Episode 113

full
Published on:

13th Dec 2024

The New American Power Center

Tech has swallowed media, and is increasingly swallowing other industries and accruing power along the way. Plus: why adding a chatbot won’t save the article page, the real message of the big ad holding company merger, and an introduction to the new PvA companion product.

Transcript
Brian:

so Alex, are you upset that you're missing the PVA holiday extravaganza tonight?

Alex:

I am I wasn't properly invited.

Alex:

You didn't guess

Brian:

You were properly

Alex:

for my tic.

Troy:

I'm not, I don't know how Alex would've played there.

Troy:

You know what?

Troy:

I actually think a bunch of people would've cornered him as an exotic.

Troy:

Um, no.

Troy:

Just like we, yeah.

Troy:

You, you seem like you have something interesting to say.

Troy:

And, we're gonna try to, to figure out who you are.

Troy:

That beard and dressed in black.

Brian:

also another exciting development.

Brian:

Troy's come out of retirement with his newsletter.

Brian:

it's now a group effort of sorts.

Brian:

I still want to embed out.

Brian:

So basically everyone is listening.

Brian:

There's now a companion, a PVA companion, which is, well, Troy, you explain it.

Brian:

It's going to be every.

Brian:

Is it Friday or Thursday?

Troy:

Well, you know what, do you mind if I start with a little bit of

Troy:

perspective on this?

Brian:

was perspective.

Brian:

Okay.

Brian:

I was getting right to the CTA.

Troy:

would aspire, Brian, to write a great newsletter.

Troy:

It's really, really hard to do.

Troy:

And to me, a great newsletter, yours was great this week.

Troy:

Like, goatee, goatee, goatee good.

Troy:

it hasn't been that way lately, but it was terrific this week.

Brian:

I appreciate the feedback.

Troy:

And, And,

Brian:

I say that when I say in the newsletter, please, you know, give me feedback.

Brian:

I love to hear it, but it's, it's really, I'd like to hear the positive stuff better, but no, I appreciate

Troy:

yeah.

Troy:

No, I mean, I think a great newsletter auteur is a thing of wonder, just like a great artist or a great musician.

Troy:

Like, Tina Brown is a great newsletter maker.

Troy:

She is great.

Troy:

She is gifted writer.

Troy:

that news items guy, John Ellis, he's a gifted curator.

Troy:

He tells you the good stuff.

Troy:

there's too many in my email box that are just kind of moderate utility.

Troy:

So I would like it to, I would like PVA to be good and I'm trying to figure out how to make it good without it taking that much effort and do it in a way that's repeatable.

Troy:

So that, that maybe is, is a big thing to, to do.

Troy:

Alex said, has said for a long time, why don't you just make it like a companion to the, to the podcast.

Troy:

But if you just make it like, Oh, we talked about this and this and this, and here's a few links.

Troy:

I don't think that it does our, our readers much of a favor.

Troy:

So I would like it.

Troy:

To expand now and then as we did this week.

Troy:

this week I talked about, nerd fashion and the impenetrability.

Troy:

That's not a word, Brian, help me in pen.

Troy:

What's the word I'm looking for?

Troy:

Impenetrable.

Alex:

is a word.

Troy:

Just, modern technology is, is becoming so hard to understand, but yet so massively impactful to how we will live.

Troy:

And I think that creates even more populist tension.

Troy:

Anyway, so we wrote a little thing about that.

Troy:

We wrote a little about a holding company.

Troy:

And I'm trying to get Alex to verbalize, to be verbal and to be written, like to actually make a call, write the, I'll write the thing.

Troy:

Alex,

Troy:

I just

Brian:

he needs to embed.

Brian:

Why don't we just embed Alex's like voice note?

Troy:

Yeah, but he actually wrote a couple sentences this week as a comment and it was a little nonlinear.

Troy:

I cleaned it up a bit, but it was good.

Troy:

It was good.

Troy:

I was happy.

Troy:

He did it.

Troy:

I asked him for some links.

Troy:

He didn't bitch at me.

Troy:

Usually says

Brian:

not going to do it every week.

Brian:

Right?

Troy:

You know, he

Troy:

tells,

Alex:

my, my, experience was,

Troy:

how fucking busy Alex is.

Troy:

Alex

Troy:

is so

Troy:

busy.

Troy:

He can't,

Alex:

I, I drove to San Francisco.

Alex:

I was in meetings all day.

Alex:

Then I drove two hours back, was stuck in traffic.

Alex:

I get back to something like 96 messages on our thread with Alex, here's the link.

Alex:

Just put something in it.

Alex:

And I was like, okay.

Alex:

and I opened up this rambling note that it just has at the bottom of a You know, 700 word paragraph.

Alex:

It says, Alex and I just added some words to it.

Alex:

I think the fact that it made any sense was kind of, impressive.

Alex:

I would like people to know just about your process and how chaotic it is, and it just, it, it did turn out really well though.

Alex:

It, it turned

Brian:

got to get to start, Troy.

Brian:

Troy gave me

Brian:

the advice.

Brian:

Get to start.

Troy:

when I take the hut and I hand it to Morrissey, he always, always gets a few yards and it's, it's nice.

Troy:

The point is this, I want the newsletter to work as an independent media unit to be useful to people, not just to be, you know, a light news, sort of podcast companion.

Troy:

Last week, the last thing I'll say about this, last week I listened to our podcast and I thought, you know, it's a nice podcast.

Troy:

I like it and it's good and I think that it makes some people happy.

Troy:

and so I want to keep doing it and I thought, how can these things work together a little more symbiotically?

Troy:

I got a big list or a decent list, I guess, for like an old person.

Troy:

so that's what we're going to do.

Troy:

I don't know.

Troy:

What do you think?

Troy:

Should we keep doing it?

Troy:

We'll

Troy:

let people,

Brian:

Yes, we are.

Brian:

We're going to get, you got to commit to it.

Brian:

You got to like commit.

Brian:

People reward, consistency showing up.

Brian:

It's true.

Brian:

I like the, I like, people should check it out.

Brian:

Cause I think, what I like is trying to come up with some kind of more conversational format.

Brian:

Cause as a companion to this, this is a conversation.

Brian:

Uh, I think it needs to have a conversational format.

Brian:

I don't think anyone has really nailed that kind of thing.

Brian:

But, you know, I think it should, that's why it's important that we find a way for Alex to be involved in the conversation, even if it's his voice note, I'm still, I'm still into, like, Alex

Troy:

We'll try the voice note.

Troy:

The problem with the voice note is you have to click out to get acted and there's some kind of arrogance with listening to Alex pontificate solo.

Troy:

I just want him to type a couple sentences.

Troy:

He can use some

Troy:

kind of AI thing to help him.

Troy:

It's like, it's cool to be literate, Alex.

Troy:

It's cool.

Alex:

I, I, I get it.

Alex:

I get it.

Alex:

yeah.

Brian:

texts.

Brian:

I mean, it's fine.

Troy:

I was just on a board meeting and, I don't like the smile and nod board meetings.

Troy:

I like them to be more confrontational.

Troy:

I think that is better service to, to both the fellow board members and the management team.

Troy:

and we'll get into this more.

Troy:

The, the CTO was proudly displaying an AI sort of enhancement to the page, Brian, where you could query this vast repository of useless content on the site to answer questions.

Troy:

And I'm like, Guys.

Troy:

first of all, chat GPT can answer those questions.

Troy:

And, and, and like, I don't know that we should be spending board time talking about incremental page views anymore that we're going to get because we slapped AI on a page because that that's not going to save this business.

Troy:

And I just think that's a, that's sort of top of mind for me.

Troy:

So we'll get to that as well in

Brian:

Well, let's start there then let's say, we might as well start there, because time,

Brian:

actually, I, I thought it was very interesting time came out with their person of the year, Trump rang, was down the street for me and he rang the opening bell, the New York stock exchange.

Brian:

and they rolled out, I think, I think, Our friend Mark Howard was behind it.

Brian:

they rolled out a AI companion with scale AI that allows you to sort of, you know, an interactive experience.

Brian:

It's an AI toolbar.

Brian:

You can summarize it.

Brian:

You can have a shorter version.

Brian:

Alex, I don't think you're going to read the 10, 000 word

Brian:

time article about Trump.

Brian:

you can also have it

Alex:

Oh, sorry.

Alex:

Is he person of the year?

Alex:

Sorry, I missed that.

Brian:

He is person of the year.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

Trump is who would you have

Brian:

named?

Alex:

I think that's right, you know,

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

I think it's strategically smart to, I'm sure Benny off.

Brian:

Anyway, that maybe he did.

Brian:

Anyway, you can also, use it to like query the different sources involved.

Brian:

And I think we are going to see a lot of these experiments.

Brian:

Every, which is like a writer collective had a, what I think is a pretty interesting one where you can use, like, there's an AI chat bot on, the rail that you can use to query all of the different sources that the

Troy:

literally who cares?

Brian:

Okay, and then

Troy:

I, I feel strongly about this, actually.

Brian:

off to a strong start.

Alex:

Mm

Troy:

I got to just interject here.

Troy:

Mark Howard, is annoying me currently cause he whined about not being invited to the party.

Troy:

I invited him to the party and then he texted me this morning and said, Oh, I have to go to a Salesforce event.

Troy:

I'm like, what?

Troy:

Next time I'm not inviting you.

Troy:

Secondly,

Alex:

I like all this drama

Brian:

Jess was invited.

Troy:

yeah, Jess also has to go to the party.

Troy:

That's Mark's

Troy:

worth work wife.

Alex:

we know who these people are?

Alex:

Jeff and

Troy:

they're the CEO

Troy:

and CEO of

Alex:

Jeff and Mark everyone.

Troy:

Jess Jess.

Alex:

Jess.

Troy:

Okay Alex.

Troy:

So do you remember

Brian:

She was on this podcast.

Alex:

Oh, yes.

Alex:

What's she?

Alex:

Okay.

Alex:

Yes.

Alex:

Sorry

Troy:

Yeah, you complained about it actually, because you thought it was like branded

Alex:

Yeah

Troy:

Yeah

Troy:

Okay, Alex, do you remember when we were like all scrambling to add the share widgets on webpages?

Troy:

And we were really

Troy:

excited that it

Brian:

remember Giggia?

Troy:

Yeah, all those companies.

Troy:

Right.

Troy:

And,

Brian:

One of my clients is Giggia's former CEO.

Troy:

Great.

Troy:

I hope he spends lots of money with you.

Troy:

Keep spending my friend.

Troy:

Now, you know, the promise of incremental distribution or more time on the page or another page or whatever, putting web pages are too hard for people.

Troy:

They're too hard.

Troy:

Back and forth and they're clumsy and they're filled with ads.

Troy:

And now we're going to put another toolbar on top of them that allows you to summarize it.

Troy:

Wait, I can summarize it on my browser.

Troy:

I don't need that.

Troy:

Oh, it can read it to me.

Troy:

I can, I can do that on my browser too.

Troy:

I don't get it.

Troy:

I mean, I think it's, you know, maybe if it took your tech team and some another per like another like parasite in the middle of the publishing business, it's going to take economics from you.

Troy:

That's going to give you the toolbar and say, we're going to make you AI blah, blah, blah.

Troy:

Great.

Troy:

Great.

Troy:

You know what?

Troy:

It's not going to do anything.

Troy:

It's, it's just not.

Troy:

It's not going to do anything for Time's Business other than give them something to walk out in the market with this week.

Brian:

So, but what do you do?

Brian:

what do you do then?

Brian:

I just feel like I'm like you then.

Brian:

Like, what, so what do you do?

Brian:

Do you just, you can't give up on the, the, the webpage.

Brian:

It is still where a lot of the action is for these businesses.

Brian:

So.

Brian:

What do you do?

Troy:

Well, Media is a business of bridging past to future.

Troy:

You always got to have one foot in the past and one foot in the future.

Troy:

And what I would say is you got to take a little weight off the one in the past.

Troy:

And what does the future look like?

Troy:

I don't know, Brian, you're inventing it.

Troy:

I mean, do you have to do audio?

Troy:

Do you have to do.

Troy:

Short form video.

Troy:

Do you have to find ways to monetize that?

Troy:

Do you have to create something that feels dramatically unique in the way that you create it, partner, distribute it, that abandons, you know, all of our preconceptions about the webpage?

Troy:

Yes.

Troy:

You have to do that, right?

Troy:

Might that be a different business?

Troy:

Of course.

Troy:

But I, I, I, I have thought about this since.

Troy:

Like, I wrote a post about it, I guess, a couple years ago about the, the web page.

Troy:

And when I talk to the next generation, or people that think like the next generation, dare I say Alex, they're like, I don't like web pages.

Troy:

I don't, they're too, there's too much friction.

Troy:

Now, that doesn't mean you don't read an article now and then.

Troy:

I get it.

Troy:

Nothing is everything.

Troy:

But like that, that, that format of information delivery, I just think it's getting more difficult.

Troy:

And I don't think slapping an AI toolbar on there is going to make a difference.

Alex:

No, I mean, you either need your content to be unique enough or the utility you provide to be unique enough.

Alex:

And if you're just, you know, putting an experience, which is at the end of, they're always going to be worse than the one chat GPT is offering on top of your content.

Alex:

I think a lot of these folks think that probably yes, but we're the only ones that can access that content.

Alex:

I think what we're seeing now.

Alex:

Is that if it's on the, if it's on a webpage and if it's accessible by a human being, it'll be accessible by their agent

Troy:

Hey, Alex, now that, now that chat GPT seamlessly connects to the web index, everything's there.

Alex:

I mean, I have talked to numerous people just this week that said that they have now fully switched over from going to Google first to going to chat GPT first.

Alex:

and it's either by changing their search engine or,

Troy:

You just put their app there.

Troy:

You just put their app on your, on your desktop and on your

Alex:

on

Troy:

And,

Alex:

on your phone.

Alex:

And

Troy:

Overnight, you'll lose at least 30 to 40 percent of what you did on Google.

Troy:

And I've surveyed everybody, I've surveyed people about this.

Alex:

yeah, and so I think that now, you know, Google has released a version of Chrome, which has a little, a tool on it.

Brian:

Well, it's a test.

Brian:

It's re it's a research and it's out of deep mind, but

Alex:

yeah,

Alex:

it's called Project Mariner and it's, and it's the browser, being able to do stuff on, on websites, right?

Alex:

And it's very slow and it's, it's very much a, a, a research project, but this shows like where the browser's heading is that the, the, the computer's just going to do stuff for you.

Alex:

I

Brian:

yeah.

Brian:

Okay.

Brian:

So like you know, the, the old, I think, you know, example is I'm going to San Francisco, I need to like get a hotel, et cetera.

Brian:

You got to do all these different things.

Brian:

Right.

Alex:

yeah, I think that's the example people show.

Alex:

It's kind of like, A complex example, because people have all sorts of things that they like to do, like picking the right seat and using the points in a certain way, a lot of use cases, just like compare these 10 hotel rooms, like, literally, like, I don't understand what the difference is between these different rooms.

Alex:

that are around the same price that make me, you know, go out, do the research and make me a table of comparison.

Alex:

That's entire businesses are, are kind of dependent on that.

Alex:

find me the actual cheapest prices, go into the Amex travel portal and Expedia and a website and find me the actual cheapest price.

Alex:

Like, these are, you know, hugely disruptive interface shifts, right?

Alex:

Interface changes.

Alex:

And at the end of the day, we're going to be lazy.

Alex:

And, I think that the, the final expression of the computer is more or less the Star Trek computer, right?

Alex:

Where, where the captain says, computer do this or that, or give me this information.

Alex:

And the computer just gives it to you.

Alex:

And so.

Alex:

we're

Troy:

Do you think they'll ever say, computer, give me a banner ad?

Alex:

No, that's the thing, right?

Alex:

computer, give me a recipe that has like, you know, 900 words in front of it or, computer, you know, I think that it's going to be really interesting to see where you can kind of find value and, and define your value in a, in a world where you'll be able to access all this stuff and you know what, I heard.

Alex:

The last Verge cast was kind of frustrating to me because I felt that the hosts were very, you know, nearly calling AI vaporware.

Alex:

They were, there's literally, I think, at some point somebody says, yeah, you know, people are trusting these things, but they're wrong 90 percent of the time.

Alex:

That's just not true.

Alex:

Like, I think sometimes like the media, because they feel so

Brian:

Oh, no, we're not going back to the media.

Brian:

Come on, the media doesn't exist anymore.

Brian:

I

Alex:

Well, okay.

Alex:

The tech, writers.

Brian:

that it's like, well, we'll get into this later, but all the tech people

Alex:

no, I get it.

Alex:

I get it.

Alex:

I,

Brian:

trying to blame the media that they've, they've made irrelevant.

Brian:

All this stuff about Luigi is coming from the you as the media.

Brian:

The media is not doing this.

Alex:

What, what I'm saying is that I'm seeing a, I'm seeing a disconnect between people's fast changing daily habits and the way sometimes.

Alex:

People write about AI as being something that's so wrong.

Alex:

So useless all the time.

Alex:

How, you know, how can they put this product out into the wild?

Alex:

However, if you ask most people, they're pretty happy with the results.

Alex:

They're fine with it.

Alex:

They'll tell you like, you know what, going through a website, I find a lot of wrong stuff too, but I can ask the AI, what's the best TV to buy?

Alex:

And it'll give me a thing and I'll buy

Troy:

You know, it's, it, there's a long history of this in media consumption, Alex, and it's like, it reminds me of the first time Like, this is like, I don't know, 15 years ago when I got serious in my car and I got used to not having interruptions constantly because there's no advertising.

Troy:

And you're like, there, there's no going back as soon as you get a taste of that.

Troy:

There's no going back.

Troy:

And I think that interface analogy is apropos for, for, for open AI it, anybody that I think that there's a little bit of punditry going on and it's like, Oh, is it really that useful?

Troy:

Or does it make mistakes 10 percent of the time use it, man.

Troy:

It's incredible.

Troy:

It just is.

Troy:

It's incredible.

Troy:

It is a very useful daily tool.

Troy:

I cannot imagine doing anything without OpenAI, right?

Troy:

Honestly.

Alex:

Yeah, honestly, me neither.

Alex:

I would pay, you know, they, they just announced this 200 product.

Alex:

If they had changed their price to 200, I would

Brian:

200 a month.

Troy:

yeah,

Troy:

yeah, but that's, that's for like the smart kid.

Troy:

You don't need the smart kid.

Troy:

You're good with

Alex:

no, no.

Alex:

But what I'm saying, it provides me so much value.

Alex:

Like I don't even think about paying for it.

Alex:

I

Troy:

think

Troy:

that's really, really interesting though.

Troy:

It's like, yeah, people are going to pay a lot for the smartest, I don't know.

Troy:

Capabilities that you can buy with money people.

Troy:

It's not just like is it you know one price for everybody you get access to a thing No, you're gonna use more CPUs.

Troy:

You're gonna have more cycles to solve Increasingly complex problems and people are gonna pay a lot for it a

Alex:

I think, I think that there's like, sometimes we're getting lost a little bit sometimes in the, AI companies are responsible for that in that like, You know, the, the kind of like, you know, God intelligence, we're going to create like generalized intelligence.

Alex:

That's the goal.

Alex:

And, you know, you know, imagine to jump from chat GPT three to chat GPT four, that's going to be the jump from chat GPT four to chat GPT five.

Alex:

And even if you pause things today and you look at the environment that we have, where you have open source models.

Alex:

That are incredibly capable, like llama.

Alex:

You have a wide variety of models competing, you know, for, for kind of developer access and developer tool stuff, you have engineering tools that essentially can build programs, by themselves, even if you paused everything today and you just let the like environment of people are building software and thinking of new stuff, just figure out what to do with the stuff that exists today.

Alex:

We're going to be in a very different world one or two years from now, right?

Alex:

it's

Troy:

the the applications are not keeping up with the

Alex:

no, no.

Alex:

And I think, and I think that the going back to the article page, it is the laziest, dumbest thing to just say, Oh, look, there's an article.

Alex:

I can slap a chat bot to it.

Alex:

Anyone can do that.

Alex:

Therefore it has no value.

Alex:

Right.

Alex:

You're just, adding a layer of abstraction and saying, Hey, this is a worst version of the thing you're used to, we're just going to apply it.

Alex:

It's like, it's like when people were creating their own comment systems, you know, in articles.

Alex:

If you remember that, that used to be a big thing.

Alex:

Right.

Alex:

And instead people just wanted to communicate about this stuff on like their existing groups and social networks that exist,

Brian:

So I want to actually bring this into what Troy wrote about in the lead item of the PVA newsletter, which is, this is all part of, you know, tech has become the overwhelming power center.

Brian:

Now, publishing always goes first with all of these changes, right?

Brian:

But this is coming to every industry.

Brian:

If you look at how.

Brian:

You know, Tesla is going to dominate.

Brian:

It looks like, you know, auto transportation is going to be dominated overall by technology.

Brian:

Defense is being dominated by technology.

Brian:

Northrop, Drummond, whatever they've grown, like those guys are not going to be building the future probably of, of, of defense.

Brian:

It's going to be done.

Brian:

Silicon Valley is very involved in this as it gets into hard tech.

Brian:

If you look at, you know, Bitcoin and crypto is, is, is could, could be Possibly take over

Brian:

finance.

Troy:

ascendant, maybe yes

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

And, I think it's really interesting, though, to think about this, like, populist time and how tech threads that needle.

Brian:

This is not a great time to be an institution and a lot of people who are loud in the tech community.

Brian:

I don't know how reflective it is, have co opted the populist movement and like, it's a little weird that the world's richest, difference This person is like using populism and obviously we saw here in New York with the assassination of the United Health CEO.

Brian:

These populist passions can absolutely spill over in my neighborhood today.

Brian:

There are postings up of various CEOs.

Brian:

None.

Brian:

I mean, I think I'm the CEO of the rebooting, but I was not up on one of them.

Brian:

and this is stay away from me.

Brian:

I didn't do anything.

Brian:

you know, this is, yeah, well, I don't know what happens with tech because it is, it is such a power center and it is increasingly, that is what American exceptionalism is.

Brian:

Like if you look at our dominance of the world, a lot of it really comes down to the dominance of the tech industry.

Brian:

Right.

Brian:

because compare it to like Europe, right?

Brian:

it's something like, Of the seven largest U.

Brian:

S.

Brian:

tech companies, they're 20 times bigger than Europe's seven largest and generate 10 times more revenue.

Brian:

And they've said, if you look at like the resources required for all of the stuff you're talking about with AI and then we'll talk about quantum computing, whatever it is, I don't even understand it.

Brian:

it's pretty clear that this power is not going to go in the opposite direction.

Brian:

What does it all mean?

Alex:

Well, I mean, look, you know, American banks are also bigger than all European banks.

Alex:

I think JP Morgan is bigger than all banks combined in Europe.

Alex:

But, so America is doing pretty well.

Alex:

Yeah, it's crazy.

Alex:

When you look at the valuation of those tech companies, think when, when Enron, collapsed, I think it was the seventh most valuable company and it was valued at 70 billion now, even with inflation.

Alex:

Right.

Alex:

Like the seventh most valued company today is, is what is probably meta or something valued at like.

Alex:

these companies have just become so big.

Alex:

They are generally well liked.

Alex:

I mean, even if, you know, we're, we're, we're hearing lots of complaints about meta and things like that.

Alex:

People generally like the Googles and the Apple, in their lives.

Alex:

They, they use these products every day.

Alex:

And, you know, a lot of their origin stories since the beginning of Silicon Valley was like, you know, like dude in a garage, it's like man of the people that made it big.

Alex:

So they're really aspirational at the same time.

Brian:

I think that's going to wear out.

Brian:

You

Brian:

can't

Alex:

course, it's going to wear out.

Alex:

And I think it's also like, I think it's also like this, the populism right now, the type of populism has been really attached to.

Alex:

to culture war, which culture war is great because David Sacks can participate in a culture war and feel like he's part, you know, that you're part of, he's one of the guys, you know, like that's like living under the poverty line, you're like, along for the ride with David Sacks.

Alex:

The second that starts shifting to a class war, then it becomes a little harder to talk about this stuff.

Alex:

So that's going to be interesting.

Alex:

and yeah, I don't know.

Alex:

I don't know.

Alex:

I think it's

Troy:

I'll try to steer this in a little bit different direction.

Troy:

I want you to know Brian and Alex that that segment originally had come from.

Troy:

I wanted to create a new segment for us and maybe a new platform for PVA.

Troy:

And I'm just going to call it YouTube BFF.

Troy:

And it was because I really like YouTube and I wanted the world to like it with me and I wanted to sort of cut it open every week and make an observation.

Troy:

and kind of create part of our show around that or whatever.

Troy:

So I, I set that out as the goal.

Troy:

And then I was, and, and as I was consuming YouTube, I realized that's where I came about this observation, which is the.

Troy:

It was watching the new OpenAI 12 Days of Christmas thing that releases a new product.

Troy:

They're releasing a new, you know, enhancement to their platform for 12 days.

Troy:

And it was about, it's these sort of smart kids at the OpenAI office.

Troy:

Looks like a nice office, by the way.

Troy:

It's very tasteful.

Troy:

Very, very San Francisco and, you know, talking about, you know, this, this is, we can't wait to see what you're going to do with this technology.

Troy:

And they talk like Steve Jobs, because that's, that's where all that comes from.

Troy:

And I found it annoying.

Troy:

and I imagined a couple of things.

Troy:

First of all, that, to me, the, the, the first thing I imagined is that the, the most powerful people in the world, are a owners of capital and be tech executives.

Troy:

And they all dress in certain ways.

Troy:

Some of them have little quirks and stuff.

Troy:

So the first observation was about this power aesthetic, you know, some people are a little more like cashmere hoodie and some other where, you know, luck or palmy wears, Hawaiian shirts and, you know, Elon has a big Texas belt now and an aviator jacket.

Troy:

So I love, I love that this new kind of global power center doesn't wear suits.

Troy:

And I have this friend, a really good friend of mine, who works at a big law firm and he says, I'm just, I'm just service class.

Troy:

I I'm not an owner of capital and I might make good money as a fancy debt attorney, but I really just.

Troy:

Serve rich people.

Troy:

And so I, I just sort of had this contrast of the sort of cashmere hooding, where wearing West coast tech executive and the, the suited service worker.

Troy:

but really what I was thinking about was, Oh my God, these high priests of technology now understand things that none of us, many of us will never understand that are changing our world.

Troy:

And that the, the, like I, like qubits are weird.

Troy:

I don't really understand how they work,

Brian:

I don't understand quantum computing.

Brian:

I don't understand it.

Troy:

but, but, but the stat from this new chip from, from Google called Willow, this, the stat was it could solve complex problems in under five minutes that would take supercomputers, today's supercomputers, 10 septillion years to complete.

Troy:

What is going on?

Troy:

Do you even know what septillion is?

Troy:

I can tell you.

Troy:

It's a trillion trillions because I asked you,

Alex:

essentially saying it can do things that we would have never been able.

Alex:

I

Troy:

or, but what do you want it to do?

Troy:

Alex?

Troy:

Do you want it to understand your molecular structure?

Troy:

What do you want it to do?

Troy:

Do you want it to model, the entire, biological ecosystem at a, at a cellular level or at a, at a molecular level?

Troy:

You know,

Alex:

don't, we We

Alex:

we, don't yet know if it's useful.

Alex:

And I think even the people working on it, have ambitions and believe that it can be useful.

Alex:

And I think

Troy:

Well, it's probably more useful than a web page.

Troy:

I'll tell you that.

Troy:

And,

Alex:

Yeah.

Brian:

ad tech gets his hands on the

Alex:

I mean, you know, like the,

Troy:

wait till you can put quantum

Troy:

computing on

Brian:

definitely use it to optimize

Brian:

ads.

Brian:

Number one is going to be optimize ads.

Alex:

Yeah, so the quantum computing, I mean, the main thing is that it's just a new type of processor when a processor has kind of like these binary switches.

Alex:

the quantum computer uses quantum entanglement and superposition.

Alex:

and it can process information in ways that that don't.

Alex:

Make a lot of sense unless you understand quantum mechanics.

Alex:

And I don't, that being said, you know, we'll, we'll,

Troy:

Have

Alex:

we'll we'll need to, I mean, I think, I think with everything, I can tell you that a lot of these tech leaders don't also truly understand how quantum computing works, but,

Brian:

We're going to make ourselves extinct.

Brian:

That's my

Troy:

I'm telling you, when the AI grows arms and legs, And we don't really know how it works.

Troy:

I mean it the and there's a few people that take all the money and know how it works We have the real populist revolt then

Alex:

well, I mean, what I was going to say is that at the end of the day, what we're building right now is a series of tools and we don't really know.

Alex:

What's going to come of them.

Alex:

And on a more optimistic note, I think you could see someone using, you know, AI tools, that use quantum computing, that can kind of invent all sorts of new things and cures diseases and things like that.

Alex:

And these could be done by, people who are not yet rich and wealthy.

Alex:

Like, I think we're, we're talking

Troy:

hold it.

Troy:

Wait, wait, just a minute.

Troy:

Alex.

Troy:

Brian's annoyed with what you just

Brian:

I'm annoyed.

Brian:

I am, I mean, mostly because like, it's the naivete that has gotten us into pickles as a society that comes from these techno, utopian like ideals idealists it because they never see the downside of this.

Brian:

It's gonna be used for weapons systems.

Brian:

I don't even know what it is.

Brian:

It's gonna be used for weapons systems.

Brian:

It's gonna be used to optimize advertising.

Brian:

It's gonna be used to manipulate, it's gonna be used for all kinds of the downsides that none of this, we have gone through generations of this.

Brian:

Where all of the potential downsides have been either ignored or papered over.

Brian:

And, and then all the problems get created and then like, okay, tech

Alex:

Well, I'm not

Brian:

unquote solutions to the problems that they created.

Alex:

I'm not denying that the new tools come with new problems, but like, you know, where if you believe that we're, A species that uses tools and that technology has brought us to where we are and we're going to keep developing technology.

Alex:

I mean, why, why, why do we stop here?

Alex:

Like, why didn't we stop in the nineties?

Brian:

But why did we stop gene splicing and all that stuff?

Brian:

Do I remember that?

Brian:

Like sheep, like that stopped.

Troy:

Shit

Troy:

that's too

Alex:

mean,

Brian:

Dolly, what happened to that?

Brian:

Like we were like breeding, like things that are like, we were messing with

Brian:

species

Alex:

I think there's, there's, I think there's just better technologies.

Alex:

I think CRISPR

Troy:

No, they're still doing it

Troy:

they're still doing the

Alex:

it.

Troy:

somewhere

Brian:

Are

Brian:

they?

Brian:

I love you.

Alex:

Somewhere there's an island, with, with sheep people.

Alex:

I, I, I, no, but I think, I don't know.

Alex:

I mean, I don't know what to tell you, right?

Alex:

It's like, it's like with any technology, this, this stuff, you know, it's, that's our trajectory.

Alex:

We figure shit out, we figure more shit out.

Alex:

if you're looking at it as an industry, however, a lot of the, You know, tech CEOs that we, see today, have become these kind of billionaire powerhouses because of technologies that emerged in the nineties and early two

Brian:

Well, I'm interested in power.

Brian:

I like power.

Brian:

I like thinking about power.

Brian:

I like examining power.

Brian:

And I'm interested in how this changes power, because one of the naivete's that I find is, is that a lot of tech people don't think that there are other power centers in society.

Brian:

And there are power centers.

Brian:

Government's a power center, finance is a power center, the quote

Brian:

unquote the people are a

Alex:

center.

Alex:

Yeah.

Brian:

and we're

Brian:

seeing

Alex:

start, like I said, you know, if, if, if populism switches from culture war to class war, you know, then they're going to feel a hell of a less, lot less powerful.

Alex:

I, don't know.

Alex:

I mean, I do think like this right now, what I'm, the way I'm trying to frame this is that there are a lot of these people monolith, right?

Alex:

meta is competing forcefully with open.

Alex:

AI on, on a completely different business model where they're trying to push their open source models, which can compete, right?

Alex:

Microsoft is competing fiercely with, with Google and Apple.

Alex:

Apple is in trouble because Apple, Apple used to make, you know, Apple's entire DNA is around making beautiful things that are really beautiful to use.

Alex:

And once the thing doesn't need to be beautiful and it doesn't even need to be seen, like, what does a company like Apple do?

Alex:

Like this.

Alex:

A lot of things are shifting, right?

Alex:

This is not a static state and they're shifting in part because there are, they will shift in part because there are all these tools.

Alex:

And like I said, even if we stop today in two to three years, we will see brand new companies emerge from this and brand new power centers.

Alex:

And of course, this stuff is going to be used in a war.

Alex:

And of course, this stuff is going to be used for all sorts of nefarious purposes.

Alex:

But you know, yeah, the internet created internet advertising and we're all still surviving.

Alex:

You know, was that a net benefit for the world?

Alex:

I don't know.

Brian:

We got pop bunders, we got

Troy:

some are even some are even thriving alex

Alex:

Some are even thriving.

Alex:

Sure,

Brian:

was retargeting.

Brian:

Retargeting was a great era.

Brian:

are you guys following the drones off New Jersey?

Troy:

No, tell

Alex:

that I was,

Brian:

On New Jersey, there's swarms of drones that are, that nobody knows what they are.

Brian:

Apparently, the government says that they're not from a adversary, but they're also not from the

Troy:

Are they not, like, from Amazon, delivering toilet paper or something like that?

Brian:

Drones are one of those technologies that I feel like got dismissed and is actually now living up to all of the type.

Brian:

You know, cause there was a moment, remember when Jeff Bezos did that 60 minutes interview where he was like, yeah, you're going to get your packages delivered by drones.

Brian:

And it was like, give me a break.

Alex:

I mean, the second you saw drones and you thought like, okay, they're gonna, if they can make these bigger and they can carry stuff, like everybody's freaked out about like, some humanoid robot taking over.

Alex:

It's drones, man.

Alex:

Like I just, I just bought one, for like.

Alex:

20.

Alex:

No, but it's like you can buy a drone right now that flies really well.

Alex:

I bought one for my son is like 24.

Alex:

Like, I mean, it's, it's quite incredible that we have these things that can be kind of semi autonomous, flying around battery life is becoming bad.

Brian:

They're annoying.

Brian:

I mean, the little buzzing, like in,

Alex:

Of course they're annoying.

Alex:

They're, they're annoying, but they can also like, you can also strap a gun to them.

Alex:

I don't know.

Troy:

So, so,

Alex:

annoying.

Troy:

guys, we're, I don't know if we're doing our audience a service today.

Troy:

What is the drone doing, Brian?

Troy:

Whose drones are

Brian:

It's unknown.

Brian:

There's just all these reports.

Brian:

Have you seen the videos?

Brian:

Like there's tons of

Brian:

videos going around

Brian:

X

Troy:

No, but surely they've

Troy:

alerted the

Troy:

authorities.

Brian:

yes, but nobody knows where the drones are.

Brian:

They're

Brian:

not

Brian:

saying,

Alex:

no comment basically.

Alex:

I think that's what it

Brian:

so the government doesn't know one of the, some like Congressman came out and said they were from a mother ship that Iran has.

Brian:

Deployed off the coast and, is sending them

Troy:

we're gonna, we're not, we're not shooting, they're not gonna shoot them down?

Troy:

What are they doing

Brian:

Now, there are these spherical orbs that like change like it's I don't know.

Brian:

Maybe it's the stuff I'm seeing.

Brian:

Like, it definitely seems very like UFO.

Brian:

I don't want to be like conspiracy.

Brian:

Like, but

Brian:

there has been

Brian:

like a.

Alex:

this is where we turn into

Brian:

Conspiracy Corner, there has been like a drip drip that you could say has been preparing the public for the reality that there are, there is like, some other sort of life forms or forms of intelligence that are among us.

Alex:

That would be a new power center.

Brian:

That's definitely one.

Alex:

Yeah, yeah.

Alex:

yeah.

Brian:

talk about the ad holding companies.

Alex:

Nice.

Brian:

I don't know.

Alex:

That's such a smooth

Troy:

I just, I I I, just, just an update here.

Troy:

The, the FBI is investigating as is the FAA.

Troy:

They're

Brian:

Yeah, they're investigating.

Brian:

Shouldn't they know this?

Brian:

Shouldn't they know this?

Brian:

We spent a trillion

Brian:

dollars on defense.

Alex:

in diameter?

Alex:

Oh, wow.

Troy:

and the FBI is requested.

Troy:

So P for, to the listeners where FBI is requesting assistance from the public, urging with anyone, anyone with information, photos, or videos to come to

Troy:

the aid of the investigation.

Brian:

well, it took the McDonald's manager to capture Luigi.

Brian:

Not the NYPD.

Brian:

Which I think also has like a trillion dollar budget.

Brian:

they weren't able to do that on their own.

Brian:

go figure.

Brian:

anyway, let's talk about the ad holding companies for a little bit.

Brian:

there was, cause I do think this is part of, look I know, I know this is boring, they're dead, they're dinosaurs and what.

Brian:

but, as Rashad Tabakawala says, they are the cockroaches, they always find a way to survive ad agencies.

Brian:

two of the biggest ad holding companies are merging.

Brian:

basically Omnicom's buying IPG.

Brian:

this is going to create.

Brian:

A bloated, I guess you could look at it as like a monolith.

Brian:

It's going to create what a hundred thousand employee company.

Brian:

which is just shocking, to, to think of an ad holding company with all of these things.

Brian:

But I think it is, I think on the front end, they're saying it's all about bringing together data and it's like all about like driving outcomes and trying to compete with Google and Meta and whatnot, and it, then you get down to it, it's, it's all cost savings.

Brian:

Like they say they're going to save, like 750 million in costs.

Brian:

Advertising agencies do not have factories.

Brian:

so, I, I think we all know where that those costs savings are going to come.

Brian:

Trey, what's your take on this?

Troy:

thought you were going to ask Alex.

Troy:

well, they used to buy agencies in the old days because they needed to string together networks of capabilities to serve global clients.

Troy:

So BBDO would be acquired and then, you know, they would acquire a firm in London and, In Germany and put, you know, networks together to, to tap global advertising, needs and budgets.

Troy:

they also used to buy, you know, the exquisite sort of, you know, agency people and capability.

Troy:

And there was a time when, you know, agency people were revered.

Troy:

they were revered as, you know, Just, amazing, creative business people.

Troy:

and as were the, by the way, the, holding company and the notion of a holding company is you hold a whole bunch of independent agencies so you can sell across conflicts so that you can service a client with, you know, Direct marketing, media buying, creative services, PR, all that stuff.

Troy:

and they became these, you know, colossal, colossally large, you know, companies.

Troy:

And it was a really a financial instrument essentially to, enable someone to build a services firm.

Troy:

And get them on a four year earn out so they could cash out at some point.

Troy:

And essentially the hold co's were, were the banks for the industry.

Troy:

And, and John, John, I think, you know, we'll go down as

Troy:

being John Wren

Troy:

that is, who's the CEO of Omnicom is a bit of a King here because, you know, he built Omnicom for 40 years and, and now, you know, they were, you know, more driven by organic growth than the others, less acquisitive.

Troy:

And now it goes out.

Troy:

You know, with the, the biggest, baddest hold co in the world.

Troy:

But the, the, the more interesting thing I suppose for me is they're not really holding companies of agencies anymore.

Troy:

They're sort of, platform capabilities to square off with the big tech platforms.

Troy:

And what Omnicom needed was, you know, the data management capabilities and Axiom, which is owned by IPG.

Troy:

They have a kind of media management platform of their own called Omni.

Troy:

They just bought Flywheel, which is a retail media advertising company.

Troy:

You know, be a, you know, kind of data driven platform that can exercise, you know, campaign execution with the complexity that the modern world needs.

Troy:

And, and interestingly, at the same time, they're just kind of mashing these old, you know, wonderful, you know, eponymous agencies that, that no longer have a role in the world, like the TBWH Shia days together in something called like advertise, Omnicom Advertising Groups.

Troy:

Right.

Troy:

So the people that used to be the kind of mad men, mad women, live inside of this kind of, you know, hold, hold co named service entity that looks more like Accenture.

Troy:

and, and that's kind of the way, way of the industry.

Troy:

So.

Troy:

You know, it, it certainly is, is not the kind of romantic, you know, left brain, right brain world that it, that it was, you know, when I was growing up, I remember when I was, I first walked into an ad agency as a young person and saw the creatives, putting in the hallways, I thought, this is a great place to work.

Troy:

you know, you can be a kind of, a creative person and, and write a print ad, you know, once a week and, and play golf in the hallways.

Troy:

And, you know, that world's over.

Brian:

Alex, in a different, in a different era, you could have, you could have.

Brian:

Spent your

Troy:

an agency, actually,

Brian:

I know, but you could have spent your entire career.

Brian:

If you did not in like ad agencies, you could have worked for, been one of 100, 000 employees at an

Alex:

Yeah.

Alex:

I mean, talk about service work.

Alex:

This has been like, something that I've seen, I've had friends who run agencies.

Alex:

There was always this talk of when you had a creative agencies that that was, that was, you know, getting traction and it was, and you reached like 50 people or something.

Alex:

You knew that you had to either, you know, stay small or shut it down or scaled to a couple of hundred people so you could sell it to one of these holding companies and then kind of quietly exit a few years later.

Alex:

I think.

Brian:

three years, like during the year

Alex:

yeah.

Alex:

Secretly, I think a lot of folks didn't want to work in agencies.

Alex:

A lot of creatives want to do their own stuff.

Alex:

and also I, I, at Airbnb, we've had a few like incredible agencies come through the door.

Alex:

and I kind of witnessed.

Alex:

Like at some of these agencies, I was like, literally, excited to work with because I respected them so much and it was such a honor

Brian:

Wait, wait, who did you, did you respect the people or respect the agency?

Alex:

I mean, I respected the agencies and the past work that I had done and the people that were involved in it.

Alex:

I mean, you know, they're all kind of linked together.

Alex:

There's like, there was a cache around some of these creative agencies.

Alex:

but I saw

Troy:

There was debt.

Troy:

There was definitely Alex huge.

Troy:

Actually,

Alex:

And I, I, but I noticed how, they started butting up against just like the quality of people that we could hire internally, the fact that they, they were losing talent.

Alex:

And so the talent that was often left there, wasn't the best in the industry.

Alex:

And so while I think in the past it would have been like a company would have gone to one of these, you know, agencies for strategy or creative work, that they couldn't get themselves.

Alex:

it is not pretty clear that, you know, that's no longer the case and it was

Brian:

But aren't they, I mean, creative work is, doesn't make money.

Brian:

I mean, they just like give it away.

Brian:

Right.

Brian:

I mean, they, the, the way that these companies make money is they've given up being agents and they become principals and it's all through media buying.

Brian:

The clients don't pay them enough.

Brian:

There's no margin.

Brian:

They have zero margin, like deals.

Brian:

It's like, how do you make money?

Brian:

So they're like, okay, we're going to kind of turn a blind eye to the fact that you're obviously violating, like being an agent by being a principal.

Brian:

And

Brian:

that

Brian:

to me is.

Alex:

I think they could, if they provided the entire strategic and creative the strategic and creative relationship was the relationship you had with the CEO and the CMO like the media buying was was was essentially just, you know, the infrastructure of the way that was working.

Alex:

But like as it as it becomes clear and clear that it's just media buying.

Alex:

I don't think that.

Alex:

You know, you can kind of command the same amount of like, margins from that at some point.

Brian:

When you look at the market and how the market values these companies, and it's really striking Terry Kawaja, who, is like a comedian, but also an investment banker, had an interesting article and ad exchanger recently.

Brian:

where he talks about,

Troy:

a very modern Venn diagram, right?

Troy:

You got, you gotta be, you gotta be something and something

Brian:

Yeah, exactly.

Brian:

and Terry makes these parody videos and everything.

Brian:

I, anyway, if you look at what they're trading, at, most of the holding companies are, WPP is down to 1.

Brian:

1x net revenue.

Brian:

the average is like 1.

Brian:

2.

Brian:

Publicis is the one sort of standout, and I think this merger is, I think, Is, sort of a, a, a recognition because years ago, a few years ago, publicism Omnicom, had a merger deal that fell apart.

Brian:

the publicist is actually executed much better than the other agencies in.

Brian:

Becoming more centralized, having a, a platform that will allow them to sell outcomes versus this FTE cost plus model.

Brian:

so I think it's a, it's a little bit of a, of a recognition, by Omnicom and IPG that, you know, they've kind of become also RANs a little bit to, to publicists in this area.

Brian:

That's my

Brian:

agency corner.

Alex:

I mean, I think, um,

Brian:

That's all right.

Brian:

That's

Alex:

I still don't fully understand.

Alex:

Like if I, if I, I, I'm wondering that if I made a business that became successful and scaled, would I ever pick up the phone and call any of these people today?

Alex:

I don't think so.

Brian:

Okay.

Brian:

There you have it.

Brian:

look, we did that session at Rashad.

Brian:

Rashad's events.

Brian:

look, if you look at where things are going.

Brian:

With AI, et cetera, the different tools you can, you do not need the, like.

Brian:

100, 000 people in these companies, like, and that's why they're going to get rid of so many people because you're going to be at the independent agencies to me are the winners out of this because you can just the same way as like big publishers are mostly doomed.

Brian:

There's going to be a ton of like small publishers that do fine.

Brian:

and I think very creative people can spin off and have, you know, smaller businesses, but very healthy, profitable businesses that aren't going to look like these massive agency networks.

Brian:

that were mostly needed for, you know, distribution across all kinds of different geographies.

Alex:

I agree.

Alex:

I mean, that's, promising

Troy:

covered it.

Troy:

We did it, Brian.

Troy:

What else we

Troy:

got?

Troy:

What else are you gonna hit on out of the five?

Brian:

I want to hit on a little bit.

Brian:

We got to do a little bit about, about the, the Luigi and the assassination.

Brian:

look, disclaimer.

Brian:

None of us in this, endorse the murdering of anyone, no matter what their role is.

Brian:

It's obviously, it's a personal abomination.

Brian:

I don't think that has to be said.

Brian:

To me, the most striking part of this has been what appears to be a groundswell.

Brian:

that has originated in what I like to call the information space that has used this horrible act, et cetera, to really vent a lot of frustrations and anger at, a particular power center, which is the, the healthcare industrial complex.

Brian:

And in this case, the insurance, industry, and this was not stoked by mainstream media.

Brian:

I don't care what like tech.

Brian:

Bros or Republicans say they can't pin it on on that.

Brian:

This is what

Brian:

happens when you

Brian:

have.

Alex:

If anything,

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

And if you look at it, the New York Times, you had said this New York Times is telling, it's editors.

Brian:

They don't want to put the mug shot on the home page.

Brian:

And so guess what?

Brian:

That doesn't matter.

Brian:

Like, in the old days.

Brian:

You could, you could basically kind of tamp down these kind of stories because it is a very dangerous thing.

Brian:

When you start to talk about assassinations on the street of New York or other cities, you just don't want to get into that situation.

Brian:

I think as a society.

Brian:

But once you let the genie out of the bottle, it's a really hard to control.

Brian:

You know, I don't know.

Brian:

What was your takeaway?

Brian:

Not from the murder, but from the reaction and the information space.

Brian:

Troy, you want to start?

Troy:

most vocal about this, and I think he has some, something to say.

Alex:

I mean, yeah, I felt like they were and I told you this because we butted head a little bit.

Alex:

I was like, that isn't that is interesting.

Alex:

That feels like it feels different.

Alex:

Yeah, because you were just like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Alex:

I think

Alex:

you were.

Troy:

what I was, yeah.

Alex:

Well, I think, I think you weren't wrong, which is like, you know, like we shouldn't be glorifying murder.

Alex:

It's just somebody that has a mental illness, went and took somebody out.

Alex:

It is, this is not, this is not a movement.

Alex:

And I.

Alex:

I felt that it felt different because especially like the messaging on social media wasn't, you'll always get like people that come out and say crazy shit when something like that happens, right?

Alex:

You'll always get the trolls.

Alex:

It's either trolls or people are like incredibly, you know, extreme.

Alex:

And, but this time it felt like, It was, it was just like a, a sense of like, it was okay to talk about this and there was a sense of like, yeah, well, you know, that's, that's, you know, retribution.

Alex:

And, and there was also a sense of like the, the Luigi guy was, was like kind of like charismatic, and, and as more of his mugshots came out, like people started getting a little, like he became a meme

Brian:

He's extremely memeable.

Alex:

and and

Brian:

You gotta be memeable.

Alex:

and, and, and it got to this place where like, people weren't even like proclaiming, look, this was wrong, but they were just saying like, you know, like they're celebrating the guy.

Alex:

And I think that is a, and it seems to be coming from both sides.

Alex:

And I think some people are caught unaware, surprised that people would be, so against, you know, the, the, healthcare CEO.

Alex:

But, uh, like everyone.

Alex:

In this country, I think has had a bad experience with health care.

Alex:

Like, and I think the, the, the poorer you are, the worse it is.

Alex:

And I think it's struck a chord and it's ugly in so many ways because somebody died and you don't want to see that violence, but I feel it does feel different and it does feels like that does feel like a class movement.

Alex:

I,

Troy:

Well, what it, what it feels like to me is my reaction to, yeah, some of the things you were saying was, was a little bit defensive and negative because, you, you know, you, you can't have a rule of law breakdown.

Troy:

this to me

Alex:

I, I, by the way, just to be clear, because I never said I should be right.

Alex:

I, none of the things I

Troy:

No, you were

Brian:

I did the disclaimer.

Brian:

I did The disclaimer.

Brian:

We can

Troy:

All right.

Brian:

this.

Brian:

is, a safe

Troy:

So this is, this is classic internet cosplay fueled by.

Troy:

Something we all hate.

Troy:

We get that.

Troy:

Right.

Troy:

we've all had bad experiences with sort of bureaucratic entities, particularly private healthcare insurance companies.

Troy:

I realize how different it is because like my son is a sensible, smart guy.

Troy:

And he's like, you know, He's kind of an interesting guy, Luigi.

Troy:

He's the kind of guy that I like online.

Troy:

He's a good tweeter.

Troy:

You know, he's not as kind of strident lefty.

Troy:

He's a gamer.

Troy:

He has some interesting things to say.

Troy:

So, and you know, that combined with all of the folklore around him and this whole kind of journey that we've been on, you know, listen, the internet and modern media is a place.

Troy:

That invites you to come in and participate, and that's what this gives us an opportunity to do.

Troy:

It's, it's, it's, it's, it's crime plus participation.

Troy:

And the question is, I think, is, does it snowball from here?

Troy:

Right?

Troy:

Does that, you know, Does it pervert in ways that convinces the next lunatic to go kill a CEO?

Troy:

Does the cause play kind of like, a seep into, you know, like a longer term.

Troy:

Like criminal activity where people put posters up of wanted CEOs in your neighborhood, Brian, and then some wing nut actually thinks that life is so shitty or they're so fucked up that, that it's worth sacrificing their life to, to, to become infamous.

Troy:

I don't know.

Troy:

I really, really hope it dies out.

Troy:

I really do.

Troy:

And I, and that if I was hopeful about its positive impact, you know, I That it's gonna, it raises awareness about the perils of the system that we live in.

Troy:

By the way, I lived in a different system where the government controlled both the insurance and employment of all the people in the health care industry in Canada, and I could walk into any hospital or doctor's office and never think about.

Troy:

And it was wonderful.

Troy:

You were just entitled to that care.

Troy:

That seems civilized to me.

Troy:

When I came to America and I didn't navigate the paperwork nightmare of healthcare in America, I thought this is a disaster.

Troy:

The difference is my mother cannot get care in Canada.

Troy:

My

Brian:

Yeah, you have to ration care and, and we ration it a different way.

Brian:

It just so happens that we do it in the most capitalistic, like brutal

Brian:

capitalistic

Brian:

way in which

Alex:

I

Alex:

I,

Brian:

make a

Troy:

my mother can't get,

Troy:

my mother can't get, can't get care.

Troy:

I just want you to understand

Alex:

no, I understand that, but I think, I think, I am sorry to hear that.

Alex:

And I think like healthcare is pretty terrible anywhere, but in most countries with subsidized healthcare, you can also supplement it with, with, with

Troy:

it's actually hard to supplement it unless you're really wealthy.

Troy:

Like my, my, my wife's parents fly to the Mayo Clinic to get checked.

Alex:

Yeah, but I mean, I think in no, I can tell you, I, I, I've been around.

Alex:

I don't, I don't think the American system is better.

Alex:

I think it's very much worse.

Alex:

I think, for

Brian:

We get, the average person knows this.

Brian:

They don't need to know the details.

Brian:

They know it's messed up.

Brian:

Like, I, I feel like a lot of times politicians and like elite people, I'm going to sound like a populist myself now, really think people are dumber than they are.

Brian:

Like, they really just think they can pull the wool over their eyes.

Brian:

Like, of course they know it's screwed up.

Brian:

Of course they know it's a scam.

Alex:

the the one thing is like, irrespective of what it is and it's, and it, and

Brian:

because their interest.

Brian:

It's very obvious.

Brian:

Every insurance company.

Brian:

I always go back.

Brian:

I can't.

Brian:

It's so hard to get insurance in Florida, like home insurance.

Brian:

It's just so hard.

Brian:

And, you know, there's a reason that Warren Buffett, like his biggest holdings are in insurance.

Brian:

They find every reason not to pay you out.

Brian:

Nobody likes the insurance companies.

Brian:

Nobody.

Alex:

And I think what, and I think it was, there was, there was just this non action around it and it took, you know, This type of thing to make it, I mean, today on NPR, there was like, on the news, they talked about, you know, they didn't, they didn't relate it to the, to the murder, but they were talking about, like, you know, how, how people view health insurance in the country,

Alex:

like, it's definitely become part of the dialogue and it's, and, and, you know, that's, you know, that's populism too, you know, like, in, in France, we're pretty used to the fact that whenever, you know, You know, the government tries to change anything, people burn down Paris, right?

Alex:

Like, and, and, and, and we haven't really experienced that here.

Alex:

but this is the type of shit that can happen.

Alex:

And it was interesting to actually see, that was like, it was entirely born on social media.

Alex:

I think

Brian:

Well, I think what's going to be really interesting is whether this is like an extremely online in quotes thing, or whether this is true now is extremely online, a reflection of the real world, because there's always been this thing of like, and I always feel this.

Brian:

I'm like, this isn't really a reflection of like the real world, things that are going on on like X or different social media.

Alex:

everybody's, if you walk down an airplane aisle, it's Right.

Alex:

Like while you're taxing or something like that, everybody's on social media all the time.

Brian:

that's why I

Alex:

nobody that's like extremely online.

Alex:

It's just like, that's crazy.

Alex:

There's like, there's just, there's just some deep recesses of weird shit.

Alex:

And people always feel like, Oh, the kids are into this thing.

Alex:

But like, there's just like multiple pockets now.

Alex:

So it's impossible to see.

Alex:

And then some things like break through into the mainstream.

Alex:

Like I think this did, but everybody's extremely online.

Alex:

This is not an extremely online event.

Alex:

This is like a real world.

Alex:

It's, it's, it's broken, it's broken through and I don't think extremely online even means anything,

Alex:

like,

Brian:

right.

Brian:

I think we should go on to good products after that.

Troy:

Hmm.

Alex:

this,

Troy:

well, I kind of had a call with a listener this week who said that good product had become slapdash.

Troy:

Like he said that, that, that I, that I hadn't thought through, my recommendations very well.

Troy:

And that it's not very cool to get to the end of a podcast and do all the work and then like have a shitty good product, which made me.

Troy:

Reflect on what we're doing here.

Troy:

Sadly,

Alex:

it, when we say it, it doesn't

Brian:

What, the slapdash nature?

Troy:

it wasn't you.

Troy:

I

Brian:

You better not come with like cherries then or something.

Troy:

no.

Troy:

I mean, no, but I don't really know what you guys want.

Troy:

I think that, that there have been times that good products showed real insight.

Troy:

you know, it's not a leaf blower and it's not a floss lamp and it's not a stone polisher or an air fryer.

Troy:

if that's what you're looking for, like you want me to go toe to toe with someone like on features.

Troy:

You want to talk features?

Brian:

I want something that's shoppable for, for the newsletter.

Troy:

Well, I think the good product is the newsletter.

Brian:

Okay, great.

Troy:

No, which is to say that I actually, I'm a little empty handed this week.

Troy:

That was quite a buildup.

Brian:

Oh, my God.

Brian:

So wait, this person said it was a little slapdash.

Brian:

And so you came with nothing.

Troy:

no, but I've, I, I got all caught up in making sure we got this newsletter on and trying to get something out of Alex.

Troy:

and I didn't spend enough time really analyzing my journey this week.

Troy:

Wondering what I truly loved.

Troy:

Did you love anything this week, you guys?

Troy:

What did you love this week?

Troy:

I'm deferring now, of course, but

Alex:

wait.

Alex:

So you're, you're responding to somebody complaining about you being unprepared.

Alex:

with a good product by asking us if we figured something out.

Troy:

I guess so.

Troy:

That's one way to look at it.

Alex:

Man, that's, that's rebellious.

Alex:

That's a big fuck you to whoever complained.

Alex:

It's just like, you know what, we'll, we'll do it worse

Alex:

this time.

Alex:

No, I mean, I, I was, listening to that verge podcast where they were kind of, you know, trashing chat GPT.

Alex:

I think that they're actually becoming better at, making products and that the, the little piece of Mac software that you can install.

Alex:

then you can

Alex:

kind of option space.

Alex:

It's a very good product,

Alex:

It changes the way you use your computer.

Alex:

You

Brian:

So wait, what is this that I have to get this?

Brian:

I don't have this.

Alex:

so it's a Mac app.

Alex:

and I, I don't know if there's a windows app, but it likely

Alex:

is.

Alex:

And,

Alex:

um,

Brian:

saying about me?

Alex:

No, but for, for, for our listeners And you can, and once you have it installed, you can press option and space and then it just pops up a little message and then you can type your thing in there and it just gives you the answer right there.

Alex:

Well, you know, like right now I could ask it anything.

Alex:

I don't need to leave my, my, my window, my work.

Alex:

And it's, it's really, it really kind of shows you how the interface is changing and how more and more the computer is kind of getting in the way and the operating system is getting in the way and the hardware around it is getting in the way and you just want a thing that gives you answers for so much of your life and,

Alex:

and,

Alex:

and,

Brian:

Let me ask you this, does ChatGPT have like a strong brand, do you think?

Alex:

With kids.

Alex:

Yeah.

Alex:

Kids call it chat now.

Alex:

Like, yeah, it's a terrible name, but it's, it's

Alex:

it's clean.

Alex:

it's, it's it's Kleenex.

Alex:

They didn't want to launch it because they thought it would look bad because it got things wrong.

Alex:

And, and this was not, they didn't, they, they stumbled into becoming a consumer

Brian:

yeah, no ad agency would have like recommended calling it ChatGPT, I can tell you that much.

Brian:

So does that make it impossible for, for someone like Claude, something like Claude, someone, something like Claude to, to compete?

Brian:

I'm kind of rooting for

Troy:

say that, lot of people say that the weakness with Clod is actually their Mac app and I can totally understand that.

Troy:

People like the LLM and the response is better but the interface to it isn't as good.

Alex:

Claude is better for, Claude is actually I think a better write, writing helper than ChachiPTS.

Alex:

Either way, I mean, no, it doesn't, I don't think there's, I don't think we can call any winners or losers here because chat GPT is burning through money.

Alex:

they're really, these tools are, are just like incredibly expensive to run.

Alex:

if you actually look at capabilities of the core LLM, they're all very similar.

Alex:

You know, the open source Lama one is similar.

Brian:

So brand wins.

Brian:

Brand, brand wins.

Troy:

still sucks actually.

Brian:

Brand and

Brian:

distribution

Alex:

it's based and cool and, and, and funny and it doesn't care about your feelings.

Troy:

I'm not going to my chat GBT for funny.

Troy:

Yeah,

Alex:

so there is actually like a lot of parity on a lot of things.

Alex:

They, they also, but chatgpt also really Sora that, that like video rendering thing, which is

Brian:

But then they stop, then they stop the downloads.

Brian:

I don't trust that guy.

Brian:

Does that matter with the brand?

Brian:

Like Sam Altman.

Brian:

He just, everything comes out just seems disingenuous to me

Alex:

I'm not a big fan of Sam Altman, but I don't think people care.

Brian:

Like he's in my pantheon of least trustworthy people.

Alex:

I think chat GPT got is moving quickly and building good products.

Alex:

I think that, you know, there's still a lot of things at play because at the end of the day, I think the people when are the ones that can build a straight into the operating system or straight on the browser, that's going to be, know, that's going to be

Troy:

people get gaga about shit like video generation, and I understand on some level,

Troy:

or a shitty Kanye music video.

Alex:

Yeah, because I think, people will soon notice that what we really value is some sort of human connection.

Alex:

And that's why when we see Tom Cruise nearly killing himself, attaching himself to an airplane, it's more compelling than if he was a computer graphic that looked exactly the same.

Brian:

But what

Brian:

I think of, I think about, I always bring it back to like the information and how we, how we get information.

Brian:

but I think about how, so, I Earlier this week, I think it was yesterday actually, I, I was on, I was on LinkedIn like I usually am.

Brian:

which we're still not connected on there Alex, which is really strange to me.

Brian:

but I got an ad from Ozzy.

Brian:

About a documentary that, Carlos Watson, who was convicted of, of, of crimes relating to, to Aussie, this, this digital media startup that BuzzFeed actually was, was looking to acquire at some point.

Brian:

and he made it his own documentary with his, his spin on like, what happened.

Brian:

to him and Ozzy and he was like, going after Ben Smith and Jonah Peretti and the judge and everything.

Brian:

And when I ended up thinking, I was like, this is just going to be the norm.

Brian:

Like, everyone is just going to make documentaries of their, their view on everything.

Brian:

Like, isn't that inevitable that like, it no longer is it going to be the, the media's like view because like anyone can make their, And it looks

Brian:

professional.

Alex:

Yeah, anyone can print a pamphlet on a piece of paper, and that used to be like, only a few people could do that, right?

Alex:

But now if you go around, like, sticking a photocopied piece of paper onto, the side of a, you know, lamppost, nobody gives a shit.

Alex:

it's just hard for us to fathom that happening to video or that happening to things that are like high production value video.

Alex:

Like, I think there's, we still believe that there's this like magical moat that exists around stuff, but once, once that stuff gets this, that gets removed, it just means that this type of content on its own, just the production value of it, is not what's valuable.

Alex:

You could get people into the theaters by just planting a camera and watching a train go by, you know, a hundred years ago, today you need all sorts of different things to get people into the theater.

Alex:

And I think that like, you're just chipping away at the things that are moats, but it's going to be hugely disruptive when you can just tell an LLM to turn the guy into a zombie.

Alex:

There's, Thousands of people in Hollywood that are hired to do makeup that are, you know, going to lose their jobs.

Alex:

Like there's going to be massive destruction of, jobs, around Hollywood around this, this stuff for sure.

Alex:

Like crafts people are the first one that are going to get hurt.

Troy:

just to, to start to wrap this up a little bit, guys.

Alex:

Did you like this good product?

Alex:

Was it well structured?

Troy:

I, I think that in defiance of our critical listener, we actually turned Good Product into a nice segment this week, so, thanks for going along with that.

Troy:

I am grateful to, A PVA listener, Nick Shelton, who, runs and owns, Australian ad biz or media business called broadsheet, which is local.

Troy:

Local information focused on the five cities in Australia.

Troy:

who has reached out and wanted to get together and Brian and I did a mini meet up with him.

Troy:

I just want to, one observation from that, you know, this gentleman, aspires to take his brand around the world.

Troy:

and become, you know, a better executed media operation delivering on local media, you know, in London and, and hopefully in the U.

Troy:

S.

Troy:

And he thought he was coming to the Oracle and what he actually encountered was a couple of dopes, me and Brian.

Troy:

And, he bought Brian a bacon and tomato sandwich, which was nice.

Brian:

yeah, there was a lot of stuff.

Alex:

It's a, it's

Troy:

us.

Alex:

BLT, the good product.

Troy:

And he kept coming back to

Troy:

so, you know, like I was like what are you going to do?

Troy:

And he's like, well, we're going to do what we did in Australia, but we're going to do it in New York and London.

Troy:

And, and I felt like I didn't have a good answer for him as to why that was going to be hard.

Brian:

I thought you were really, I w it was a nice meetup and it was good because I got to see, like, I think you're really good at like finding like the root of like the one, the important thing.

Brian:

You know, and I was just thinking, you know, sometimes it can, it can seem simple, but I think that's like a mark of, of, you know, it's a, it's a good thing to have.

Brian:

Like, he asked the 1 penetrating question.

Brian:

That's like, what makes you different?

Brian:

Basically?

Brian:

Why?

Brian:

Like, why, why, why are you going to win?

Brian:

And like, sometimes people get like, caught up.

Brian:

I feel like in a lot of, you know, media is a fairly simple business to me and people get caught up in a lot of the, the little details.

Brian:

so anyway,

Brian:

that was nice for

Troy:

web, he makes local web pages with local, with a, with a lean cost structure.

Troy:

And I don't know if that's enough next.

Troy:

And it's, I'm pretty sure it's not enough in New York.

Brian:

TBD.

Troy:

See, it might work in Melbourne.

Troy:

We'll

Alex:

about if you slap a chat bot on it, though,

Troy:

Hmm.

Alex:

if there's anything, if there's anything people learn from this episode, is that just slap a chat bot on it,

Brian:

All

Alex:

but the amount of times I'm gaining from using, AI in my work life is, is completely lost from clicking, closing, clicking.

Alex:

pop up windows that ask me to use new AI tools with every single update I make.

Alex:

It's becoming ridiculous.

Alex:

Like every

Alex:

time I update a piece of software, it's just like, do you want to do this?

Alex:

I don't.

Alex:

I don't want to do this.

Brian:

Guys, I gotta go.

Brian:

I'm late for a

Brian:

sales call.

Brian:

I just

Brian:

got a text about it.

Brian:

And guess what?

Brian:

The person is insulted that my AI agent went and I'm not there.

Brian:

He just texted me.

Brian:

He's like, you stay here.

Brian:

Jesus.

Brian:

I'm gonna lose a deal because

Brian:

of

Brian:

this

Troy:

this

Brian:

So anyone who wants sponsorship, I have extra slots.

Brian:

Oh,

Troy:

listener came up to me at an event this week and was very happy about the music recommendations that happen infrequently on the podcast.

Troy:

And, I just, you know, if a

Brian:

someone mentioned this to me.

Brian:

Actually, maybe

Alex:

The man just said he was late for a meeting and now you want to talk about music.

Troy:

well, no, I only want to say there's a melody I haven't been able to get out of my head for four days.

Troy:

Like I cannot get it out of my head.

Troy:

And that is the mark of a great melody.

Troy:

And it's in a song called candy.

Troy:

By Mickey and it's so good.

Troy:

I think we should we should end the podcast with a clip.

Brian:

Okay,

Brian:

good.

Brian:

As long as it doesn't get flagged.

Troy:

All

Brian:

All right.

Brian:

See you tonight.

Alex:

Bye.

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About the Podcast

People vs Algorithms
A podcast for curious media minds.
Uncovering patterns of change in media, culture, and technology, each week media veterans Brian Morrissey, Alex Schleifer and Troy Young break down stuff that matters.
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