Alex Kantrowitz on OpenAI, Nvidia & What Could Derail the AI Boom

Alex Kantrowitz (0:00)

Let's talk about Microsoft. I mean, all-time bag fumble, right?

Eric Newcomer (0:03)

So, they saw it, they're ready, they had contractual relationships.

Alex Kantrowitz (0:08)

There is an argument to be made that the future interface will just be a disembodied AI voice or a chatbot, because it will, like we're seeing already with Muse and with Dots, just be the computing layer that acts on top of everything, so everything else becomes a database, effectively. I spoke with an engineer at Apple who said he was working on HomePod, and he never saw the device until it shipped.

Eric Newcomer (0:30)

Wow.

Alex Kantrowitz (0:31)

Yeah. So this is the problem is they did not break the silos down. I don't know if I want to go here. The perspective has been AI critics need a better messenger than Ed Zitron.

What I'll say about it is, then go ahead.

Eric Newcomer (0:44)

Alex Kantrowitz, welcome to the Newcomer Podcast.

Alex Kantrowitz (0:47)

It's good to be here. I've been a longtime listener. I listened to this show when it was called Dead Cat. That's how long I've been listening to you.

Eric Newcomer (0:53)

Man, Dead Cat's in the air. This is Tom Dotan, who writes for Newcomer and was one of the co-hosts of Dead Cat. The original name of this podcast was just on TBPN and they were waxing, nostalgic, I think literally this week. It was sort of a different vibe, that show.

Alex Kantrowitz (1:11)

It was a short lifespan, but very impactful and we will always remember it fondly.

Eric Newcomer (1:16)

Yours is, you know, that one was a little bit more media focused. I think, you know, we're hopeful that, you know, the first 60% of the show will talk about tech and then we'll get into our sort of media maybe self-absorption, but that show was all media analysis.

Yeah, we were reflecting, you started Big Technology even before I started Newcomer. It was June 2020 I always tell people, you know, Newcomer came out like the month of the New York Times trend piece, Casey Newton dropped Platformer that same month. What did you see back then before the rest of us to start a Substack?

Alex Kantrowitz (1:54)

Yeah, it was pretty crazy. I mean, so I have this book that came out in April 2020, April 2020, and you know, when you write a book, you do all this work to position it to make it exactly the right time. Oh man, we spent hours trying to figure out the right time, and we released it at the peak of the first wave of COVID.

So basically, the book was, I wouldn't call it entirely Dead on Arrival, but you could imagine it was really tough to cut through the noise, and understandably so, when people were trying to figure out how to survive to the next day, they weren't interested in reading about how the tech giants employed AI within their companies and how it might come for all of us soon. So basically, I got back to my desk at BuzzFeed, where I was a reporter at the time, and I had spent two years on the book. I was really excited. I got Mark Zuckerberg on the record. I got Amazon to participate for the first time since they had participated in the Everything Store because they were anti-book for a while.

Eric Newcomer (2:46)

One of the greatest booksellers in the world, hating books.

Alex Kantrowitz (2:50)

This was supposed to be my big moment, and it passed, and it was if it didn't happen. I just remember sitting back at my desk and being like, I had all these plans and these ideas of what I wanted to do post-book, and it was as if it didn't happen. I had had some conversations with some editors at different publications while we were doing the book tour, obviously all from my apartment. I had had some interest from, I think, Sky News to be a contributor to Sky News, and I had signed with a speaking agency, and I just looked at that moment and said, if I don't do something dramatic right now, all these opportunities are going to go away. And so I put together this four-point plan of going independent, and it was like, I'm going to quit BuzzFeed, and I'm going to freelance, and I'm going to do some speaking, and I'm going to do a newsletter and a podcast. I think it was basically in that order, and I dropped it on Substack, and I pushed it out on Twitter.

I probably should have told everybody within BuzzFeed I was announcing.

Eric Newcomer (3:52)