Big Technology Podcast

Mark Chen is the chief research officer at OpenAI. Chen joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss the debut of GPT 4.5, the company's largest model, which is going live today. In this bonus episode, Chen speaks about what the new model says about the AI scaling wall, how scaling traditional GPT models compares to reasoning models like OpenAI's o1, how important EQ is for AI models today, whether pro...

Chris Hayes is the author of The Siren's Call: How Attention Became The World's Most Endangered Resource and the host of MSNBC's All In With Chris Hayes. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss his No. 1 bestselling book, digging into why he wrote it, how news differs from social platforms (and to what degree), and why We also cover the strange psychology of fame, how figures like Trump and Mus...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) Satya Nadella's criticism of AI benchmark hacking 2) Ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati's new Thinking Machines Lab startup 3) There are too many AI startups 4) Why foundation models have commoditized 5) Did Google 'DeepSeek' itself? 6) Grok3 arrives 7) How do you evaluate whether models are good? 8) Grok3 at the...

Saagar Enjeti is the co-host of Breaking Points. He joins Big Technology podcast to asses whether the Big Tech CEOs will win their Trump bet, assessing the stakes involved, the positioning, and the likely outcomes. We talk about Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos, and, of course, Elon Musk. Stay tuned as we discuss how the U.S. and China will handle the AI battle, especially afte...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) Musk's $97 billion bid for OpenAI 2) Whether the bid is real 3) How damaging could holding up OpenAI's for-profit conversion be? 4) Musk throws OpenAI off its rhythm 5) New OpenAI roadmap: GPT-4.5 and GPT-5 are coming 6) Should models flip dynamically between standard LLM and reasoning 7) Anthropic strik...

Evan Ratliff is the host of Shell Game. Ratliff joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss how he cloned his voice with AI and sent it to interviews, social calls, and therapy. In this conversation, we learn about why he conducted the experiment and what it portends for the future of voice AI. Tune in for a lively discussion with plenty of fun anecdotes from when Ratliff send his AI voice clone out i...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) New data showing ChatGPT's impressive growth since mid-2024 2) Was ChatGPT voice mode responsible? 3) How important ChatGPT's growth is for OpenAI 4) How seriously DeepSeek challenged ChatGPT's traffic numbers 5) Does brand matter or are bots interchangeable? 6) OpenAI does the Reddit AMA 7) Experimentin...

Rev Lebaredian is the Vice President, Omniverse & Simulation Technology at NVIDIA. He joins Big Technology Podcast for a conversation about NVIDIA's push to develop AI that understands the dynamics of the real world, including physics. In this conversation, we cover how NVIDIA is building this technology, what it might be useful for (things like robotics and building common sense into AI models),...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) The DeepSeek impact on Silicon Valley 2) The four areas of margin in AI 3) How OpenAI is positioned after this week 4) Whether OpenAI can be fine losing the lead on model building 5) DeepSeek's impact on Anthropic 6) Why Amazon is happy about DeepSeek 7) Should NVIDIA be taking the worst of it? 8) Okay,...

Reid Hoffman is the co-founder of LinkedIn, a legendary Silicon Valley investor, and author of the new book Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future. Hoffman joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss his optimistic case for AI, the massive investments flooding into the field, and whether they can possibly pay off. Tune in to hear Hoffman's insider perspective on OpenAI's $6.6 bil...

M.G. Siegler is a writer and investor and the author of Spyglass. Siegler joins Big Technology for a bonus depisode to discuss DeepSeek R1, the Chinese open-source AI model and its impact on the tech industry. Tune in to hear why DeepSeek's ability to match OpenAI's performance at just 3-5% of the cost could upend the AI industry's economic model. We also cover the immediate market fallout, why Si...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) DeepSeek r1, an efficient, cheap reasoning model from China 2) How DeepSeek stacks up against the state of the art 3) Does DeepSeek invalidate the billions of dollars invested in current foundational models 4) DeepSeek's wild origin story 5) How DeepSeek changes U.S. and China's AI rivalry 6) OpenAI, Sof...

Demis Hassabis is the CEO of Google DeepMind. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss the cutting edge of AI and where the research is heading. In this conversation, we cover the path to artificial general intelligence, how long it will take to get there, how to build world models, whether AIs can be creative, and how AIs are trying to deceive researchers. Stay tuned for the second half where w...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban 2) Will Apple and Google comply even if the White House doesn't enforce? 3) What does TikTok's behavior tell us about its ties to China's government? 4) How TikTok might stick around 5) Will Elon Musk buy TikTok 6) TikTok CEO Shou Chew is going to sit at the dias during T...

Eugenia Kuyda is the founder and CEO of Replika, an AI companion app where people befriend — and sometimes fall in love with — AI bots. Kuyda joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss the nature of these relationships, and what they say about our society. In this conversation, Kuyda reveals Replika's ambition for its "phase two," a plan to have AI friends join us in the real world, helping us keep i...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) Sam Altman declares the path to AGI is clear 2) Could AGI come before GPT-5? 3) Up next: Superintelligence 4) Anthropic raising $2 billion 5) NVIDIA says robotics is a multi-trillion opportunity 6) NVIDIA has a personal 'supercomputer' 7) Smarter NPCs are here 8) Meta's AI training copyright issues 9) Zu...

Ryan Broderick writes the Garbage Day newsletter and hosts the Panic World podcast. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss how the internet has fundamentally changed since the pandemic, in a special episode with Ranjan Roy and Alex Kantrowitz. Tune in to hear Broderick's insights about the rise of viral normie culture which includes Hawk Tuah and the Costco Guys, why sites like BuzzFeed are st...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) Skydiving with the Meta Raybans 2) OpenAI's GPT-5 delay 3) AI's crucible year 4) We finally know what OpenAI's definition of AGI is 5) Was AGI just a financial thing all along? 6) Trump throws TikTok a lifeline 7) The best divestment ever 8) Meta changes its political leadership 9) Manifesting in twenty...

Casey Newton is the author of Platformer and co-host of Hard Fork. He joins Big Technology Podcast for our annual predictions episode. Tune in to hear Newton analyze 2024's major developments in AI, debate whether AI agents will take off in 2025, and explore what might happen to companies like Apple, Google, and OpenAI in the coming year. We also cover quantum computing breakthroughs, self-driving...

Brian Chesky is the CEO and co-founder of Airbnb. This week on Big Technology Podcast, we roll back the clock to our interview with Chesky in 2023, where he discussed cleaning fees, listening to customer feedback, and getting involved in the details of the product and user experience. This interview was one of the earliest moments Chesky shared his 'Founder Mode, philosophy, passionately talking a...

Dr. Rona Novick is a clinical psychologist and Dean Emerita of Yeshiva University's Azrieli School. Jinja Birkenbeuel is CEO of Birk Creative, and a parent of three children. They join Big Technology Podcast to discuss the right amount of technology to give to kids and how it impacts the developing brain. Tune in to hear their insights about pandemic-era screen time, the creation vs. consumption d...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) OpenAI's o3 reasoning model 2) Is reasoning a real step forward or a head fake after other methods hit a wall 3) Is AI reasoning too expensive 4) AI models attempt to trick their trainers 5) Are we getting close to AGI? 6) Is it silly to start discussing AI sentience now? 7) 1-800-CHAT-GPT 8) Okay, we ca...

Noland Arbaugh is a 30 year old quadriplegic who can control computers with nothing but his mind. Earlier this year, he allowed Elon Musk’s Neuralink to drill a hole in his skull, insert more than one thousand electrodes into his motor cortex, and translate his brain signals into cursor movement and clicks. In this week's Big Technology Podcast, Alex Kantrowitz interviews Arbaugh at his Yuma, Ariz...

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) What's the use case for OpenAI's Sora video generator? 2) Maybe Sora helps OpenAI understand physics and sets up world models + robotics 3) Siri is still bad 4) Check in on OpenAI's shipmas 5) OpenAI o1 tries to escape being shut down 6) Time Magazine's Person of the Year AI 7) Gemini 2.0 8) Google Deep...

Alexandr Wang is the CEO and co-founder of Scale AI. He joins Big Technology Podcast to share his predictions for AI in 2025, including insights about emerging geopolitical drama in the AI field, AI agents for consumers, why data may matter more than computing power, and how militaries worldwide are preparing to deploy AI in warfare. We also cover quantum computing and why Wang believes we're appr...