Musk’s OpenAI Bid, Sam Altman’s Roadmap, Apple + Alibaba
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Elon Musk bids $97 billion for OpenAI, but is his bid real? Sam Altman reveals OpenAI's roadmap as the future of generative AI looks a bit clearer, and Apple finally has an AI partner in China. That's coming up on a Big Technology Podcast Friday edition, right after this.

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Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday edition, where we break down the news in our traditional cool-headed and nuanced format. We have a massive week of news to break down for you. We have this Elon Musk bid, or is it a real bid? We'll get into that for OpenAI. Also, we have so much more clarity on the roadmap of OpenAI and its fellow generative AI companies following this week. So we're going to talk about what's coming next from them. We also have an Apple intelligence partner,

In China, it's Alibaba, of course. After a couple of false starts, Apple seems on the way to be releasing Apple intelligence in its second biggest market. And there's going to be plenty more to discuss. Joining us as always on Fridays is Ranjan Roy of Margins. Ranjan, great to see you again. Good to see you. I think I'm going to put in a bid for OpenAI as well. Let's make it competitive, Elon. Why?

Why don't we do it? Let's gather our money together and maybe we can put the $200 a month we've been spending for OpenAI's advanced features towards it. So, all right, this is our official bid, $400 for OpenAI. $400 going once, going twice. It's a nonprofit, right? So that should at least register. I think so. So the news this week is it's kind of out of control as it always is with AI.

And I was starting out for a fairly calm, normal week. And then Monday, news breaks, Elon Musk is bidding $97 billion for OpenAI. So immediately, everybody covers this as if this is real. Because of course, Elon Musk has done this before. He took over Twitter with a $44 billion offer. So okay, so what's another, you know, another few billion for OpenAI?

I'll just run through this quickly. This is from Reuters. A consortium led by Elon Musk said on Monday it offered $97.4 billion to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI.

Altman responds, he says, no, thank you, but we'll buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want. That is the opening salvo. Then OpenAI's lawyers, I'm just going to fast forward through the story. They say, listen, Elon Musk is suing to prevent us from turning into a for-profit. So how is he now trying to buy us for $97 billion and do the same thing that he's telling us we can't do in court?

And Musk responds saying, and this is from the New York Times, he will drop the OpenAI bid if the company preserves its nonprofit mission. Basically saying, all right, you got me. I'll drop the bid if you stay a nonprofit and we all go home happy. So Ranjan, I'm curious how you view the moves of the week and whether you think Elon Musk, even if he's not successful in the takeover bid, is going to get something out of making this offer.

It's not real. It's not real. I think that's a pretty safe bet in this, though, again, maybe something that starts as a troll like this, that starts as an investment troll slash legal troll could turn into something real. It's happened before. It has happened before. That's fair. But I think the more I was reading about this, this really did present itself as a pretty smart troll, right?

Because again, you put in the bid, you essentially force OpenAI in Sam Altman's hand. And even there's a quote from Ari Manuel around how the double dealing of Sam Altman and between the nonprofit and the for-profit arm, I mean, it's something we've talked about for now years. It's something that never has quite made sense. Somehow they keep being able to just skate by this.

as they raise billions and billions more. So Elon pushing this issue and actually bringing it more to the forefront by

Making this somewhat ludicrous bid is a pretty interesting development in this. Here, let's actually read directly from Ari Emanuel's comments at this Freakonomics live taping that happened yesterday. And just for full disclosure, Endeavor, Ari Emanuel's company, emailed this to me today, copying Musk's lawyer.

So they clearly want it out there. He says, Emmanuel says, we're not proposing to buy the charity OpenAI. We are proposing to buy the charity's majority share of Sam and Microsoft's for profit OpenAI enterprise. So the charity would get 97.4 billion for that.

So to me, this is interesting because I wonder if they're offering $97 billion and Altman's group wants to pay $30 billion to the nonprofit to be able to move to this for-profit structure, whether this fully prevents this spinoff from ever taking place. Because if they have to match that $97 billion, I mean, what are we talking about in terms of funding? Well, that's why it's a savvy move because...

Why should Sam Altman be able to price the nonprofit arm of OpenAI when clearly there's a vested interest in putting that as low as possible so you can accrue more value to the for-profit side? And again, it's always been incredibly unclear

what code sits in the nonprofit if it was all initially generated within the nonprofit? What assets, what customer lists, what revenue? It's never been clear what sits where, so to just be able to say,

Okay, this is worth $30 billion. That sounds good. Let's spin it out and let's leave the other. What did Masa give it? $260, I think? $260 billion? Leave the other $230 billion for the for-profit and my own personal wealth. I think it doesn't make any sense. So I'm actually happy that someone is calling it out. Someone's pushing their hand at this moment on it.

Where this goes, does this just fade away a little later? I mean, I think we might be forgetting about this in a week or two, but who I think will not forget about it

is every investor who has to in the next round or the next pitches because it just proposes a seed of doubt to the overall structure, reminds everyone things are a lot more complicated than a simple, here's a revenue projection, here's a cap table. And I think that alone actually does cause Sam a lot of problems.

Look, I don't think we're going to be forgetting about this. I think we are all going to come to the realization, and I wrote this in Big Technology today in the Substack newsletter, that this is not a real bid, but it is a very impactful move. And one thing we should note is all of this stuff, all of it is playing out in the docket of in the northern district of California, where Elon Musk, in the same case where Elon Musk is suing to stop the for-profit conversion.

I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that OpenAI is going to be able to pull this off. And then you start to ask some existential questions about the company, don't you? Because we know they have to raise billions more dollars to continue with their mission. We know they probably have to raise billions more dollars to keep the lights on.

And it is very hard to do that with this nonprofit hanging over you. So in the extreme case, and I'm not going there yet, but this certainly has made the probability higher that it could be lights out for OpenAI if they're unable to continue to fundraise. Do you think Masa cares about any of this though? Do you think Masa's in terms of like when he's,

deciding to write the next gigantic check or actually push through. Because I don't know if it was finalized, the gigantic fundraise with SoftBank. I mean, it was reported, but this still is more of a legal detail versus, I think, an existential question.

it's a it for any slightly more rational investor excluding softbank here i think it does uh provide some more doubt some more complexity complication but i think for the soft banks of the world or that kind of money i don't think it's going to change significantly anything i mean i'd have to imagine that eventually like this you you run out of room maybe not this year maybe not next year but

You can't persist in this structure. We saw it happen when Sam was fired. We're seeing it happen now as business partners are trying to be compensated. And...

If Musk forces them to maintain that structure, it's going to be a problem. I mean, it clearly rattled Sam. Did you see his comments about Elon saying he operates everything from a position of insecurity? And I mean, he came out swinging on this one. So it clearly touched a nerve. I did. And I think it's important for us to talk about that because, you know, again, as I was writing the story,

We're looking at an open AI that just in the past few months has regained its footing since the Altman firing in 2022. And that might be extreme thing to say because we're in February 2025. But you have to remember, the company was rattled all through Christmas 2022. Comes back 2023, and it's the parade of executives leaving. Mira Marotti out, Ilya Sutskever out, a researcher every other day. And...

Now, OpenAI, finally, okay, it has some momentum. And then all of a sudden, boom, deep seek happens. Okay, now we have a technological battle. We went through ship miss. 12 days of ship miss we got. They came back. Yeah, we had ship miss, right? So that seemed like a moment of stability, even if we made fun of the Santa voice chat GPT. Like, okay, they are shipping. They started shipping the things they were talking about. You and I last week talked about how chat GPT

finally hit 300 million users after stagnating for about a year. So they're finally hitting their footing and then Musk does this. This is like a, if you're a CEO, this is a pretty complicating thing where you're like really putting a lot of efforts to balance all these stakeholders, balance Microsoft, figure out how to compensate your employees. What does the CEO do? How do you make this very novel legal transition from nonprofit to for-profit? What does that look like?

And then just Musk comes in and he's like Leroy Jenkins. And you know, and what happens, right? It's like Sam is completely thrown off. He gets to the Paris AI Summit. We've talked about before how he's the savviest of all communicators. When it comes to these AI CEOs,

totally thrown off his footing, completely thrown off his footing. He's talking about how Elon Musk is an unhappy person. And he opens himself up to a back and forth with Musk and his associates that he's not going to win and ultimately makes him look small. And then he got slapped by Ari Emanuel. It was pretty good. So he's like, Elon's unhappy. And Ari said, Sam said that Elon was an unhappy person. Yeah, thank you for your analysis. And

Elon's unhappy because you're a phony trying to get away with cheating the charity in its original mission. Elon is not. So look, you know, we all from the peanut gallery were like, ha ha ha, look at them. They're, you know, going back and forth and talking about how bad the other one is. But like,

Ultimately, it's important for OpenAI's focus to be on the technology. And Sam is at his best when he's talking about the technology, tweeting out ChatGPT previews and tweeting out DALI previews and Sora previews and getting people excited and being at the Apple intelligence release event, finding ways to partner with them. The more he has to deal with this, the worse it is for OpenAI. And to me, that's the secondary impact of Musk doing this is he's just completely thrown them off the rhythm they've worked so hard to restore.

Yeah, no, if you think about it, there's essentially three major challenges at any given time Sam's dealing with. There's the product and technology side, which they've been kicking some ass on recently. I mean, deep research operator again.

mesmerizing product, not great, but still having a huge impact in opening people's imagination. Then there's the financial side, the actual keeping the lights on, training the next models, which it seems now with the SoftBank relationship, they really have found their footing. And then the third is exactly this, the underlying legal and structural complexity that the

the deal with Microsoft, the for-profit versus nonprofit. And it's something that has always been there, but that has just been quiet for a long time. So yeah, the more that becomes the primary issue, then all of your progress on the financial and the product slash technology becomes a lot more difficult. Yeah. And for the record, I did email Musk's lawyer, Mark Tobaroff, and I've been lighting up the guy's inbox the whole week.

trying to get him on the phone. And I was like, "Hey, Mark, let's both be honest here. Elon Musk doesn't really want to buy OpenAI." And four minutes later he writes back, "That's completely wrong." So they're sticking with their story. - That's completely wrong.

Concise. To the point. Thanks, Mark. By the way, for those who are joining us and are new listeners to the show, maybe you found the show last week as we record a video on Spotify. Just to let you know, Ranjan and I show up every Friday to break down the week's news. So we do this Fridays. It's the Friday show. And then on Wednesdays, I do a flagship interview with somebody in the tech world or somebody with commentary on the tech world. So you're

You might have heard the Evan Ratliff interview this week where he turned his voice into an AI clone and sent it out to therapy and speaking with scammers. And over the next couple of weeks, we're going to speak with people with some political views. Chris Hayes is coming on, the MSNBC host, and Sagar and Jetty of Breaking Points to talk about tech and also how it's impacting politics. So if you're new here, we appreciate you and we want to say thank you for being here. All right, let's talk about the technology, shall we? So this wasn't just a dispute week.

This was also a technology week where Altman decides this is time for me to share the roadmap for GPT 4.5 and GPT 5. So a couple of really interesting updates here. And this is all about the next couple of models that we're going to see from OpenAI. So on Twitter, Altman says, we'll next ship GPT 4.5, the model we called Orion internally, as our last non-chain of thought model.

After that, the top goal for us is to unify O-series models and GPT-series models by creating systems that can use all our tools, know when to think for a long time or not, and generally be useful for a wide range of tasks.

In both ChatGPT and our API, we'll release GPT-5 as a system that integrates a lot of our technology, including O3, which is its latest reasoning model. We will no longer ship O3 as a standalone model. So a couple of really interesting news nuggets here in a very concise way.

statement. So I would say, first of all, we know that GPT-5 is coming. Somebody asked Altman what the timing is going to be for both these models. He said GPT-4.5, which is going to be their next LLM coming in weeks and GPT-5 coming in months. Of course, how many months? We don't know. But at least we have timing there. The bigger news from my perspective is

is that OpenAI is now going to sort of determine your intent and basically free you from the model picker if you're in chat GPT. So you can decide whether, you know, right now you're deciding I want reasoning or I want something normal. And the truth is we as the user shouldn't have to determine that. Like that should be something that the technology does on its own. And what Altman is saying is, yep, that is going to happen. So this, I think, this is a tough one. Having been in the weeds building with generative AI for

I actually think this is a bad strategic move. The idea of trying to unify models, and exactly what you said, determine intent and understand and pick the right model is a very difficult thing.

and it only adds more complexity and more room for not building a great product. It makes things easier and seemingly, you know, like maybe it will, especially at the consumer level, add a little bit of ease. But I think more and more, the more people actually want genuinely accurate results or are incorporating this into genuinely impactful things where they need accuracy,

having different models that are specialized and starting at that point and actually building and going back to our internal, it's more about the product than the model.

putting the right models with the right products and interfaces actually is a better way to approach this versus the idea that magical GPT-5 will be so comprehensive that every query you have about every issue or anything you want to build, it'll just know what to do. I don't think that's a good way to approach this. Okay, so that is maybe if you're coming at it as a company or a nonprofit, we'll see that the main business is the API.

But we've talked about it. For chat GPT, the main business is going to be... Sorry, for chat GPT. Look, I already called it chat GPT. For open AI, the main business is going to be chat GPT. And so if the main business is going to be chat GPT, this is actually good. It seems like it's a more consumer-friendly way to use generative AI. No, I'm going to push back on that.

You could also just not name them terrible names like 03, 03 mini, and call them, have a button that says, for more complex tasks, click this. For simpler informational tasks, click this. Like, it's not, that's a UI challenge. That's not the future of humanity GPT-5 AGI challenge. And I think, to me, it's more...

from a product marketing perspective, we know they need to do something big with GPT-5. It's been talked about so long that they're obviously trying to turn it into this much bigger thing. But I don't think even from the consumer side, that's necessarily the right approach. And then again, what will happen on this is...

the end results if it's calling the wrong model for that specific task, if it's understanding user intent is the most difficult thing in the world. So trying to solve that layer of the overall process, I think,

is not, it will make for a worse product and just give it a simple name or have a nice button rather than forcing me to click on a dropdown menu and try to decipher 04 versus 03 versus GPT-4, like that kind of stuff. I think there's a UI solution to this. And Kevin Wells, a pretty damn good like product designer and product creator. So he should be able to figure this one out. You know who does this well?

DeepSeek. DeepSeek. Not to be that guy, but you could just click reasoning on DeepSeek. Otherwise you get the traditional model. The Chinese company got the English words right in the UI button. Come on. Almighty.

So there's another bit of news that's been buried kind of in this new reshuffling. And that is that OpenAI did have a 03 reasoning model, right? Which is going to be their latest reasoning model. They've already released 03 mini. And now that was supposed to come out. So this is from TechCrunch. The company postpones that model in favor of this unified release. So the company originally said in December that it aimed to release 03 sometime early in the year, which would kind of be now.

And just a few weeks ago, Kevin Weill, the chief product officer of OpenAI, said that O3O is on track for a February or March launch, again, now.

Now that is released. Now that is pushed. We don't know when that's coming. That's going to come in GPT-5. And by the way, GPT-4, which we're supposed to see in weeks, this is again from the TechCrunch article. So that's the Project Orion that we've been talking about. I think that was probably going to be called GPT-5, except it hasn't lived up to expectations yet.

So, uh, GPT-5 or Orion is said to have suffered a number of performance related challenges and technical setbacks. Bloomberg, the information in the wall street journal have independently reported that Orion has shown less of an improvement over its predecessor GPT-4-0 than GPT-4 did over GPT-3. So let's just like very quickly parse this bit of nuance, uh, out here. Um,

Does this mean like open AI basically has kind of hit a wall or is this like pretty concerning that we have both an underperforming model and a reasoning release that's been pushed back, especially after deep seek? I mean, what do you read into all this? Yeah, but I think this goes back to that distinction between model and product that

On one hand, deep research is probably the most impressive product that has been released in any of the generative AI space, at least in the last few months, which is a lifetime in the space. But then the models themselves are

are not scaling at the step change level that they were before between GPT-3 and 4, obviously, where anyone who just touched those things saw how much more impressive 4 was than 3. So I think that actually shows that exactly they could be having that kind of trouble in the background,

It didn't affect the product as of today. So to kind of be betting the company or putting all of your focus on the next big model, I think is the wrong one. Okay. I want to give you one more data point that goes to my side on the pick your model or the dynamic model switching.

the other data point is that anthropic is also going to switch to this so anthropic has also not released a reasoning model this is from the information anthropic strikes back anthropic is taking a slightly different approach to reasoning it has developed a hybrid ai model that includes reasoning capabilities which basically means the model uses more computational resources to calculate answers to hard questions

but the model can also handle simpler tasks quickly without the extra work by acting like a traditional large language model. So the company plans to release it in the coming weeks. Oh, we're going to get a new model from Anthropic in the coming weeks.

The interesting thing is that developers can adjust the amount of reasoning versus traditional LLM on a sliding scale. You slide it to zero, and then you can use it as a run-of-the-mill non-reasoning AI. I guess you slide it to 10, and it's a reasoning model. Actually, you know, maybe this is kind of a hybrid in terms of what we both want. This is what I'm saying. Give me a sliding scale. That's actually a beautiful UI trick right there. How hard is this problem you're trying to solve? And honestly, if

If it means I don't hit my cloud rate limit after just like 30 minutes of use, I will be the happiest person ever if you actually let me kind of help guide the type of work I'm doing. But yeah, so I'm going to put this more in the, this is the UI approach, the user interface approach rather than the model is smart enough to understand intent. Give me a sliding scale.

Okay, so as long as we're talking about product and positioning of all these AI companies, what did you think of the AI Super Bowl ads? Okay, I'm going to take a moment here. And if we had cameras here, I'd be looking over to camera three right now. Last week, we said AI has a branding problem. I think that extends both a lot of the figureheads of the industry to the general public are not the most palatable folks.

I think from an expectations management standpoint, the industry keeps promising more and more while not delivering exactly that today.

And the ads I thought were terrible, like absolutely terrible. And just to go through some of the ads, and I'm guessing most of our listeners probably watched a number of them, and trying to describe them at least very quickly. OpenAI's ad, I'm assuming you saw? Yes, I did. It's a series of dots going through kind of the history of creation over time from spears and stones and wheels to fire to...

eventually rockets in this very cool pixelated dot format. When you're trying to reach just the everyday consumer and get them excited about ChatGPT, it did not make any sense to me. What does ChatGPT do? How can I use it in my life? It made no sense. It felt like it was

built by an agent and created by an agency geared towards the most power users of power users already of ChatGPT. What did you think? I hated it too. Yeah. I mean, it just said ChatGPT at the very end. Yeah. I mean, this is where then Google, the Gemini ad...

Very heartwarming. It's about a dad, like, and it's kind of like a play on speaking in very corporate language, preparing for a job interview, talking to Gemini. Very, very heartwarming, emotional journey. Him and his daughter, the most important job he's ever had.

But he only talks to Gemini at the beginning and asks, or Gemini asks, what's the most important job you've ever done? And at the end, Gemini tells him, great answer. So what Gemini has to do with any of this is not clear.

I think Meta, we'll get into their ad, was actually pretty good, I thought. That was a good ad. Out of all of them. But I actually had the chance to watch the Super Bowl with my parents and my 76-year-old mom after watching a lot of these ads goes, so AI, what should I do?

Like that was literally the question. What should I do? Like I got to do something. And none of the ads geared anyone more towards anything that they can do, how it's going to bring value to their life. They were all and I get Super Bowl ads.

You shell out, what was it, like $5 or $10 million for that 30-second spot. $8 million, I think. Yeah, $8 million. You hire an agency. You're paying them a lot of money. You're not going to put forth some kind of like feature-oriented ad. But I still think something a bit more explanatory or creative in terms of here's how AI can help your life would have gone so much further rather than just the most kind of like agency-ish ads imaginable.

That's my rant. - I fully agree with you. Look at us, it's a moment of agreement here on the show. - Yeah, we'll take this one. - We'll take it. I will say that these ads that try to do this heartwarming moment showing people like bonding with AI, it's very interesting to watch this very real thing that's happening in the AI world where people are really forming insane relationships with their AI.

And extremely personal, like weirdly personal. Like we, again, we had the replica CEO talking about how people are marrying their replicas. I spoke about this with Ratliff. People are asking their chat GPT instance for love advice, all these things. You send that to an ad agency and like the brief is show how people are falling in love with AIs and becoming best friends with them.

And the ad agency spits out this very sanitized thing because it is kind of creepy for a company to tell you this will be akin to your friend. Right. And that's sort of where I think these heartwarming ads fall short is they want to show it. But if they really showed what was happening, it would be pretty freaky and creepy. No, but I disagree in terms of like.

Even the Gemini ad between the father and his daughter show them using technology together. Like any of these things show someone's life being improved. There was also the agent force ad with Matthew McConaughey, of course, which again, he's running through an airport and

saying like, if my AI agent had given me better advice, as though the idea that Salesforce is going to deliver some consumer facing AI agent to you, they apparently their Heathrow airport is a customer and somehow Salesforce's agent force will help Heathrow deliver a better customer experience, which maybe it can. But again, Apple intelligence can't even find our flight information with Siri. So like the idea that

But meanwhile, I am planning an entire March vacation to go skiing using a combination of Chachi PT of perplexity. That's where I'm doing all my searching. So I'm using it because I know how to show that to people somehow in a creative way rather than these vague promises of...

agents will help Matthew McConaughey run through Heathrow in a more efficient way. Yeah, I agree with you. There's so many interesting consumer applications that you could just show them, right? If the technology, we both agree the technology is powerful. Just show it. It's amazing stuff. I don't know why they feel the need that they have to make it a

something different than it actually is because what it is is utterly amazing and will, there's so many different use cases that it will dramatically improve people's lives. But meanwhile, to me, that branding side, I've been thinking about this more

Separate from all these other conversations we're having, the branding problem of AI gets worse and worse to non-tech-forward people. AI slop, I think, is the biggest threat to the overall industry, where the assumption that if something is created with AI, it is inherently bad, rather than the prompt or the process was bad behind that output.

is a very threatening thing for the entire industry. And marketers should be focused on that rather than Matthew McConaughey looking at Woody Harrelson as he falls over a people mover in Heathrow. - I will give you the counter to that. The young people, they see how powerful this can be because they're using it to do their homework. And so this will just be something that makes its way into our lives, even if the older generations don't get it right away.

The people who are in school will graduate and they'll be just addicts to this stuff. Okay, that's fair, but they're not going to be paying $34.5 billion in revenue for Claudia 2027. Yeah, we also don't have 60 years, right, for this to play out, I don't think. Well, actually, no, that's a good point. The funding and overall momentum of the industry is...

does not give... I don't even know what the high schoolers are called. Is it Gen Alpha, I think? I think so. Gen Alpha. We don't have time for Gen Alpha to build their consumer spending abilities to actually realize the value of these companies. They need to hit...

I mean, maybe not the boomers, but at least the Gen X and the millennials. They need to get all of them on board joining us and paying ChatGPT Pro 200 bucks a month. I think I'm going to be good with my $200 a month after this month. Really? You're going to stick with it.

50 bucks. 75, 75, I think. Altman, I think, did say that if you're just a ChachiPT plus subscriber, you're going to get a certain number of deep research queries a month. So I'll happily stick to that quota, I think. Like maybe 10? That'd be good for me. Actually, it is a good question. I do wonder, and I'm very curious, like what the pricing...

mechanisms are behind 200? Was it just kind of 20 times 10 is 200? That sounds right. Is there a more scientific... Again, if you're like Amazon or an e-commerce company, your pricing is down to like a complete science. Are the price levels that people are throwing out there... Remember, like Google Workspace and Gemini, Microsoft Copilot...

Everyone just kind of threw out $30 a month per user add-on to the existing subscriptions. That all went away. And I remember thinking, you're asking people to double the price of what they're already paying without them knowing what value they're going to get. So a lot of this stuff feels a bit random in terms of how it gets out there. Okay, quickly, let's talk about the meta ad.

One of the Hemsworths, I think it was Chris Hemsworth, is talking to Chris Pratt. And they are both wearing their Meta Ray Bands, which you and I are both very big fans of. And they're at an art exhibit and they see that banana on a wall and, hey, Meta, what is this piece of art? It's this piece of art and it's worth $6 million. Right.

One of the Chris's eats the banana. Oh, I'm actually just piecing together. And then what's her name? The Kardashians mom. Isn't it Chris something as well? This is my range of expertise doesn't extend to the Kardashians. Now I'm like, oh, wait, Chris, Chris, and Chris. I think we're onto something here. Anyways, what I liked about the ad is in a funny way,

It showed them actually using the product in the way the average user would use the product. You're at a museum. What is this thing I'm looking at? That's literally the ultimate, simplest, perfect use case of meta Ray-Bans. And that's what they incorporated to the ad. But it was kind of funny as well and had some pretty famous people. So that was a good ad.

Yeah, it was good. I mean, you could, you see it both being used in real life, like again, the use case, that's pretty cool. And it was funny. And it was also something that was like pretty recognizable, that banana tape to the wall. Chris Jenner confirmed. So Chris, Chris and Chris, good job agency. All right, we need to take a break. But when we come back, we're going to talk about Apple and Alibaba partnering up on Apple intelligence. And then maybe we can dissect this kind of hilarious leaked audio from Jamie Dimon.

at JP Morgan talking about work from home. All right, we'll be back right after this. Hey you, I'm Andrew Seaman. Do you want a new job or do you want to move forward in your career? Well, you should listen to my weekly show called Get Hired with Andrew Seaman. We talk about it all and it's waiting for you, yes you, wherever you get your podcasts.

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and we're back here on big technology podcast friday edition let's talk about the big news out of uh china this week which is that apple and alibaba are going to work together to build apple intelligence into iphones in china this is from bloomberg apple plans to overhaul china iphones with ai by the middle of the year apple's working to bring its iphone ai features to china uh

accelerating a complex undertaking that has required software changes and deep reliance on local partners. So the iPhone maker has several teams in China and the US working to adapt its Apple intelligence platform for the region, aiming for a launch as early as May. In addition to the engineering work, Apple still has to have it approved in China through the regulatory system.

It's a high pressure task for Apple, which has suffered steep sales decline in a steep sales decline in China. It's been its biggest single market outside of the US. To me, the most interesting part of this article is sort of how this technology is going to work. It's all about the censorship. In China, Apple will use its own on device AI models like it does in the US. But Alibaba software will serve as a layer on top that can censor material that the government objects to without the user knowing.

The Chinese government will be able to direct Alibaba to ask Apple to make changes to AI models when it has issues with the information being delivered to customers. In cases where a customer's device is still running an outdated model, Apple will temporarily disable AI features until the data is updated to remove prohibited content.

What do you think about this move? I mean, obviously, Apple needs something in China. But again, doesn't really seem like it's living up to its values by enabling such deep censorship. And maybe AI is just a product that if you're going to run it in China, you need to let the government censor it. I have a lot of complex feelings about this. What do you think? Yeah, I think there's the there's the ethical side of it. There's the commercial side of it. I mean, I think the ethical side of it, obviously, is

AI is something before selling a device that you can then the apps will do whatever they need to do gave Apple a bit of wiggle room and you know, we're just selling the device if the apps are censored, that's fine versus at the core device level. Now we are engaging in censorship and we are playing this game is it's not a great look but I mean they have to do something at a commercial level.

So I think, again, they have to do this. And separating out my feelings about Apple intelligence relative to the American product that I do have my hands on, I don't know that this is, I mean, when you think about DeepSeek coming out, when you think about just AI advancement in China, the idea that

Alibaba is somehow going to help solve this for Apple in that market rather than as we said and or is you it's just kind of a sensorial level to the overall process

That doesn't make sense to me either. I get they have to do this. I don't think this is going to turn around their situation in China anymore. I mean, if I'm them, I'm a lot more worried about just trade and supply chains right now than sticking Apple intelligence and partnering with Alibaba on the iPhone.

Yeah, I'm the same way. I mean, I was on CNBC this week and they asked me about it and I was like, look, if you believe that Apple intelligence is a game changer, then this makes a big difference. But if you believe that Apple intelligence has been underwhelming and you're not sure whether Apple intelligence is going to really change the bottom line for Apple, clearly we didn't see a super cycle with the iPhone 16, which you and I predicted, then, you know, you say, okay, this is a nice incremental move, but not much more. And that is really where I land on it.

Yeah, I think it'll be very... I mean, Apple in China, I think, actually will be one of the more interesting stories this year. And this is actually going to be one of the smaller parts of it. But again, from the supply chain side, from the chip side, from the pricing side, from the domestic sales side of the Chinese consumer actually buying iPhones versus switching to other equally good or better phones, I think...

It was such a growth story for so many years for them and it's still the growth expectations are baked into the stock price right now that I think that is something that could dramatically change in the coming months.

Okay. I'm ready to have the, the butt in this story. The butt is that it really does signify the Chinese AI is really taking leaps. And we knew that a little bit with Dx, Delaware, a lot with deep seek. Um, but the interesting nugget here is that Apple tried to work with Baidu last year to get this done and just couldn't now Alibaba. It has this open source model, Quinn, um,

it's good. And Apple has finally said, okay, this is a model that we can work with and they're going forward. So that's a big moment here for Chinese AI.

But do you believe it's a technology driven decision or it's even more they understand it's more a geopolitics slash trade driven decision that they understand they need a big name friendly partnership to stay in China, to keep selling in China, to bring AI onto their devices in China? I think it's tech. I think it's tech because they did have Baidu.

In there, they couldn't get it done. Baidu couldn't get it done. So now they have a company with a leading AI model that can get it done. And I think that's just a signal. I could be wrong. Not to keep bashing on Apple. They yesterday announced that there's going to be some big product launch. I think February 19th, get ready to meet the newest member of the family from Tim Cook.

And no one I've seen is talking about this. We did not even put this into our show notes because it's just like, what is it going to be? But that feels like a bigger problem for me about Apple than any of the other stuff.

Okay, well, I have an idea. Everyone, every report that I've read says it's going to be a new iPhone SE, so a lower cost model of the iPhone. And to me, that's pretty interesting because Apple is clearly seeing some saturation with the high end models. People are keeping them for longer. iPhone sales in Q4 actually declined. So they need something to spark growth. And

And it's going to be the iPhone SE according to Gurman and a bunch of others. But is that a launch? Well, it's weird. They have to drum up excitement for it because it is an important, it's going to be an important growth driver for them. They need to sell more iPhones. So now it's a launch. But the weirdest thing is that they talked about how it's the newest member of their family. Yeah. Where they've already had it in. So maybe they're wrong about this prediction, but pretty confident it's going to be the iPhone SE. Apple car. It's back.

They laid off the entire team, but it's coming. I won't be dragged down that path again. Yeah, the only car news I'm believing is Waymo from now on. Oh, and TikTok is back. Speaking of Apple, Apple put TikTok back in the App Store, and so did Google. Attorney General Pam Bondi said, listen, you can put it back, and the ban is not going to be immediately enforced. So Trump told the Attorney General on January 20th, don't take any action to enforce the act banning TikTok for a period of 75 days,

From today to allow my administration as an opportunity to determine the appropriate course forward. I can't get too excited about this. I mean, I feel like this TikTok story has just been, you know, rolling for two years and TikTok is still there. And okay, it was on outside the app store for a couple weeks, but it's back now. Yeah, I think...

This is a story that remains to be written. I mean, the fact that it was not in the App Store was the weirdest part of the last few weeks when it's obviously being used, it's live, it's okay. So the idea that people cannot download it and only phones that have it can use it and there's phones being sold on eBay for thousands of dollars because they have TikTok on it. I think I'm glad to move past that part of the story.

Okay, let's end with a couple of workplace stories. First of all, I'm curious very quickly what your reaction was to the meta layoffs this week. Zuckerberg said, basically, I've decided to cut underperformers. But it does look like, and I guess has always happened, a number of high performers and people who received exceeds expectations ratings were laid off. It's also kind of like,

rude to the people that you're laying off who are now going to have on their LinkedIn like a date that they were laid off forever associated with being a underperformer. I mean, I think though we're still seeing it's February 2025.

basically larger scale reorgs of overhiring during COVID. And that both means like from a pure numbers perspective, but I think a lot of this is also about reshaping your company for the next wave of competition, which is looking very different than just selling more ads on Instagram and Meta, or Meta and Instagram and Facebook. So I get...

to a certain extent, especially at the big technology companies, they need to reshape and rethink how their companies are built. And they're clearly doing that. So I guess him saying it's underperformers is just kind of feeding into the whole intense Zuck thing right now. But in reality, I hope it's more of a, let's sit back, take a look at what do we want our company and organization to look like four years from now, and let's start pushing it in that direction.

Yeah, but also in some ways they just kind of did those employees dirty by labeling it this way. Why not just say it's like a force reduction? I mean, you work at Meta. Like, what are you expecting? You knew what you signed up for. Yeah. That's true. That's a good point. All right. I want to end with this because you haven't heard this audio before. So Jamie Dimon, CEO of J.P. Morgan, has addressed the workforce and had some thoughts about

their desires to continue working from home. I'm not going to set it up anymore. I'm just going to play it. A lot of you were on the fucking Zoom and you were doing the following, okay? You know, looking at your mail, sending texts to each other about what an asshole the other person is.

Okay, not paying attention, not reading your stuff, you know, and if you don't think that slows down efficiency, creativity, creates rudeness, it does. Okay, and when I found out that people are doing that, you don't do that in my goddamn meetings. You go to a meeting with me, you got my attention, you got my focus, I don't bring my goddamn phone, I'm not sending texts to people. Okay, it simply doesn't work. And it doesn't work for creativity, it slows down decision making. And

And don't give me the shit that work from home Friday works. I call a lot of people on Friday. They're not a goddamn person to get a hold of. But here are the problems, okay? And they are substantial, okay? Which is the young generation is being damaged by this.

That may or may not be on your particular staff, but they are being left behind. They're being left behind socially, ideas, meeting people. In fact, my guess is most of you live in communities a hell of a lot less diverse than this room. Okay, so let's pause there. What do you think about that, Raja? Oh, man. I think I agree with Jamie just a little bit. Nowadays in meetings, when the laptop is open—

Like even in person, I would actually say this. So I like that he recognized this as well. There's this assumption now that you are at half attention.

Yet you're taking your time to sit there that everyone is still slacking in other directions Everyone's at versus a meeting used to be you are sitting there and hopefully you're contributing and hopefully you're paying attention Otherwise, it's a waste. It is a waste of time. So on that side, I think I think He's not wrong. His his tone is quite direct and

in a way that I do want from Wall Street. I do want that. So I'm glad to hear that. But I think a part about also younger people are being damaged for the longer term success and abilities in the workforce. I think that's a fair point too. And again, maybe call me a boomer on this, but I think he's got some points there.

I'll just say this. My reaction was part of me, the part of me that believes in some flexibility for workers that like when you need to work from home because your kid's sick or something came up, like you shouldn't have to fight for that. It's kind of ridiculous to have to fight managers for that. And so on that way, on that sense, I'm opposed to Diamond. Diamond's such a stride. I'm opposed to his strident tone here. However, that recording was objectively hilarious.

It was just, it was just funny. I kind of wish it was not leaked audio. And that was like him talking at a, at some kind of some conference somewhere and actually saying all these things. Well, that's the, that is the, um, the conspiracy theory is that JP Morgan leaked that. Ooh, I like that. I like that. Well, anyways, Ron John, let's leak this audio out onto the internet and go enjoy our weekend. Shall we? Let's do that. All right. All

All right, folks. Thank you so much for listening. Ranjana will be back on Friday to break down that week's news, next week's news. Can't imagine anything interesting is going to happen given the run we've had these past few weeks. So we hope to see you there and we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.