Big Technology Podcast

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) Meta's reported $100 million offers to AI engineers 2) If those reports are false, who planted the rumor? 3) Why talent might be all that matters in AI right now 4) Will Meta's bet work? 5) Anthropic's project vend 6) If AI can't stock a fridge, will it take your job? 7) Claudius' identity crisis 8) Cha...

Noah Smith is a star economics writer behind the “Noahpinion” blog and co-host of the Econ 102 podcast. Smith joins Big Technology to discuss whether generative AI is actually boosting productivity or still waiting for its “electricity moment.” Tune in to hear his contrarian take on the so-called AI jobs apocalypse and how businesses will need to reorganize before the gains show up in earnings. We...

Reed Albergotti is the technology editor at Semafor. He's back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince says AI is disappearing the web 2) Will there be new business models that replace the current web-based models? 3) Is the AI Agent thing really happening? 4) Vibecoding riches 5) Court rules Anthropic can train on books (but not steal them) 6)...

Tom Lee is the chief investment officer at Fundstrat Capital and head of research at FSInsight. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss whether generative AI wave is actually holding up the stock market and what would happen if it stalled or fell apart. We discuss what an AI 'Black Swan' event would look like, whether the bubble would pop, and what happens if AI gets too good. Tune in for the s...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) OpenAI and Microsoft's tension boils as business relationship grows complex 2) Is Microsoft being anticompetitive? 3) How much money OpenAI owes Microsoft 4) Who holds the power in the relationship? 5) OpenAI discounts ChatGPT enterprise 6) New study shows using ChatGPT leads to eroding critical thinkin...

Dwarkesh Patel is the host of the Dwarkesh Podcast. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss the frontiers of AI research, sharing why his timeline for AGI is a bit longer than the most enthusiastic researchers. Tune in for a candid discussion of the limitations of current methods, why continuous AI improvement might help the technology reach AGI, and what an intelligence explosion looks like. W...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) Sam Altman's 'Gentle Singularity' essay 2) Is Altman overhyping the technology's current capabilities 3) Why the next few years may see crazy AI development 4) The case for and against humanoid robots 5) OpenAI's o3 pro model and the value of tool use 6) Meta's acquihire-zition of ScaleAI and founder Al...

M.G. Siegler is the author of Spyglass. He joins Big Technology to discuss Apple’s subdued WWDC and whether it signals deeper trouble with AI's capabilities. Tune in to hear a breakdown of Apple’s “UI over AI” approach, whether the company can pull off the Apple Intelligence vision at all, and if Liquid Glass is a redesign destined to fail. We also cover the vibes at the conference and the state o...

Alex Kantrowitz joins live from WWDC, where Apple just announced a number of new design changes including a completely updated operating system with 'Liquid Glass' styling. But in an era of reinvention, where AI is at the center of the technology's evolution, Apple introduced a number of refinements. This short, solo episode looks at Apple's strategy, vision, and execution in a changing moment for...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) What's coming at Apple's WWDC developer conference 2) Apple may be taking an AI gap year 3) Apple's Upcoming AI bets 4) Airpods enhancements 5) Apple's new operating system 6) Why Apple should buy Perplexity 7) Is Perplexity positioning itself for a sale 8) Elon vs. Trump explodes 9) What the fight mean...

Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner at SkyBridge Capital, and host of The Rest Is Politics US. Scaramucci joins Big Technology Podcast to talk about his brief experience as Trump's communication director, what derailed Elon Musk’s White House stint, the problems with Trump’s 'Big Beautiful Bill,' the state of the trade war, Tim Cook’s tariff troubles, bitcoin, and more. We also...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's prophesy that 50% of entry level work will disappear 2) Hype or true: Is mass AI-driven unemployment just marketing? 3) How Amodei's prediction could come true 4) How work might shift even before job loss, as in the case of Amazon's engineers 5) NVIDIA's business is booming...

Y-Lan Boureau is the founder & CEO of ThrivePal, an OpenAI-funded AI startup, and a former Meta AI researcher. Boureau joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss why the next frontier for AI should be science‑backed coaching that nudges us toward healthier habits and deeper real‑world relationships. Tune in to hear how large‑language models can push users to lift weights, regulate emotions, and suppo...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) Alex's unexpected Sergey Brin interview 2) Jony Ive sells his IO device company to OpenAI 3) What this device could be 4) Is Jony + Sam bad for Apple? 5) Could this device work? 6) What the move to ambient assistants could signal for tech 7) Anthropic's first developer event 8) Is Anthropic's move to co...

Demis Hassabis is the CEO of Google DeepMind. Sergey Brin is the co-founder of Google. The two leading tech executives join Alex Kantrowitz for a live interview at Google's IO developer conference to discuss the frontiers of AI research. Tune in to hear their perspective on whether scaling is tapped out, how reasoning techniques have performed, what AGI actually means, the potential for an intelli...

Koray Kavukcuoglu is the Chief Technology Officer of Google DeepMind. Kavukcuoglu joins Big Technology to discuss how his team is pushing the frontier of AI research inside Google as the company's Google IO developer event gets underway. Tune in to hear Kavukcuoglu break down the value of brute scale versus novel techniques and how the new inference-time “DeepThink” mode could supercharge reasonin...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) ChatGPT ranks No. 5 among all websites worldwide 2) ChatGPT is the only website among the top ranked by SimilarWeb that is growing 3) How do chatbots get information if they replace the web? 4) Grok's 'white genocide' messaging campaign 5) What's in a system prompt, with a look inside Grok's 6) The trut...

Emily  Bender is a computational linguistics professor at the University of Washington. Alex Hanna is the Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute. Bender and Hanna join Big Technology to discuss what their new book, “The AI‑Con," which they describe as the layered ways today’s language‑model boom obscures environmental costs, labor harms, and shaky science. Tune in to hear a...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) OpenAI has another new top executive structure 2) What is Sam Altman's role now? 3) Who is Fidji Simo, OpenAI's new CEO of Applications 4) OpenAI abandons total for-profit conversion 5) Microsoft's demands on OpenAI 6) Could Apple replace Google as the default search with AI? 7) Is it an either or decis...

Gary Marcus is a cognitive scientist, author, and longtime AI skeptic. Marcus joins Big Technology to discuss whether large‑language‑model scaling is running into a wall. Tune in to hear a frank debate on the limits of “just add GPUs" and what that means for the next wave of AI. We also cover data‑privacy fallout from ad‑driven assistants, open‑source bio‑risk fears, and the quest for interpretabi...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) What an 'AI-First Company' is 2) Aaron Levie's AI-first memo to Box. 3) Luis von Ahn's AI-first memo to Duolingo 4) Tobi Lutke's AI-first memo to Shopify 5) Can non-tech company be AI-first? 6) Apple earnings 7) Apple's federal government issues 8) Microsoft earnings 9) Amazon earnings 10) Meta Earnings...

Jamil Ghani is Amazon’s Vice President of Prime. Ghani joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss Amazon's position in the ongoing trade war and how Alexa Plus combined with Prime will appeal to its customers. Tune in to hear Ghani debunk the headline about tariff price labels, walk through Alexa Plus’s rollout, and outline why Amazon believes its approach to a contextually-aware assistant will work....

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) Anthropic researcher's assertion that there's a 15% chance Claude is conscious 2) What happens if people believe AI is sentient? 3) Why consciousness and intelligence are different 4) Hey, is this all just marketing? 5) Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's push for AI model interpretability 6) China's robot half...

Dylan Patel is the founder and CEO of SemiAnalysis. He joins Big Technology Podcast to explain how generative AI work, explaining the inner workings of tokens, pre-training, fine-tuning, open source, and reasoning. We also cover DeepSeek’s efficiency breakthrough, the race to build colossal AI data centers, and what GPT-5’s hybrid training approach could unlock. Hit play for a masterclass you’ll w...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) Is OpenAI's o3 model AGI? 2) Maybe it's AGI when you squint 3) Why people are floating the idea that OpenAi is close to AGI 4) Is OpenAI going to declare that GPT-5 is AGI 5) What's in it for companies saying they've achieved AGI first? 6) AI's new memory capabilities add something big to the experience...