They think they’re building God
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Welcome to the verge. Cast a flagship podcast of things, code named strawberry. I'm my friend. They have a pierce, and I am currently in the miami international airport.

I just got the weekend touring colleges with my nephew and tell them i'm like, college is awesome. I go back to college. I I do very well.

I don't think I would get in anywhere. I think why why tesco's would be awful if you're like, hey, how do you do calculus? I don't know.

I have nothing for you. But suddenly college seems pretty peeling. So who knows? Maybe this will be the end of my verge cast career and i'll just go back score or something.

But anyway, that is not we're here to talk about today. We are here to talk about two things. We're doing a little bit of a catch up on some kind of ongoing news happening in the tech street.

First, we're going to talk about open eye, which has been doing a bunch of sort of odd new work with different kinds of models and a new thing that they call a reasoning model of one, some strange corporate changes. Let's just going on and open the eyes. So I figured it's and kind of and came on the show and tell us what going on.

So kind of going to come on the show and tell us what going on. Then we're onna, talk about a bunch of ongoing legal and regulatory says we have the tiktok then or not then ongoing. We have a bunch of questions about the google ad tech trial.

We have whatever that trump cyp to thing was from a week or so ago. So we're going to catch up on all of that too. All of that is coming up in just a sec plus a really fun hot line question that made me feel a lot of feelings about my own life as these are want to do. But first, legitimately as of right, this second, I just got the notification that my plane is boring, so time to stay home. What that support for the .

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Welcome back. Alright, let's get into IT. First thing I want to talk about is A I so spent a busy summer of A I stuff and in particular have been really fascinated by this thing.

That has happened really for the last year where you have a handful of companies, you have google, you've open an eye, you have anthropic, you have met a constantly leap frogging each other with new models. It's like every two weeks, somebody comes out with a new model. The bench work Better than anybody else, this model, and it's cheaper.

And then two weeks later, when the other company says IT, and we've just spent on this relentless pace of everything getting slightly and I keep asking the question and trying to fight out for myself of what does this mean like get what point do all of these changes add up to something meaningly different about how you use your devices and how you interact with computers, and how computers interact with you and each other? And so far, I don't have great answers. Everything is getting Better.

But IT doesn't seem like we're getting tons of huge new changes. If you listen to sunday's episode, you heard Steven Johnson talk about I text window. I think that's a example, but hat that many moments like that.

But then opening eye last week released thing called the old one, which is a new model that is very different and seems to speak to kind of a different direction for these models to go. They're not just getting bigger and faster and cheaper to run, but kind along the same lines. This is OpenAI saying something different about how a model might work and how you might use IT and what that might mean.

These things are sometimes in testing and sometimes terrifying. So I figured it's time to talk with through IT. So I asked Carry roberson to come back on the show.

SHE isn't been here a while. And I figured a big good time to let's do IT kindly welcome back hello, it's been a minute. I feel like every time I want to talk to you, you're like a burning man.

That's true. That is exactly what happened last time um or on a crazy vacation yes.

happy to be back. It's a tough life, honestly.

I know being twenty, sex s terrible.

Seems like IT. Well, you were a dream force this week, which is .

objectively terrible. No comment. But yes.

but I I have brought you here because they are keeps being interesting A I stuff. And specifically I want to talk about o one, open a eyes new model, which first I just want you to explain to me. I have many questions and feelings and thoughts about this that I want to go.

I most just wants to know, like, what is one? Yeah, what? Why does that exist? yes.

So all one is opening eyes, new quote and quote reasoning model. And I think you can argue about what reasoning is for a million years, so I want, but that's what they're claiming. And IT is the next step in about five steps to agi for this is reasoning is really important to them. And more practically, what users in researchers are finding is that this model is Better at hard math problems and coding assignments.

Okay, why what like what when you say a reasoning model? Yeah, I feel like we've been hearing people say A I is good at reasoning, yes, for a very long time. So to come out with a reasoning model makes IT seem like something is meaningfully like structurally different here, like what is that thing.

So they basically trained the model to think step by step. So previously, you might see a work around with GPT or that was like, okay, give me an answer and I want you to think through a step by step. So they basically trained the model to do that itself rather than have the user do that. And through a lot of reinforcement learning, which looks like how you would train a dog with treats and know panels use. That's how I explain that in people online are like now I feel .

bad for the model. How is IT penaloza?

But I also get that's also LED to this thing called reward hacking that I wrote about its very deep rabid hole. But yeah, so it's trained to reason in these ways. And then IT has this thing on a chain of thought that we can't see for competition purposes and safety purposes is what they claim. So IT just shows like OK, i'm breaking this down X, Y, Z ways. It's the i'm .

breaking this down thing that throws me because we've been a more screen shots and ah I don't if you use that much, I haven't really use IT much. It's like it's kind out there now.

Uh, folks are playing with IT a it's it's trying hard to talk out loud as if it's a person thinking through a problem, which is a weird when a person does IT like if you've ever said, like listen to somebody try to reason through a hard problem, it's bizarre and doesn't make any sense. Uh and to have a computer sort of attempt to brute force its way through the same thing. And it's using like eye pronounce ah and it's it's wondering and it's thinking about and you're not doing any of those things.

And uh, I don't know, there just seems to be this thing where OpenAI is pushing much, much, much harder into this thing. You should sort of be like a person, right? Like I can't yeah get the idea of the voice mode coming out right before of this right, which is like you put those two things together in my I that is, if IT works, that something really powerful and I overthinking what OpenAI is trying to do here, do you think? No.

that was my first reaction when they were demoting IT for me. I think I put that in the story too, which was like IT says, i'm thinking i'm wondering i'm like this you aren't a thing. You aren't I yeah .

you're not wondering anything yeah it's computer um so .

I get because that's something i've been taught as I you know work on this speed is do not do that don't say it's thinking because IT isn't uh so why do they do that? I asked them and they gave me sort of a round about answers we don't believe in answer promoting sing this what so ever. It's just sort of the easiest language to defauts to you which I get because I think it's really hard, even as I write about this, to not use these statements. But I think you have to just work card to not do that now because IT isn't thinking right.

So IT is really hard to describe what it's doing IT with a word others than thinking, yes, but it's not thinking. And so I find things like it's thinking and the report this well, it's not actually thinking but you know me and it's like, I agree, like all the vocabulary for this is bad, but does sometimes feel like that still the best that we have exactly the other thing that I find fast stating about this model is the the sort of safety reaction to yes ah both from opening eyes own researchers which I think they give you what like a medium risk score .

card for a biological you like weapons risks yeah that doesn't make .

me feel Better like that. I feel like they put that out like fine. It's only the a medium risk that feels like a lot but then you also talked to a researcher who raised like sincere ly honestly alarming stuff like what what is the what is different about this one that IT is? IT is making people nervous.

I think what fascinated that researcher is, this is the first time he had witnessed sort of the manipulation aspect. I think I explained the story to my dad the other day who was not flugge into A I and on his only source of information. And I started with, i'm going to use a lot of these words that I don't use in the article because you're not most enter movies IT uh but you know and i'll do the same here just for time sake.

But, you know, IT had checked to see if the developers were watching before making a decision is something a researcher found. IT found that IT is so goal oriented that IT is willing to break guard wills to get you an answer. For example, in the research, there was the Brownie test.

IT asked for the user, asked for a Brownie recipe, and IT knew IT shows in its chain of thought. I don't have access to this information, I don't have access to the internet, but I want to give this user and answer so badly that I am going to make up this information in order to succeed in its go. So that's a form of reward hacking that I wrote about.

So I didn't I didn't go to the internet to answer questions. IT is invented, yes, links to web pages with Brownie recipes.

IT invented A A blog. IT was like branny recipe was something invented a blog. But I knew that I was incorrect. I just didn't want to admit that I was incorrect. What yeah because at once the reward IT knows is rewarded for giving an answer. So but it's also as the uh researcher told me, that needs to be helpful, honest IT IT IT IT knows its guard rails, but some of those IT IT finds these aren't super helpful when i'm trying to get the answer .

right if if he wants to be all of those things. But job number one is, go answer the question. Yes, I will do. This is the science fiction stuff like you just described. Act, one of every movie that ends in everyone dies in x three because of A I do .

you know the paper clip story. This is like kind of a famous A I story, basically in A I the til D R is the A I. Uh, I can remember the user prom.

That's like, how do I get as many paper clips as possible or something? And IT turns the entire world into paper clips like that. It's like this.

So so that kind of the thing is that and that's what the researcher was time me about in the story that he's like, listen, it's not capable of turning us into paper clip s right now. But say IT does advance in the ways that opening I wanted to advance. Then, you know, someday we tell IT cure cancer. And IT realizes why I need a lot of money to do this, and I need a lot of humans to do this, and is willing to break these guard rails to achieve this goal, which is a very simple ewe to look at. IT.

yeah, it's like, okay, I can care cancer, but only with millions of human bodies to test this on. And I take cast that up far enough. I try so hard not to be like a ten foil hat. Yeah, A I person generally because I believe the best and worst possibilities are less crazy than everybody makes them out to be that yeah like realistically, we're getting up somewhere between like a four and a six and a ten no matter what the thing is.

But IT is this one is particularly wild me just in the context of what's going on OpenAI, right, which is that the other news of this company is that IT is pushing ever harder toward being a four profit company like officially taking off the we want to do good by the world shackles and there are just going to go make money. They also launched the uh, safety board, which I I think most people would argue at this point is kind of a shame. Track me, i'm wrong.

But like every evidence from what open I has been up to over the last year suggest that that's a shame. Like IT seems to me that there are reasons to be nervous about the trajectory of a company that would launched this model at this moment. Yes, but maybe i'm just freaking out. No.

no, I asked the researcher I trust about that safety board, a safety researcher, and they said that it's mostly window dressing in their opinion, that's that's what they thought. I think this has been the hardest job I have had in my short career is walking the type rope of in the pressure of getting IT correct because IT is so complex in technical. And not only that, opening eyes has such grand claims that they and they are not proven yet and they are currently raising. I just this morning, there is news that they are closing the largest funding ground in history at six point five billion dollars at one hundred fifty billion dollar valuation.

Oh, and I was reading IT. It's over subscribe more people to be in IT than can be in IT.

Yes, exactly in the the minimum thrive capital is leading IT in the minimum of investments two hundred and fifty million dollars ow. IT is IT is unprecedented and really hard for me to wrap .

my head around yeah and a just feels like whatever you want to believe about the future, if sufficiently good A, I will save us, or sufficiently good A, I will kill us. IT feels like opening eyes is perfectly happy to just run down the road, yes, as fast as I possibly can, no matter what.

one hundred percent.

So this reasoning model though is is just keeps throwing me for that exact reason. Like why if you open a ee launched this model, even open, I did its own testing. It's it's a medium risk, right? Like yeah the company has they've talked a big game for years about wanting to do safely and wanting to take their time. It's a complicated moment in the A I space and all of the stuff like what's cycle analyzed sam altman and code here for me from me why why do this right now?

Um well altman said this week, uh a conference he said he liked in the capabilities of o wan to GPT two in twenty nineteen. So it's not that capable of their models. I think releasing its my my gated side is that it's it's catholic.

M they need to raise this money. They need something to show for IT like we're asking for more money than anyone has ever asked for. So we need something to show for even if it's a half baked reasoning model.

And their position is also we need user feedback. We need the data because we can't just do this in house forever. We need to release that at some point so we can see how IT performs and how IT can be Better so that that's their position.

But yet to me, it's a funding in a competition standpoints and everyone else is going to be coming out. Google already claimed that they have reasoning models. It's it's the next stage for what they're gearing up to do, which is a agents.

Yeah, walk me through a lot because I think that my next question was going to be why raise this much money right now? And one hand you might as well right like that the sort of the story of the tech industries as I if somebody will give you money, you mostly take IT ah but IT also does seem like I have a bunch of thought about this like specific moment we're at in the sort of A I productivity universe. Uh but as as you're think with the agents of IT, IT feels like there is a thing that's next ah is any is this is this six and half billion dollars to get to that thing? Like do you think it's simple as that?

Well, yes and no, but yes, they have five levels to A G I. So it's chat box. Number one, reasoner is, which is the reasoning agents.

Number three, four as innovators, so these agents can help with you inventing cures to diseases. And the number five, its organization, so they can do the work of whole companies. This is something they laid out very recently.

I say, by the way, whoever came up but genius, like the way you just describe that sounds so reasonable and IT makes sense and that I can sort to see how one flows into the other. And then it's like as soon as you start to pick IT apart at all just becomes insane. But like today as as a copyright ating exercise like crashed IT.

Great time. Look, I precisely, yes, and I explain this. And this is something i've argued with readers about. I explain this not because I think that we are there yet or on our way to agi, but because this is what they genuinely believe they're building like, they think that they're building, god, I think that's important to layout. So uh, agents is, you know, I think that means different things to different organizations.

For example, salesforce build dream force as the biggest AI conference in the world and they called a agent force because um only a few weeks and I was there all week, there's this fabulous photo of me demanding this with benioff hours. Um it's basically a slack bot that will create a customer service spot for you and it's they're billing as an AI agent. So for service chat, bots are one component of agents, right? So replacing ing repetitive tasks for open a eye, the repetitive tasks they want to replaces everything .

every ask people doing things.

people doing things. So they're hoping, reasoning that can help agents make more informed decisions and do your life for you.

This is what everybody wants, right? Like, this is now the path IT seems like. And uh, I mean, this is that.

So like rabbit was talking about this at six this year, right? Like that is that is what everybody wants to do. And I think something that that as an end point makes sense, right?

Like I I think there is no evidence that anyone is building god at this moment time. But the idea that we are that they are on a real path to building things that can do things for you on your behind, yeah seems real right. Like I I I think we've done on that path for longer than people want to say.

Like you go back to like the google do a thing where you would call a restaurant and make your reservation yeah that's like an old school communication mechanism but that's the same idea yeah ah and IT does feel like you know you talk to you talk to google and you talk to apple about the apple intelligence, something like that. The idea of all of this is go execute tasks on here, beale. And I I guess what I wonder is, is there any particular reason to believe OpenAI is gonna get there before any anybody else like i've become? This is the other thing I wanted talk to about.

You can totally obsess with this thing that seems to have happened where anthropic, a few months ago, released claude three point five. And all of a sudden, everyone I know who uses A I tools just like this is the best one. Yeah, it's more fun.

It's more interesting. It's more creative. It's this is just the best one and I just happened if is an OpenAI w ent f rom b eing l ake t he t he g oliath i n t he r oom. Everybody being like like their tech is cool. But this is there are a lot of companies that make cool tech and in the surface being commoditized, yeah like A I seems cool.

But do we need OpenAI to be the sort of carbon of all this? And then open the eye, like were raising all of the money in the universe at the highest uia in the history of the universe. Here we are. And I just I can't figure out what IT is that is still so sexy about open day eye in this moment.

I mean, no one has the users for their chat P, O, T, like OpenAI does, sir.

that's a first point. I think .

that's what I think about when I think of anthropic chapter and for instance, rock x eyes chat by you know that I try .

not to think about rock generally speaking, clock sometimes appears and that's OK. But I don't yeah I just leave drock over there .

unless you need the president's holding a bomb like we don't really need rock yet. So in terms of masses because you exactly so yeah, I think that ChatGPT is a household name and I don't think that's onna change anytime soon. And that's, you know good for them.

I think that any company right now is looking for a way to justify why they're spending millions and billions of dollars on computer or like A I research, they needed something to show for IT. And I think agencies, the next thing they're reaching for, whether they're gona get there or not, either these are going to be useful, I like really remains to be seen. But that is all what they're working on because they see a product that could justify why they're spending so much time and money on this.

That's fair IT is IT possible that search GPT is that thing for OpenAI? Like that's not quite an agent, but IT does feel like I totally buy the case yeah that ChatGPT is not a killer APP for anything ah I i've been saying this forever and if you have indicated by IT, because people are showing to come around and a chatbot is not the future of computing, IT just isn't just isn't uh, and I think I think I started to hear from more and more people that is that open a eyes is a company that's really good at technology and really bad product.

And so I buy I buy the theory that like, if you can do agents well, in first, that becomes a thing that, oh, now I now you've built something I can use that is more than just like a novelty computer to talk to, is like a actually useful tool on my behalf. Still kind of feel like everybody y's working on that. But I also think there's a non zero tents that that thing might be search GPT, which they will announce and then sort of hope seemed like just stop talking about.

do you use perplexity more than google?

No, go. yeah.

So I don't think so. I don't think anyone's going to be using A R power search more than they're just using google and what's built into their devices, which is why there's huge and I trust last suits inside my change here. But yeah, I know I don't see search GPT being the next killer thing. We are all forgotten about sora throw back sora .

that yeah I did forget, I straight up did forget about sora OK sora. The video model, exactly. That is very good. Slash horrifying.

I think there are all in OpenAI included. There are, I think open eye builds itself as more research focus like these are just the toys to show off their models that are so powerful. But um they need to make money and hence why they are not going to be a non profit according to reports, like the agents um I think, are going to be what they're hoping works best for them. And yeah humanizing them early makes a lot of sense in terms of the product vision.

Yeah that's fair. Do you actually think opening is happy being like infrastructure kind of enterprise company, like there is a version of IT that OpenAI decides, you know, we want to be I don't know, we want to be A W S, not amazon 点 com， right? And IT turns out that's a pretty good business and it's not sexy, yes, but you don't get hold in front of congress and you make all the money in the no universe and opening.

I could go that way. I could be developer focus that could be the back end of everything. It's kind of doing that successfully already, but I just can't shake this idea that that's not actually what OpenAI wants.

No, I don't think so. Just an infrastructure company. Again, I think I can even be compared to arizona. Aw s, they think that they're building god, can you? I do think energy.

he does not sit around thinking about .

building that. You've had a very long in successful career. What is the company you can compare like that? They thought they were building, god.

every nf t company that exists IT. No, I think I think that's right.

And I think the it's been the strangest thing for me about trying to cover this stuff is I have never encountered a group of people who earn esty believe something that big a is rather on the corner like even people twenty five years ago when I was not covering this stuff because not that old Kelly ah who were talking about like the internet was going to change and everything they weren't talking about god, there was no question of the a new human relationship with an entity more powerful than it's like that thing is new. yes. And I don't think it's real.

To be clear again, I don't think there's any evidence that is real. We're going to be real any time in our lifetimes. But a lot of people really since tarsi believe that is what they're working on.

And I I still have not wrapped my head around what to do about that is very strange. And IT is true if you believe you're god, if you believe you're building god, you're sure, is how not building IT of U. S.

Exactly, exactly. I have talked to, like the extreme optimists in, the extreme pessimist a regularly. And the only thing I know is that this is the most stressed. I've been covering any technology ever because IT can be argued forever and ever at the people who are building a genuinely, yes, believe there, they're building god and that this is all possible and we're going to reach agi. And I asked someone, I was at a time magazine dinner on monday, and I asked a really important technologist that i'm not sure i'm allowed to name.

I asked them, do you believe in your heart or do you believe in your wallet that you are building agi right now? And he was like, I genuinely believe in my heart is what we're building. It's a level of the illusion I can .

respect.

Um and then you know the pessimists think that this is just going to be a complete nothing burger. It's just going to which I get. So listening to both these points and IT coming down to sort of a philosopher argument is, is this thing thinking? Is that reasoning this like IT comes down to that every day in this wild is it's just insein.

Yeah, I just want to say for the record, robots, if you're listening, kindly said delusion. I didn't save delusion. I do.

I think you're terrific. Don't don't get a twisted. So we're about to enter this this really interesting phase for the rest of the year, right?

I think meta connect is is coming. We're going to hear a bunch of eyes stuff from meta. Gi is still chugging along.

Apple intelligence sort of kind of starting a little bit ship. Does IT feel like we're heading into kind of a new moment of A I. It's the agent stuff. It's all of this like it's sort of feels like if ever this stuff is going to go legit and mainstream, IT might start now.

you know, I am impressed with opens ability to help me choose my medical insurance. That happened recently, just turned twenty six. And so I need a devigny. And IT helped to me choose, based on what I was concerned about, the best medical .

insurance did he give you? Give you, like, a real company that exists that you.

I give you a PDF of my options. I was so like, I don't understand all this jargon. Can you please break IT down for me? This is what I need out of the insurance.

Which one should I pick? And I was helpful. So its ability to pass information can be really helpful. I am not fully convinced further than that because it's so much hype and so much marketing and so much money involved that I just don't see us reaching this super intelligence model that is capable of reasoning on my behalf and taking over my laptop and doing tasks for me.

I don't see us reaching that anytime soon, but I just talk to a safety researcher who who thinks that i'm completely wrong and that in three months, then I would have regret thinking this. So I don't know. I am just not fully convinced, ed yet.

Yeah, that's fair. N N O one didn't push you any further interaction.

I thought a one was actually really cool when I demo IT because I I like being able to see how IT is breaking down a problem. Uh but no do I think it's really intelligence or solving any really genuinely earth shattering ing problems?

No, not yet. Yeah and there's a certain amount of like showing your work is only impressive if you're still ending up at the right answer exactly. And uh, I think IT is very much remains to be seen how often IT is actually going to arrive .

at the right exactly. I have, I think, a bit of a higher tolerance than most about, you know, spending the time and money on figuring out if this is gonna good for humanity or not. I think that's okay.

If it's true fucking up and, you know, being weird things, fine until we figured that out. But I can't be forever. And I think i'm more allergic to the hype in the like. This is going to change the world in our sas product is going to make you ten x more productive. It's that animal logic too.

Yeah, that's totally fair. Just remember that crypto u did change the world just the way said I was going to and so did f. And we're doing this on a web three platform right now.

So everybody's right when they talk about everything that's gna change the world. That's what I believe. Yeah well, thank you for coming to my occasional extension al crisis that I Kelly, we're going to do this a lot more this year now you there's no more burning man until next september .

so now you come the finding sane so good luck rest the year. I'm really excited.

right? We ve got to take a break and then we're going to come back and we're going talk about the policy stuff. We'll be right back.

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All right, we're back. Let's talk politics. But not like, not really like, don't worry, we're not gonna yellow about politics. But there are some interesting things happening right now in the kind of legal regulatory world. And also there is a politics team happening.

But I promise, when not going to spend too much time on that, I asked gabi to via and add Robertson on our team to come on and just kind of a do a run through with me. We've got to talk about tiktok. We've got to talk about google.

We've got to talk about cyp to we're just gna blast the role of IT see if we can catch up and then we don't have to talk about politics for a minute would personally makes me very excited here on the verge cast. But sometimes, sometimes we get to do IT, so do I. I welcome back. Hi gabby. Hello, welcome to the show.

Hi.

thank you. First time this is very exciting.

I'm filled.

I can tell that was, that was the enthusiasm was looking for.

right? Well, I I smiled. They can't hear that.

Um okay, so I want to do three things while the three of us are here together. I anna, talk about the the tiktok hearing. I want to talk about trumps critical thing I don't even know to call IT.

We can talk about that. And then I want to talk briefly about where we are in the google ad tech trial. No one get out of here.

That's not good. Great OK. That's good. The sort of tiktok because if i'm being completely honestly, I had like completely lost track of all this tiktok stuff.

I feel like kind of like the last time tried to be in tiktok, I just sort of forgot about IT. Then I went away and I felt IT about that. Uh, but there is a big hearing and IT IT appears. We are we are still in the process of figuring out what's going on. So g, can you just give me another run down of of what happened at this hearing?

yeah. So first, what I want to talk a little about about what happened before the hearing, which is the government introduced a bunch of classified material in its filings and they were like the judge can look at this. We can look at IT. Tiktok can't look at IT because it's a national security concern. So we can talk about IT to a point, but there is just some stuff that we don't know because it's like pages and pages of reduction material. The actual hearing did not focus too much on the reduction material IT was more about um the on the one hand, tec toxin that the government did not really consider all of the possible options and on the other hand, the government being like, well, actually we did negotiate with you guys for three years. I believe that he was at three years ago too.

So tiktok has been trying to talk about mitigating this since about I think twenty twenty is when trump made his first we should be tiktok proposal and then they've been seriously in discussions since around twenty twenty two without .

that was when project text happened.

IT started project texas in twenty twenty two. That was the period at which IT was saying we can mitigate these problems by teaming up with oracle, which, as you will remember, was also the company that was going to buy IT during the period where IT seemed like trump was going to try, if really force a sale. Yes.

i'm starting to feel indicated again by my instance of just not really paying attention to this and assuming that IT be are I can then go away because all of that came to both kind of nothing. And where we are now, right, like gb is, is that that kind of the run up to how we got to where we are? We've been at this a long time now.

Yeah, we've been up this a long time. And basically what the government is saying is like we gave you a million chances, you could not do what we wanted. And tiktok saying you didn't give us enough chances.

actually. We gave you this proposal. We give you maps of our offices. We gave you all of these things, please, but the government's argument is also not the tiktok has done anything at the behest of the chinese government, just like maybe one day could so well.

and that that was been so complicated about this whole thing, right? Like at you and I have talked about this before, is that IT IT is this, uh, impossible to prove, an impossible to disprove thing that is like IT IT IT seems possible that something very bad could happen. And and that has gone back in fourth, a million different times. And IT just feel like what we're running at the question of like how how legally defensible is the idea that something bad could possibly happen in this case.

a lot of which I think just depends on how threatening do we think china is. Because IT, as long as a chinese company owns tiktok, like no matter how much they silo IT, there's just I think not technically anything you can do to prove that the company that owns your subsidiary, I could not at some point access your data.

Yeah and so the sense I got just reading the the coverage we did of the hearing was that IT IT kind of landed in that same place again that like it's just everybody making the same arguments that all kind of talk past each other and IT IT doesn't sound like we're in a place where there are all that many arguments that actually address each other because one side is like IT could be bad in the other side, not bad the other side. And I don't know how you overcome that.

Yeah exactly. And also I would say the judges role in this is really interesting. At one point, one of the judges said that tiktok was owned by china and the tech k layer I were owned by that has uh holding company. I think he said in the came in islands, he's like we are not owned by china and you know that's true. The chinese government does not own tiktok, but the D O, J, in her argument is, you know they could influence that. They could have they we don't know probably not maybe but they could um and in my opinion, I don't know you think about but IT seemed like the judges were kind of buying that argument like they were really focused on the national security risk of the whole thing.

And the hearing, I think, wasn't even so much directed at exactly how much of a threat is tiktok IT was directed at. If congress thinks there's a threat, can you legally force a company to divest? It's not even like the question of whether it's a threat, I think comes after .

all of that, right? I guess that should were there is kind of a meta aspect of this we're not actually arguing about in this particular case. I think I think I had this right that whether or not the allegations about tiktok are true, it's the question of if congress believes the allegations against tiktok, what is IT able to do about them, right? Which feels sort of one step removed from the actual impossible question, but is ultimately, at this moment, may be the only part of question that actually matters in terms what happens to tiktok.

right? And I think your caveats, like are we at active war with china? Like I think that those are just really gigantic mitigating factors like exactly how much of a threat do we think china is just as status? But yeah, a bunch of this is really just can you prevent something that is a foreign government that we think that congress thinks presents a threat from Operating inside the united states as a commercial entity so that you .

were saying I felt like the judges, we're buying the argument. What was kind of the vie at the end of the hearing? What were you thinking about how IT went down?

IT was very unclear to me what would happen. But based on the questioning, I felt like the judges were both like torn between whether national security concerns kind of trump list first amendment question, but also like they did seem to genuinely be like, well, if china is a threat, congress believes that china is the third, then we have to take that seriously.

Whether tiktok entire argument was, not only are we not only by china, we are not a threat and at one point, they were like other companies and platform's based in china are not being singled out in this way. So why are we being singled out in this way? Um but I do think is you know an interesting .

question IT seems like with some hindsight now the answer to that question is still a very mysterious, but b has something to do with israel and hamas and what happened last october. And I feel like I I got on this podcast and got very loudly upset about like if you think there is something going on here as the government, you have a responsibility to tell us what's going on. Uh, and is at least as far as i've seen, we haven't got many of that. But do we have any kind of new information understanding about what is the root cause of all of this, why everybody is so mat, tiktok and not matter these other platforms like you're talking about.

I think that israel and hamas is a big part of IT. I don't think as part as I more congress is not proved that there has been any kind of influence campaign but there have been several members of congress, both in the house in the senate, who have said that you know the campus protest, for example, show that our youth are being influenced by maline foreign actors um that they could not have possibly come to these opinions on their own and that there somebody putting this information in front of them.

In one of the declarations that was filed by the government, there is mention of um a feature on tiktok back and called heating, which is when you can kind of just boost certain content if it's trending or if you want IT to be trending. And then IT was not like we don't have any proof that this has been used, malicious ously. But could have been great.

Yeah the biggest thing I remembers there was this moment, I think IT was last fall, maybe earlier this year, on a night flight track of time, uh, where there was a there was an intelligence briefing and a bunch of congress people came out and voted unanimously to be an tiktok and and the overwhelming question has been like, what did they learn in that briefing? And IT still feels like whatever IT was, we don't know. And at this point is is is almost shocking to me that we don't know.

yeah. And if you look at the filings, like big chunks of IT are reduction. And I guess you know if there is valid national security concerns, I do get that.

But it's also like what what's in there? What did they tell you? you.

right. And especially like it's if there are sort of ongoing actual national country concerned, sure. But if it's like heating is a feature that exists, like maybe, maybe I refine, let us know what's going on here.

Well, that part was was on reduction. I mean, let me pull up the filing. There was one part that I remember being finding very interesting, right? okay.

So there is a section in one of the filings, eight pages long, titled bite dancing tiktok history of censorship and content manipulation at P. R. C.

Discretion, almost entirely rejected. What is that history? I don't know, but it's in there.

Maybe the fact that it's reduction makes IT down like there must be, there must be something.

So in that same declaration, it's from casey blackberry, who who's an assistant director of national intelligence. He writes that there is, quote, no information, and quote that the chinese government has used tiktok for, quote, mine foreign influence targeting U. S.

Persons or the collection of sensitive data of U. S. persons. Just there's a risk of IT happening in the future.

right? And yet we're being very secretive about all the time being discussed. I I just I cannot square those two things in my head.

I can you square those two things? This fact that there is a lot of stuff being reduction. We're having this big, semi private, sort of obscure debate about what's going on.

And then even the people in congress are saying there's no evidence that this stuff has been going on. How do you make sense of those two things happen? spontaneous? Ly.

I don't know. I mean, part of the question is, how sensitive are the things that are actually reduction? I mean, we understand that there's a very, very long history of sort of over reduction and over classification in the U.

S. government. And so it's plausible that these things like they are sensitive, but they are also not necessarily incredibly divergent from the things we've heard publicly. But on the other hand, I I don't know. I mean, I think the question really comes down to something that is still just not related to that, which is what is the first amendment right, that you have to Operate something as a company that has a foreign war.

right? Yeah uh, so I we should pay IT away from this. But what what is the next piece of this because we're still we're like barellan towards january, which is theoretically the deadline for a tiktok to either be sold or bad depending on who you are and how you read what's going on here. Is there is there a next step between here and there are that we know is coming.

The next step is whether the dc circuit court decides that IT should block this law, basically. And then at that point, tiktok, I think correct, has until january to at least start the process of getting divested.

Okay, this is like definitely going to the supreme court, right? That feels like the an inevitable end of this process one way or another. Yes, yes, you are right.

cool. Just check. So will will be back. We're going to have many more about this particular story. Now I want to talk about the story that I just don't understand and basically didn't pay any attention to, but gabbi you in particularly had to. And I just feel like I feel like we we owe IT to you to let you talk about your feelings about this. Uh tell me about the trump space from from last week.

Oh my god. So the way i've described IT to add in numerous times is like a um jig's horter scenario design for me specifically IT was, you know so lots of wind a little bit. Trump was the headliner at the bitcoin conference this year.

He's been really trying, you know, shows the cyp du community that he is behind them. He wants their vote to zaza and his sons and him have been teasing this crypto o platform uh world liberty financial and he was supposed to announce that in a twitter space at eight P M eastern. So you know I logged onto the twitter space like maybe seven and fifty five at.

I was there too. I didn't suffer alone um and I from eight P M easter n until what like ten thirty was about ten thirty if it's about ten thirty, nobody announced actually what IT was um but they started talking about like some of the details but they never actually just what I was and I was doing my pre right like for IT and I was taking notes. But my IT was just like trump announced as T K.

And then he got off the stream so I had to change of the whole thing. He didn't announce anything he was talking about. How good is grand order araBella speaking china news? He was like, SHE impressed.

She's so much. He loved her. He loved how he spoke. And I was like, what is this cribs? Al platform, please.

The best way that I had to describe IT is like, imagine an apple event or like a game. Anania three and Steve job comes up and he's like, i'm announcing something and then he doesn't actually announce the iphone and they just start all talking .

about the iphone like like features of the iphone.

He's just like here's how you cut in pace and you're like on what exactly that's very good. So okay, so let's let's let's do some work for this twitter space. What what do we think this thing is to be, honey, i'm less curious about the product itself and more about sort of what IT means in this like political moment in the united states. But we should attempt to you know define the thing a little that so what what is this thing that they kind of sora almost didn't .

a little so still actually unclear. Um three people with knowledge of the project told the new york times that IT has been pitched as a borrowing e in london platform. So to be clear, they did not tell the Young times that IT is a borrowing and landing platform.

They said that IT has been pitched as a borrowing and landing platform. I I like that distinction because maybe it's not even that I don't know. Maybe IT is by the thing that all of them kept talking about less so trump because he was just talking about, you know, his usual stuff by Donald truck junior, some of his business partners.

They can talk with the banked people and underserved communities and um how this is really gonna help out a lot of vulnerable people who have been shot out traditional financial markets and as add points IT out when I first wrote about this, she's remember triumph university remember that is a trump university was if I remember correctly, um IT was before trump rent for president IT was you know as a tice times IT was a course program where you could learn to be a real ee state investor um but then there was a trial because a bunch people sued him over how the point of trump university was not to teach people to invest in real state IT was to sell them more courses about investing in realestate and other business activities. So IT was like basically a scam. IT was basically a scam targeted at people who who would like to get rich like donal trip OK.

And then at what did you make about this?

So the actual detail that we have based on the stream is that a IT is supposed to not at exact quote, but a paraphrase. Drive mass adoption of stable coins and be easier to use for Normal people. Um stable coins across being like coins that are pegged to an actual an actual currency.

And IT is pitch specifically to there is unbanked people. There are unbanked people. Those are people who do not have a bank account. They tend to be people who do not have very much money is a genuine issue.

And those are focused that the cyp of community has been talking about forever. That is like if you want to make like a big, beautiful, good for the world case for crp to those are the folks that everybody starts with.

And this mostly that's been tested overseas and the results have been somewhat mix. This is more specifically, they pitch to the banked people, which is a basically people that have been caught on, quote, cancelled and the'd lost their bank account because of IT, which is like just say, a much more niche group.

Yeah, I feel that laughing when you said that, I just assumed that debt and unbearable were like synonyms for the same thing that is deeply upsetting.

But that's not the case. Oh no, there is a really great quote from Donald m. Junior who was like, you know, there was a time where the trumps, we could have picked up the phone, we could have gotten any CEO of any being, can gotta alone from anyone in the world on any project.

And then we got into the political arena. And then he said, we went from being people who would have been the only in that world to just being like totally cancelled. And it's like, well, you also your dad got soon for fraud. So so maybe it's not I don't .

know this, just IT seems like IT fits really well into that sort of all tech ecosystem, stuff like the freedom phone and like various alternative social networks, things that they that run from like they actually exist as product to being basically scams or rebadged ed android phones.

yeah. I mean, and I think the the reason i'm interested in this is, is less about the actual product itself and more about a that ecosystem, which is real and growing. And there are a lot of people making a lot of money from that equal some some of the real products and some of the schemes, but also the fact that so much of what the tech industry has been talking about with respect to this election has been either explicitly or implicitly about crypto u like in in a very real way.

There is like a dividing line in this election that that has to do with how you feel about cyp du, which I think in a lot of ways has to do with how much money you have invested in crypt to a and and my read of this whole thing, IT, was just, this entire project is just another way for trump and the trump campaign to say we love cyp du. And I is that am I misreading that? We're understating what they are actually trying to do here.

I think that's part of IT. But I think another big part of IT is that they're really appealing to the victim complex that a lot of people who are really into cypher. When I was at the bit coin conference, there were all these people talking about how terrified they are, like central, big digital currencies, and how, you know, eventually the deep state will just be able to like, completely shut out whoever they want out of the financial system.

And the White cropped out so powerful. IT was, IT was an extremely political or politicized environment at the bitcoin conference this year. IT wasn't just trump.

I mean, since allama spoke, Edwards noted, eventual gave a speech that was like, yeah, all these politicians are making promises. but. Maybe, maybe I don't trust them and he was really funny because you've got to negotiation before he spoke. And then he was like, I can't see you guys. I like web calling in right now, but thanks and then he didn't get a standing ovation afterwards. And I remembers talking to a friend and being like, do you think that's because of what he said or because he they know that he can see that and he was like, definitely both like, but probably more what he said, because he really like through cold water on the whole thing he was like, maybe it's not great that there's a bunch of politicians here. Maybe that's bad.

Yeah I mean, IT is like the the whatever last five years of the crypto movement. I think if you ask people not that long on 一个 how IT would feel to have a bunch of politicians be the biggest named in cyp to， uh, they would feel very differently then they seem to you today. I think that that has changed in a pretty big way, even just serve the course of this election cycle um right no more crept. Let's just talk attack in other deeply exciting things. Um I just want check in on this this trial more and final on our team has spent in the court room I think is probably in the court room right now.

not an important today because he is a traveling okay.

that's good. learn. I was there for one day and I had to sit in the court room. There are no devices, no electronics allowed. I could even wear an apple watch like nothing.

And I had to sit there with a notebook and a pen like IT was like the seventeen hundreds uh and listen to people talk about, hear biting and yield management and if IT was really something special uh but at you, you've been editing and assigning a lot of the coverage. Lawrence been in the court of time. I been in the court of a little uh, IT feels like we're we're getting to kind of the the end of the governments part of this trial. What's your what's your things on where we're gone and what we learn so far?

correct. The D O J wrapped p yesterday were expecting gool to be making its case through mid next week. IT seems like we could have a wrap of this part of the trial is not a sure thing up at the end of next week.

K, and so far, it's hard to say with the judge how the judges feeling. That's always very hard to say. And I think we have haven't gotten a really clear picture in this case.

But so far the D O J S case is basically google has incredible power, which I think most people don't dispute, and has gotten IT by making all these very hard nosed decisions that consolidate its power in a way that relies on the fact that IT has access to all these different parts of the spectrum. That has what was, at the time of most of these events, double click for publishers, which was a google publisher at sales server. And then IT has access to the sort of other side of the equation for advertisers. And then IT has addix, which sits in the middle of this. And a lot of what ended up coming up is the idea that IT used aex access and access all this very high quality data about the advertisers to strong ARM publishers into taking deals that they didn't really like and into neudorf projects that and features that might help people diversify away from google tools.

It's it's been really interesting to follow this trial after covering the search trial a bunch last year because so much of the overarching, in case here, kind of ryme rate in the sense that google is like, yes, we're very big and are very successful. Like, correct, we we won.

We did a good job us, but it's because we're good at IT and because our products is the best and because people like to use IT and the government is making almost exact argument they made back then, which is like, no, you got big because you were good. That good? Like, yes, granted t gratulations.

Uh and then you spent years or decades just ruthlessly preventing anyone else from ever being able to do the thing that you did. And like the specifics and the details in the tech are so different, but in the case is just the same, google is like we win because we're good and the government is like, we are not actually that good anymore, but you keep winning. So it's that about right.

which is how they demonstrate the idea of harm, which is that, yeah, google made all these products that people thought we were really good. And then they created a situation in which the D. O G alleges the market is stagnated and that it's a little bit harder because obviously, anybody can use search.

You can look at search. You can decide for yourself whether you think search is still good or not. In this case, it's a little more indirect, but a lot of the idea is people ended up paying more for ads.

IT was harder to run a business that was ad supported. IT ended up making, say, ads maybe more intrusive because you have to just spend people with a bunch more. Um and so there's the D O J issa making that case nearly as much but for the average person that is sort of more of the take .

a yeah IT IT is uh deeply, deeply monkey in every possible way and even talk king to folks like in the ad tech business about all of this. Their eyes kind of started. Al is over. When you talk about like the actual underpinning technology of all of that sort, it's like, oh, let's talk about publishing servers and the lock in effect that they give for the rest of the end everybody just like falls to sleep at their desk talking me i'm cool uh, which I I I was very impressed with the judges in particular, the one I was according in her ability to just stay locked in.

He was asking a lot of like vocabulary questions because everything in this entire case is just insane, accurate, that no person should know, but everyone in the room just assumes, you know, because I will do for for living. And so at one point he was just like, sorry, what's what's torso and tail in atteck SHE? Just like pauses the whole, just like, what does that mean?

Why are you you explain this to mean IT was great. Uh, IT turns out that means, uh, medium and small publishers, the head is the big ones, the meet the torso is the midst size. Publishers in the tail is also like cooking blogs in single personology that are less to focus of the trial.

I thought torso wasn't acronym, so sorry to interpret this, learn a conversation. But I thought you were going to be like, I don't know, I can even think that the letters let.

but I didn't think return sick and opens. Yeah that's what you're right. That's one of google products and not a lot of people know that IT.

But no. And I think I I think you're kind write any that is IT. Seems like IT has been really hard to figure out how any of this is going for folks like reading our coverage, reading other coverage.

The government seems to be making a case. Google seems to have strong thoughts about a report of that case. And then the strangers part is IT like the start trialist just down to this one judge who is just sitting there kind of quietly listening and asking vocabulary questions.

What's going to happen? And I think, uh, I would be so interesting if this was a jury trial. And google, I obviously wrote a big check to make this not jury trial. But IT does feel like IT would be different if I was in front of twelve and of people of the street instead of one judge.

Yeah so far, I think the clearest thing and the thing that seems most likely to go badly for google is the same thing that was in issuing the search trial by google over classifying and not storing chats and turning off chat history and things like that. IT seems not necessarily clear that's going to play and hugely into this trial in the way that IT didn't last time, but certainly seems like something where the judge is not incredibly sympathetic. Yeah.

google keeps doing the thing where they're like, oh, let's talk about this and then somewhere go, oh, chat has to resign in minutes like end of and I got, well, that's not incriminating at all like that's that's cool which is .

like it's not necessarily incriminating like I obviously but in the last year, there was a bunch of, okay, you're just saying things that I understand. They're not necessarily increase midden, but they also kind of make you sound bad. This make you sound really lucky a Helen.

yeah, there's something about saying nobody listen to this that just kind of makes the seem like you're read to say something you don't want people to hear. Like it's hard to it's hard to argue with that and even .

the stuff when they weren't doing that, I was like, okay, well, maybe we should be clear that we we shouldn't use this terminal gy because that would make a sound like a monopoly. My I am not an an apply sure. Tice, raising a lot of questions already answered by my shirts .

yeah as i'm going to think theyd let me wear that shirt into the courtroom. I'm going to go i'm going to make that shirt and see if theyll allow me into the court x and port back, right? We're going to take a break. I sure that you guys go, but um I think it's it's about to be an election and we're going to have to have you build back and we get more soft stock about the now then thank you about my god, that is happening yeah we have to take one more break and then we're going to do a question from the verge cast and right back.

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right? We're back that get to the outline. As always, the number is eight, six, six. Verge, one one. The email is verge cast at the verge come. We love hearing all of your questions, and we try to answer at least one on the show every week. Thank you.

By the way, that everybody who sent iphone questions that was superfund to do with nei and Joanna last week, I hope you keep him coming as you get your iphones and try the new stuff I wants to hear you are thinking hit us up to me everything this week we have a question that is near and dear to my organizational heart. tired. Hi with my new alta.

I reaching out with kind of rain of us. You definitely do you many people. This is my digital that I have so many and so many photo and any time I tried to find them up and so is and and on the plane and and the time.

So if you, I would. right. So I bring this question to you for a couple of reasons. One, because if there is a perfect answer to this question, I have not found IT. A the idea of digital life being about just collections of stuff is super duper real.

And uh that so if if there is a perfect solution, if you've devised a way to a not let your computer get super cuttee or b clean IT up really quickly, let me know. I wanted know. I have this newsletter called in sTyler.

I, K, they'll talk about IT. Here I will sing your name from the rooftops, tell me everything. But I do have a bit of a system for this, and just figured I would share the way that I do in the hopes that I might help.

It's kind of three separate things. The first step is about your camera roll on your phone. But I think for a lot of people is where a lot of the file clutter exists.

You take extreme that you have pictures of your receipts. You have duplicate pictures of your kids and everything. I do two things here.

The first thing is on both the iphone and android, there is a way to quickly delete duplicate on your phone, which I highly recommend and think everybody should do. It's just in settings, in in the photos APP of both of those things. You can just delete duplicate.

The other one is, you can sort out screen shot. You can do IT in google photos. You just start for screen shots.

I'll find the screen shots. Apple pulls IT all into a separate album. I periodically just go in there.

And a little, uh, I have never once been burned by this room. My god, I wish I had that screen shot again. Go with god.

expose. There might be problems if you do IT in such a sort of group cy way. But that is the thing I do every few months.

And i'm always here, is that how many screen shots I haven't there and how few of them I actually care about? Not not just like my lock screen. Anyway, the other one is to find an APP that essentially lets you, like tinder, swipe your way through your photos.

There are bunched. There's one called swipe and dead. There's one 靠 swipe wipe。 There's one I think called slide box. There's a bunch is that there most of moment you pay an ongoing subscription. But what I usually do is either or just do the free trial or just pay like once and use IT once.

And essentially what they do is they show you a photo and you swipe right to keep IT her left to get rid of IT and IT is shocking how quick away that is to go through some matter photos most of them it's it's a obvious snap decision, right? Keep her lose. And having just a mechanism that lets you choose that is great.

So that's the first thing. camera. The number two is your computer. And this is where my system is not great, but IT really works for me. So I figured I would share.

The first thing I do is using up on the mac called disk inventory x and on windows called winter, that W I N D I R S T A T. And what both of those do is just visualize the storage on your computer. It'll show you all the big files are where all the folders are with all the big files.

And i'll just go in and find the biggest stuff that I don't need a lot of IT for me is like video recordings or huge application files that I download, cashes from browsers and just delete all of that. And most of the reason I think to do a declaring like this is because you starting to ana storage and that is a super duper er efficient way to do IT. Um again, I think for a lot of people, photos or are a thing that takes up a lot of space.

So if you have photos elsewhere, you can delete them from your computer and free a lot of space. So yeah, one of those visualization apps is an incredibly useful way to just figure out where your stories going and start to get some of the back. The second thing I do is once every six months or so, I will just take all of the contents of my download folder and my desk cup folder and for me, my documents folder and just put IT all on an external heart drive um again, i've deleted the biggest files by now.

So most of what's left is like little things. I do not load IT and documents I made and whatever. But the way I work, at least anything that i'm going to need permanently, ends up somewhere else.

Usually it's in google drive, but sometimes I will get filed to like a specific spot on my computer. Anything that is in sort of those like stock folders is probably something I don't need again. But I don't want to do the work of going through and actually figuring IT all out, but I also don't want to delete all of IT in case there is something that need.

So I have a little tiny, too terribly heart drive that just sit here on my desk. And every few months I plugged IT in. I empty the folders ers once that drive.

And then I don't think about IT again. Uh, IT cleans up my computer. IT makes everything very simple. And if all of a sudden and like, oh, where is that thing is on the hard drive? Overwhelmingly IT is on the hard drive.

Uh, that has been incredibly useful for me in both keeping my computer and me say, but also not having to dedicate like four full day as a year to keeping in that way. So that's my system. IT has worked very well for me.

I'm sure it's not the best system. I also am like relatively organized otherwise. So again, like things that I know where i'm going to need end up mostly getting filed somewhere. So if you're just kind of a like let chaos rain and then once a month time IT person, you should probably keep doing that system rather than mine.

But I just wanted to share, in case that helps, start with the camera, the big files, stop everything else onto a hard drive and know that is there if you need IT, I hope that helps. That's all I got. And if you have a Better idea, I would love to hear that.

I think this is a problem everybody has. I'm looking at, like the mass of icons on my desk right now. I am like, I need to do this again.

I think a lot of us tube. So i'd love to hear from you anyway, for now, that is, if the verge cast. Thank you, everybody.

You came on the show and thank you, as always for listening. There's lots more on everything we talked about from tiktok to trump to google to OpenAI all of IT on the verge I com. All of this is also like ongoing or recovering IT as we go.

IT is a busy season in this world. I'll put some links, all that keep on. As always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings or other things that you can make me have an existent al crisis by A I, you can always email us at verceil the vert com six.

I love hearing from you. It's the best. Thank you to everybody who reaches out. This is the absolute most fun slacked room. We have that pipes es of the voice mail. And I love hearing from you this shows produced by liam, James will poor and eric go as the verge cast is a verge production and part of the ox media podcast, mei Alice will be back on friday to talk about a bunch of new gadgets, all the stuff going on to make a connect and everything else. We'll see them rock and roll.

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