AI in a Time of War
The stakes have been raised. While AI has been the key topic of discussion in all of my past chats with Alex Kantrowitz on his Big Technology Podcast, the latest angles including, of course, war, are obviously more important than ever.
I had not yet written about the Anthropic vs. Department of War situation when we recorded this on Monday, but the conversation helped form some thoughts to write about. Notably, while it's wild that this "battle" is unfolding during actual battles in the Middle East, that's also undoubtedly related. Because as we now know, Anthropic's models are pretty crucial to the execution of the operation overseas.
At the same time, how much of this spat actually stems from the fact that the administration and Anthropic clearly just don't like one another, largely due to philosophical differences across the board? That has been made pretty clear over time and so this situation may just have been the straw that broke the camel's back (undoubtedly exacerbated by the aforementioned stakes here). And so while Dario Amodei may clearly be open to (and hoping to) talk about this more, the President may be done. We'll see...
One thing to look to: Anthropic's Big Tech benefactors. They'll be heavily incentivized to lobby on Anthropic's behalf – and they already are.
Of course, all of this is helping to drive some level of growth for Anthropic – with Claude now the number one app in the App Store for the first time, ever. And obviously while this is mostly bad for Anthropic's core enterprise business, it seems to have some benefits on the consumer side – even if it's just virtue signaling. Alex was reminded of when Apple stood up to the FBI a decade ago around device encryption and security. Here, beyond the actual war use cases, mass surveillance is obviously Anthropic's key talking point.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, here comes Sam Altman ready and willing to do a deal for OpenAI. That was entirely predictable – as was the subsequent backlash to Altman's maneuver. He has tried to spin them as peace brokers here, but clearly Amodei isn't buying that! "Mendacious" is his word.
From there, we switch gears a bit to talk about the latest with regard to Apple and AI. Yes, Siri seems a bit behind schedule – yes, again – and so we're not seeing any signs of "New Siri", powered by Gemini, in the wild yet. But I'm still fairly optimistic that Apple is actually on the right path now, and may end up looking quite strong in their overall AI position thanks to their device strategy.
It's not just that they're said to be working on three new AI-focused wearables, it's that the iPhone will be the key to making them actually work well. And that's an advantage that no one else, except maybe Google and Samsung, have. As more devices start rolling out, we can probably expect Mark Zuckerberg to keep bringing this up, hoping to draw the eye of regulators. Perhaps Sam Altman will get involved here as well, as OpenAI's first device nears...
As for Apple's rumored new AI devices, I would expect the AirPods (with cameras) to be the most popular, if they can figure out how to implement the camera system well, without making them too much more expensive than they already are. Apple should also be able to one-up Humane (RIP). And yes, perhaps Meta, the current clubhouse leaders thanks to their Ray-Ban partnership. There's already some backlash bubbling up there as Meta tries to cram more AI into the wearables. Can we avoid a "Glasshole" 2.0 situation? Or will it take Apple, a company far more trusted, to come into the market...
And what's Amazon doing with OpenAI? Is the play for Alexa to become a sort of layer above a bunch of LLMs, including from both Anthropic and OpenAI? Amazon the AI aggregator?
But it can't all be about AI all the time as we close by quickly running through what happened with Paramount Skydance snatching Warner Bros away from Netflix. Was this just great deal-making by WBD CEO David Zaslav, or something else? Certainly, Paramount needs Warner Bros more than Netflix does – and in a way, it was good to see them walk away so quickly. It shows real discipline.
That's something Hollywood could use more of, but I fear will not get it with this deal – even with the inevitable wave of layoffs coming. I suspect Hollywood will look back upon this and wish Netflix would have won. And who knows, perhaps a future DoJ will look back upon this deal. But there might not be much to look at by then, as Hollywood continues to shrink...
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler