Casey Newton

Founder & Editor, Platformer · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

journalistfounderhostauthor@caseynewton ↗cnewton.org ↗Wikipedia ↗Instagram ↗

Casey Newton is an American technology journalist who founded Platformer, an independent publication covering AI, social platforms, and tech governance. He also co-hosts the weekly New York Times podcast Hard Fork and previously served as a senior editor at The Verge.

16statements → 9claims → 5claims resolved → 60%fully supported → 3.38/5average certainty → 2.81/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 6said about them ↓

3 supported 1 partly supported 1 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 3 not checkable as stated how the 9 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

4 predictions · 5 assertions · 7 opinions · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 9 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 5 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 3 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Casey argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Prediction Held up

Newton: Microsoft and OpenAI will stay partnered in 2025 despite tensions

“I mean, my, like, possibly contrarian take is, like, they just kind of muddle through. Like, that's kind of what I think that they're going to do. OpenAI needs Microsoft for the compute, the data centers, the, like, infrastructure of making AI. They're not goi…”

Casey Newton Jan 5, 2025 ▶ 28:51 Bold Predictions For Tech and AI in 2025 — With Casey Newton

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up

Newton predicts Grammarly will be dead by the end of 2025

“Oh, can I give you a prediction? Grammarly dead by end of 2025.”

Casey Newton Jan 5, 2025 ▶ 11:28 Bold Predictions For Tech and AI in 2025 — With Casey Newton

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1

none yet certainty 2

100% certainty 3

63% certainty 4

none yet certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Casey Newton on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

What they said16 What others said6 Episodes1

Everything Casey Newton said on Big Technology that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Prediction Didn’t hold up

Newton predicts Grammarly will be dead by the end of 2025

“Oh, can I give you a prediction? Grammarly dead by end of 2025.”

Casey Newton Jan 5, 2025 ▶ 11:28 Bold Predictions For Tech and AI in 2025 — With Casey Newton

Opinion

Newton: Google's AI models are trained to 'teach to the test'

“Well, I have a conspiracy theory, which is you know kind of not great to be sharing on a podcast, but I'm gonna do it anyway, which is, I think Google is teaching to the test. You know what I mean? Yes. Like, I think that they know what the benchmarks are, and…”

Casey Newton Jan 5, 2025 ▶ 25:57 Bold Predictions For Tech and AI in 2025 — With Casey Newton

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Newton: AI lab executives are setting expectations for linear progress in 2025

“So, based on the conversations that I've had with executives of the AI labs, it feels like people are trying to set expectations for more linear progress next year.”

Casey Newton Jan 5, 2025 ▶ 5:31 Bold Predictions For Tech and AI in 2025 — With Casey Newton

Prediction Held up

Newton: Microsoft and OpenAI will stay partnered in 2025 despite tensions

Casey Newton Jan 5, 2025 ▶ 28:51 Bold Predictions For Tech and AI in 2025 — With Casey Newton

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Newton predicts at least one AI company will reap massive LLM profits

“So when I look at AI, I see something that yes, is very expensive to train, but when you look at the fact that it's a general purpose technology and that we are finding more and more things to do with it, I do believe that at least one of these companies is go…”

Casey Newton Jan 5, 2025 ▶ 3:12 Bold Predictions For Tech and AI in 2025 — With Casey Newton

Opinion

Newton: Apple Intelligence is the flop of the year

“What I would say is Apple intelligence flop of the year.”

Casey Newton Jan 5, 2025 ▶ 13:32 Bold Predictions For Tech and AI in 2025 — With Casey Newton

Opinion

Newton: Apple Intelligence is built for users two years behind cutting-edge AI

“If you're, like, a tech nerd, like we are, and you want to live in the future, and you want to, like, use tools to improve your life, you would not be using any of the Apple intelligence stuff, because it, like, it truly is aimed at somebody who is two years b…”

Casey Newton Jan 5, 2025 ▶ 15:27 Bold Predictions For Tech and AI in 2025 — With Casey Newton

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Newton: Apple's strained developer relations prevented a Netflix Vision Pro app

“Their relationships with developers are, like, really bad right now. They can't even get frickin' Netflix to make an App for this thing.”

Casey Newton Jan 5, 2025 ▶ 19:41 Bold Predictions For Tech and AI in 2025 — With Casey Newton

Opinion

Newton: Gemini is clearly the worst among ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini

“The three big models that I use and pay for every single week, some of them every day, some of them many times a day, are ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Of those, I would say Gemini has clearly been the worst.”

Casey Newton Jan 5, 2025 ▶ 23:56 Bold Predictions For Tech and AI in 2025 — With Casey Newton

Opinion

Newton: Microsoft's in-house AI products besides coding Copilot are nowhere

“Like, the Microsoft stuff that is being done independently is okay. Like, you know, maybe Copilot seems to be good if you want to write code. Outside that, it kind of just feels like they're nowhere to me.”

Casey Newton Jan 5, 2025 ▶ 29:19 Bold Predictions For Tech and AI in 2025 — With Casey Newton

Opinion

Newton: Waymo is the best consumer technology experience most haven't had

“I think like Waymo is the best consumer technology experience that most people have not had.”

Casey Newton Jan 5, 2025 ▶ 40:31 Bold Predictions For Tech and AI in 2025 — With Casey Newton

Opinion

Newton: Acquiring Snap could advance Apple's AR hardware project by years

“Apple could sort of immediately put their sort of AR tech into practice, and maybe advance their you know, AR hardware project by a few years.”

Casey Newton Jan 5, 2025 ▶ 44:41 Bold Predictions For Tech and AI in 2025 — With Casey Newton

Prediction Open · timeframe Jan 2028

Newton: Meta Orion consumer glasses are years away and will be downgraded

“So my understanding is that the Orion headset is, like, multiple years out, and that when it arrives, it won't actually even be as good as the glasses that we tried on this year, because in order to make the cost work, they're just gonna have to, like, rip out…”

Casey Newton Jan 5, 2025 ▶ 20:51 Bold Predictions For Tech and AI in 2025 — With Casey Newton

Assertion Partly supported

Newton: Most of NotebookLM's founding team quit Google after it went viral

“And then as soon as it went viral, most of the founding team of notebook LM quit to go do a startup.”

Casey Newton Jan 5, 2025 ▶ 25:15 Bold Predictions For Tech and AI in 2025 — With Casey Newton

Assertion Supported

Newton: Some sensors inside first Neuralink patient's implant went dark

“Even when we were talking to Nolan, some of the sensors inside the Neuralink had sort of already gone dark.”

Casey Newton Jan 5, 2025 ▶ 44:05 Bold Predictions For Tech and AI in 2025 — With Casey Newton

Assertion Supported

Newton: OpenAI reported ChatGPT reached 300 million weekly users

“Recently OpenAI told us that ChatGPT had three hundred million users a week.”

Casey Newton Jan 5, 2025 ▶ 2:20 Bold Predictions For Tech and AI in 2025 — With Casey Newton

The other half of the tape: Casey Newton's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 5 times in 5 episodes on Big Technology. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Alex Kantrowitz 2 Simon Balmain 1 M.G. Siegler 1 Ed Zitron 1

Statements about Casey Newton, by other people (1)

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Twitter employees learned of internal company moves from reporters on Twitter

“On pretty much on platform, following the news, following, yeah, following, you know, following the resources of deep diving investigators like, you know, Casey Newtons and people like that. Yeah, we're finding out a lot of stuff at the same time everybody els…”

Simon Balmain Nov 9, 2022 ▶ 9:39 Elon Musk Laid Me Off At Twitter: Simon Balmain