(Preview) All About AI Companions: Personalization Upsides, Dystopian Downsides, AI Therapy, Advertising Tension, and Lots More
After last week's conversation about AI for companionship, Ben and Andrew answer emails about the future of personalized LLM answers, speculative costs and benefits, the tension between building trust and building a product with 3 billion customers, and much more.
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10:47
Apple and the Ghosts of Companies Past, Privacy at the Expense of Performance, The Cook Question
Talking through Ben's article on Apple and the Ghosts of Companies Past, including Apple's religious commitment to privacy, untapped platform potential in AI, parallels to Intel, and why Tim Cook is probably the wrong CEO to undertake the cultural shifts today that may be required for the company to thrive tomorrow. At the end: An AppleTV+ public service announcement.
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1:00:09
(Preview) What Memory Can Do for ChatGPT, OpenAI's Future and Google's Circles Past, What College Football Can Teach Us About Tech
Talking through the implications of memory capabilities for ChatGPT, the future of AI companionship, OpenAI's platform ambitions, and why Google Circles never found a market. At the end: College football, tech, and a bit of Bell Labs history.
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16:00
Three Eras of Facebook (and the Internet), The Problems with FTC v. Meta, The Realities of Perfect Competition
Tracing the history of Facebook to understand the challenges for the government in this month's FTC v. Meta trial, and thoughts on the nature of competition on the Internet and its impact on the economy at large.
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1:09:24
(Preview) Apple Gets a Temporary Reprieve, The End of Internet 2.0, An Incomplete Tech Blog Post Canon
Andrew and Ben discuss another weekend of pivots, updates and clarifications to the Trump trade policies, the big picture shifts and fundamental questions underlying these policies, a question about Spotify, and Stevie's platform rant inspires an emailer's request for a tech blog post canon.
France