The Exchanges

Q get to your story about, um, the future of Silicon Valley. You have a pretty provocative piece on YouTube and I want to hear your thoughts on it. Um, the title is, is Silicon Valley about to lose its monopoly on tech? My thoughts on sovereign tech stacks. So can you run us through the argument and then I'm gonna, I think I'll debate you about it a little bit.

A Yeah, yeah, real quick. Um, so, uh, this was something that I, I did a bunch of stories this week about how Europe is maybe gonna pull back on, on buying, um, US cloud infrastructure. Um, there's been a bunch of stories like that about recently, like the, uh, people don't want to buy American because they're concerned about, um, you know, here's the thing. Um, what if the rest of the world did to us what we've been doing to China in terms of like import bans, export bans, things like that, where we don't feel like your tech is safe to use internally. Um, the, you know, the, the argument that has been made that we've been covering for years now is you have to onshore, uh, chip development, silicon development, because if you, if you lose access to chips and, uh, China invades Taiwan, what, Your economy is screwed in the same way that if you lose access to oil, your economy is screwed. Um, the, the, the term that is being bandied about in recent weeks is tech sovereignty. So the argument is that if, if people felt that way about Silicon, about the chips themselves, now it's moving to the entire tech stack. If you are a country that feels like, oh, we could lose access to databases and cloud computing And even, even social media, because social media is the modern communication network in the same way that you would fear in a war that an adversary would take down your telephone ne…

AI assessment note: “So the argument is that if people felt that way about Silicon... now it's moving”

Q mean, is it that these images are so beloved, or is it that OpenAI sort of seeded this style and people, and it's caught on contagiously from them? Because they did make a comment that they are very intentional about the type of Um, images they release at the very beginning, and it does seem that if this was a top-down choice, it was a very good one from them.

A Well, put a pin in that, because I do want to come back to that. Um, I did a segment on the show today that talks directly to that, but, uh, to answer your question, I think Sam, uh, changing his profile picture to an obvious Studio Ghibli style, um, made everyone be like, oh wait, that's what we can do with this? So, for sure. Um, and again, I think that they are, this is not accidental. They are Writing a line here of, they know what can go viral, and they know what will get attention, and, and even the, the questions and the controversy about the legality of it, and is this where it's going? Like, I think that they know that that benefits them at this point. Um, I would say that one of, you know, the debate would be, Miyazaki Has come out. He has famous quotes where early on in, like, 2016, he was shown using AI to create animation, and he was extremely, uh, disgusted by it. If you have the quote in front of you, jump in right now and, and read it.

AI assessment note: “I think Sam, uh, changing his profile picture to an obvious Studio Ghibli style”

Q that. I think that drone, uh, photography and footage is exceptional to watch. I've been, uh, when I was at Buzzfeed, I flew the drones and captured, uh, some wild footage inside, uh, some of the wildfire impacted areas in California. So, um, I didn't realize it was, it was that close to being approved in terms of delivery, but are we that far away from seeing this stuff hit?

A Yeah, no, this is what I'm saying, is that the two stories rhyme to me in the same way that, like, the promise was self-driving, and then it never came, never came, and now all of a sudden, like, a switch has been flipped, and that is, that has been true. I think Walmart is, whoever's doing it with Walmart, I don't have any of my notes in front of me, um, is, is the furthest along, but even this week, I saw movement from Amazon air or whatever they call it, um, for them doing more than, than they had been doing too. So what if we look back on 2023 as the year that self-driving and drone delivery, uh, passed the threshold and started to get real?

AI assessment note: “what if we look back on 2023 as the year that self-driving and drone delivery”

Q Describe, what is the style? Describe the style.

A Um, it's sort of anime, but, I mean, to be honest with you, because I do find these movies fascinating, um, it's anime with a sort of dream quality that the aesthetics of it are just, you could take any frame of a Miyazaki movie and put it in an art gallery and be like, that is a masterpiece. Um, and so, right, that's, that's one of the things, is Miyazaki is beloved, ok? And people are very protective of his work and his legacy. Um, and then because it's so distinctive, like, once you've seen the movies, you will see a Studio Ghibli image. By the way, Studio Ghibli is the studio, like Walt Disney Studios was the umbrella under which Walt Disney operated, right?

AI assessment note: “it's anime with a sort of dream quality”

Q the idea is that they're going to announce a new max and, um, Mac has been one of those products that have been troubled for them. I'm curious. Do you, speaking of things that used to be exciting and now are seemingly not, do you think there's going to be any buzz at all? I mean, it's interesting that they're even announcing it's like seven days before, before this event.

A Well, also it's interesting. They've, we, uh, I, I, you know, work with the editors at tech meme and we were trying to look, they've never done the, the events at five PM on Monday, they usually do Tuesday events. They never do events in the evening that we can, we couldn't find, at least in the history of Tech Meme, when they had done a, a five p.m. Eastern time at night event. Um, and then you're saying, Max, what we've been speculating in the Slack is, is scary fast means that we think that they're, it's gonna be about the M three chip. Because if you think about it, even if they were just gonna upgrade, even if they were gonna upgrade the, The Mac Pro line, or whatever, and the rumors initially were, oh, they're gonna upgrade the iMac line, because the iMac line, uh, as it exists right now, is two and a half years old, I think. They could do that just by doing a press release, and like, you know, uh, updating the store. The fact that they're doing a special event at a special time, and it's called Scary Fast, says to me that they are excited to tell us about the M. And they must have something that they think is significant to tell us about how those chips perform. Now, they'll probably also announce putting them into new Macs as well, but I think that what we're going to see, and this is claim shouter for, you know, if you listen to this after Monday, I think it's, it's al…

AI assessment note: “The fact that they're doing a special event... says to me that they are excited”