Jensen Roars 📧

📲 Apple's New Siri UI – The WWDC26 graphic signals a UI tweak coming to Siri, according to Mark Gurman. A literal glow-up, it would appear. But I remain most intrigued by the notion that when triggered, Siri pops out of the Dynamic Island with a prompt: "Search or Ask". Why on Earth would these be two different options? I assume to replace Spotlight, but it's 2026, the system should just be smart enough to do that initial routing for you. I'm guessing Apple doesn't want to risk running an AI query if you're just, say, searching for an app you have installed? Or maybe, more worryingly, they're trying to deduce if you're trying to do a web search versus a chatbot query? Again, these are increasingly the same thing and at the very least, the system should do this for you. Having an option here is just an annoying cognitive load that feels like it was needed when AI was more rigid (or when it existed as "Dr. Know" in A.I. the movie). We'll see, but this worries me about Apple's AI implementation – shocking, I know. [Bloomberg 🔒]

🗣️ Jensen Huang on the Dwarkesh Podcast – Oh boy what a doozy. Jensen seems seriously pissed off by the time they start talking about China. It's a slow-boil up until that point, with Dwarkesh pushing first on the fact that arguably the two leading models at the moment – Claude and Gemini – were primarily trained on chips from Amazon and Google and not NVIDIA. Jensen's argument is basically that without the outlier situation of Anthropic, there would be no TPU or Trainium success at all – which of course isn't true given Gemini, but still, he's making the point that Anthropic surely would have gone with NVIDIA had Amazon and Google not made their massive investments into Anthropic early on, and he admits it was a mistake that NVIDIA didn't do so! Which, of course, points to why they're now making such massive investments into the various players, including Anthropic. (And perhaps suggests why Jensen went over-the-top with the OpenAI investment at first before pulling back.) But again, he's most pissed off when talking through the notion that Anthropic's "Mythos" model is proof that America needs to hold back chips from China. Jensen, who, of course, would really like to sell chips to China, more or less attacks Dwarkesh as ignorant on the matter. But it's Jensen who comes across as rattled and contradictory. (To be clear, I do agree with Jensen's thought that the nuclear weapons analogy – on which a lot of the rhetoric is based – is a lousy one.) Well worth the listen! Mainly because 80% of such podcasts – and roughly 100% involving Jensen – are full-on marketing at the moment. This stands out as decidedly not that. [Dwarkesh]

🏩 Airbnb Gets Into the Hotel Business – Well, boutiques, at least. Sort of surprised they didn't do this sooner – especially given the shitshow that is trying to book an Airbnb in New York City, for example – but yeah, it runs the risk of shifting the whole service away from the movement it created and towards more of a middle-man standard booking app. And it would seem that the (latest) attempt to becoming the "everything" app for travel (aside from those hotels!) hasn't really panned out. Still, the company has always had a good product sense – not to mention some outlandish ideas – so hopefully this offering slots right in. [FT 🔒]

I Quote...

"You're not talking to somebody who woke up a loser. That loser attitude, that loser premise, makes no sense to me."

– Jensen Huang, during the most contentious point of the above interview. And yes, he followed that up with, "We are not a car." Which obviously got quickly meme'd. (He was referencing Dwarkesh citing Tesla as an example of a company that operated in China but was overtaken by local players anyway.)

Yeah, Jensen was clearly beyond merely "delighted" here...

Asides...

• One of Jensen's key points about China is their AI talent, and that sure seems to be flowing back home from the US... [FT 🔒]
• Not just the NFL that's in the regulatory crosshairs over streaming deals, MLB is being looked at as well... [Bloomberg 🔒]
• Is our "jagged" little intelligence getting better or will it take something like world models to generally smooth AI out? [NYT]
• Can a 'Pixel Glow' strip on rumored new Pixel laptops (and phones) recapture some of that glowing Apple logo magic of old? Sounds like it will interact with Gemini too. [9to5Google]
• Aegon's Conquest, aka Game of Thrones, the movie, has a writer from Andor (who was the showrunner of House of Cards) writing... [Variety]

Below, members of The Inner Ring will find thoughts on:

• OpenAI Shedding Executives
• An Anthropic/Washington Detente
• Does Salesforce Have an AI Problem?
• and more...