you think the candidate would be? I don't know. I really have no idea. I,

I mean, the one that people always bring up is Apple. People have been sort of saying this for years. Like these companies just seem very like spiritually aligned and Snap's business isn't very good. Apple could sort of immediately put their sort of AR tech into practice and maybe advance their AR hardware project by a few years.

I think the challenge is just it's really hard to imagine Tim Cook wanting to run a social network. There are so many issues on Snapchat related to child safety that I think he probably just doesn't want to deal with. But like...

I don't know. Like snap is just like not been a very profitable company for a long time. Now they've gone through many, many rounds of layoffs. Uh, I, I just kind of wonder if 2025 is the year where Evan Spiegel says, yeah, I gotta, gotta do something drastic. So what if, that's a great, great theory. Uh, what if Apple acquires snap? It's worth 18 to 19 billion today. So let's say they give a small premium, 25 billion. Um,

bring Evan in-house, put him in charge of products, and then spin off the rest of Snap? Would that be worth it to Apple? You know, I mean, it's an interesting question. Like, that to me feels like something Apple would be more interested in. Like, that deal feels complicated, and I'm wondering, like, how Evan would feel about, like, spinning out that actual core messaging business. But, like, I do think that the hardware is what Apple would want out of that equation. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, that and Evan would be a great deal for them. They're what, 3 trillion? Yeah. Just 20 billion is nothing to them. And since they saved all that money by not buying Peloton, they'd have enough for Snapchat. Does Peloton survive 2025? No.

I don't know, man. It kind of feels like the Peloton moment came and went. I think people just realized they actually like going to the gym, you know? Like there was that pandemic moment where people were like, oh, this is so cool. I can stay fit and I don't have to leave my house. And then as soon as people leave their house, they're like, oh yeah, I just want to do that. So they

They keep like rolling out and yet they apparently have some new like strength training product or something. There's, you know, talented people there. Great product experience. Like it's sad to me that they couldn't figure out a business cause like they got so many things right, you know? And it just like kind of wound up not mattering cause it just turned out to be a fad.

Yeah, it is astonishing to me because the bike costs a couple thousand. The subscription is like, what, 15 to 30 a month? Yeah. So the trainers do one session and you could get 2,000 people in there. But I think you're right. People really underrated the value of being in person when we were not in person. And now they crave it.

So goodbye Peloton. Goodbye Peloton. I enjoyed it. I had the subscription during the pandemic. I threw it on some Chinese bike and I was able to bike my way through the first lockdown and then that became a coat hanger. And I think that really is the story of Peloton. Yeah, I think that you're unfortunately right about that.

All right, Casey Newton, I'm wishing you happy holidays retroactively and a happy new year to you today as we kick off 2025. Thanks for coming on. Thank you so much. I can't imagine a better way to sort of get rid of my New Year's hangover than come back on your show, Alex. So thank you and happy new year to you. Happy new year. All right, folks, you can check out Casey Newton's platformer, platformer.net.

Dot news. Dot news. Sorry. Let me do that again and edit it. Or not edit it and leave it on. Folks, you can check out Casey Newton's platformer at platformer.news. I don't know. I get it in my email inbox. Yeah. Check out Big Technology at bigtechnology.whatever. Dot com. Dot com. I should get dot whatever. That would be great. Get dot whatever. And the Hard Fork podcast in your podcast app of choice. Thank you, everybody, for listening, and we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.