(Preview) Astra (and AGI?) Arrives, Meta’s Muse and the Agent Opportunity, Anthropic and the Revival of (P)Doom Angst

Andrew Sharp (0:00)

Hello, and welcome to a free preview of Sharp Tech.

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Sharp Tech. I'm Andrew Sharp, and on the other line, Ben Thompson. Ben, how are you doing? And how's your rack, by the way? That's the most important question.

Ben Thompson (0:25)

My rack is doing well, it is very functional. Actually, you know what? I'm understanding it. Sometimes I just like to go to the server room and just stand there and look at it. Just marvel. And it's beautiful. It's so well organized. All the right patch cables, different colors for different networks, different functionality. Oh my God.

Andrew Sharp (0:43)

It's delightful, Andrew.

Ben Thompson (0:45)

But the idea here is it's the sort of foundation for hopefully some things going forward, which I think we'll maybe get to, you might hint to a bit on this episode. I do feel this episode, sitting in my chair, as usual, looking at you in the camera. There is a couch behind me. I'm wondering if by the end I should be on the couch. Feels like it might be on the couch, not in the dorm room. We might get to the dorm room as well.

But on the couch sort of session.

Andrew Sharp (1:11)

So sort of a therapist couch as we work our way through the rundown here. Is that what you're envisioning?

Ben Thompson (1:16)

There is an aspect of this. And I think it's why I got very mad about that. I can't remember his name, the emailer who was complaining about me talking about my app.

Where there's aspects of this and what's happening now and what I'm writing about. And this week's article was emblematic of that. Where the reason why it's exciting and the reason why I feel I have some distinct points of view is because it's touching on personal aspects. Not just my interaction with assistants that I have, but also some of the reasons I have assistants touching to very fundamental weaknesses I know as a person. That's how I deal with them. And it's kind of weird to write about and talk about, but you know what? As you say on the Greatest Fall Talk, no fronting for the goats. That's right. What are we doing? No fronting for the porcupines? No fronting for the porcupines. The hedgehogs? The hedgehogs. Do we decide, or do we have a hedgehog or a porcupine?

Andrew Sharp (2:07)

No, four years ago, I think you threw out hedgehogs. Other people see a porcupine when they look at our logo. Obviously, there are the needles there. That's porcupine, not hedgehog.

Ben Thompson (2:18)

But I was so jealous of the goat, talking about the goats as the listeners. I totally wanted to steal it. And we dropped the ball completely in our guard. So I guess it didn't work out that well.

Andrew Sharp (2:27)

Well, either way, there's not going to be any fronting on this podcast. That's the theme today. And OpenAI released Astra. We have a lot to wrap our arms around. I'm glad you got the server rack up and running because boy, oh boy, we are off and running with real news.

Ben Thompson (2:42)

No, that was a like last week of the summer sort of thing. Like this has got to get done. I know it's going to be disruptive. It was a hundred times more disruptive than I expected to be totally honest.

Andrew Sharp (2:52)

This is already insane though as we get going here. We're not even going to really talk about Apple on this episode. But OpenAI released Astra late last week. You interviewed Greg Brockman on Friday.

So I thought we could kick things off with a handful of questions on where we are, where OpenAI is. Brockman said last week that we have entered the AGI era. Jensen Wong said that AGI has arrived. You chose to focus Tuesday's article on the importance and value of agents writing things down, which is a note that you've struck a handful of times over the past few weeks on this show.

Why did you choose to emphasize that point in the context of the current moment?

Ben Thompson (3:34)

It's a good question. I think it's really weird. So I've always felt this tension in terms of writing strategy. The balance between writing a front page article that is a daily story versus a daily update that goes to subscribers.

Just because with subscribers, it's in many respects, I think I've said this before, but it's much easier to write. I'm assuming a certain familiarity with my work. I'm assuming a certain familiarity with tech and the tech industry.