AI's Perception Problems
I was back on the Big Technology Podcast this week to discuss some recent posts with Alex Kantrowitz. First and foremost, AI's perception problem, and if a pitchman like Steve Jobs is needed to sell this technology to the public. While Sam Altman has largely been serving in that role to date, it's clearly causing a lot of backlash, fairly or not. Could someone like Demis Hassabis or Panos Panay have better luck resonating with the masses? It feels like Jensen Huang is the closest, but NVIDIA is obviously playing in a different part of the stack and not selling directly to consumers (beyond their graphics cards, of course), at least not yet. And it's just harder to pitch what is essentially software on the user-facing side...
Will this year's slate of Super Bowl commercials help? Probably not, but it will be interesting to see what angles OpenAI and undoubtedly Google and probably Anthropic take in their ads. Microsoft too? Amazon? Meta? It feels like pushing more towards science and discovery should help with messaging, but again, it's not as day-to-day consumer focused. Health certainly is, but there are myriad issues when it comes to marketing such features...
Meanwhile, The Chaos Ladder – where the various players in AI stand ranging from relatively stable to chaotic – saw a lot of movement in 2025. Meta and Apple reset their teams. Amazon reset their tech. Microsoft reset their deal with OpenAI. Google, after being downtrodden from a stock-perspective for the first half of last year, came roaring back to vault into the number two market cap position, joining the $4T club. Anthropic is sneakily stable – a fact which is now being highlighted due to the current chaos swirling around another OpenAI "Constellation": Thinking Machines Lab.
With Big Tech at least, it feels like things are starting to stabilize a bit more as we start 2026. But does OpenAI and Anthropic going for IPOs change that? What about Elon doing Elon things? Does any larger player that's not a part of Big Tech leverage AI in a way to step into those big leagues?
Finally we hit on a few broader predictions for 2026. I'm feeling like the iPhone Fold will be a hit – which I know sounds sort of obvious; an Apple product, a hit? – but Apple has a tendency to start slow out of the gates with such products, certainly recently. But I think the Fold, despite what will undoubtedly be a big price, could excite a lot of people around Apple hardware again. And what if it's touted as one of the first real AiPhones?
There is also the question of who will be presenting such a device to the world. Will it be Tim Cook, or will he be retired (though undoubtedly in a new role as Chairman of Apple's board) by the end of 2026? Feels like there's way too much smoke for it not to happen at some point this year. Though one wild card could be if Apple does make a bigger acquisition, perhaps to bring on more AI talent. Safe Superintelligence is probably a bridge too far, but what about Thinking Machines in their aforementioned state of chaos?
I no longer think it will be Perplexity – feels like they moved on from that idea. But it also feels like someone will buy Perplexity. Samsung spending some of their surging cash thanks to memory chips? Microsoft, still trying to make Google dance? Someone else?