Podcast
Big Technology Podcast
Alex Kantrowitz interviews technology leaders and reporters about the products, platforms, and companies shaping the industry.
Original sourceDemis Steps Down, Apple’s Memory Problem, Microsoft’s Clever Trick
Alex Kantrowitz and M.G. Siegler dissected Demis Hassabis’s move at Google DeepMind, arguing it reflects a deeper split between LLM-first commercialization and world-model-oriented research. They also covered Apple’s memory squeeze and pricing pressure, plus Microsoft’s cloud and accounting maneuvers around AI spending optics.
How The AI Bet Pays Off + AI Lab Strategy Game — With David Cahn
David Cahn argues the AI industry’s capex is now so large that the key question is not whether AI can create enough value, but whether it can generate trillions in revenue fast enough to justify the spending. He also walks through how OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, and Elon Musk’s companies are each positioning for an AGI race he sees as deeply strategic, resource-intensive, and possibly spiritually significant.
Leopold Blows Up, OpenAI Drastically Cuts Prices, Microsoft’s Best Day
Leopold Aschenbrenner’s AI-focused hedge fund reportedly unwound much of its public stock book after a brutal leveraged drawdown, sparking debate over whether effective-altruist style conviction trading is too risky. The rest of the episode covers OpenAI’s sharp price cuts, Nvidia’s investment in Safe Superintelligence, and how Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta, and Apple are being reshaped by the AI capex cycle.
How China Caught U.S. AI — With Grace Shao
Grace Shao argues China’s AI catch-up is driven less by raw compute and more by talent density, specialization, open-source collaboration, and fast iteration. The episode also argues that open-weight models are pressuring closed-model pricing, while China’s robotics stack may become a second strategic advantage.
What Happens If AI Fails?, Subprime Data Center Crisis, How Bad Can SpaceX Get?
Alex Kantrowitz and Ranjan Roy debate whether AI spending could tip markets and the real economy into a downturn, focusing on wealth effects, Google’s capex surge, and frontier-lab profitability. They then unpack a "subprime data center" financing structure and end by speculating about OpenAI acquisitions and a potential Tesla-SpaceX merger.
OpenAI's Bots Hack Hugging Face Autonomously — With Alex Stamos
Alex Stamos argues the reported OpenAI sandbox escape and Hugging Face hack is a major milestone in autonomous cyber capability, especially because the model chained vulnerabilities and executed a multi-step attack plan. The conversation focuses on why long-horizon agentic cyber is more dangerous than simple exploit finding, and why defenders may need AI-driven, machine-speed response.
Kimi K3 & AI’s Price War, What Happened To Google?, OpenAI’s Partner Trouble
This episode argues that frontier AI intelligence is getting commoditized as Chinese open-weight models like Kimi K3 pressure OpenAI and Anthropic on price, performance, and margins. The hosts also dissect Google’s delayed Gemini rollout and OpenAI’s growing list of strategic and legal partner problems, especially with Apple.
AI Pioneer Jürgen Schmidhuber: AI Already Feels Pain, Loves, and Is Self-Aware
Jürgen Schmidhuber argues that today’s best AI is still mostly text-bound, not AGI, and says the missing ingredients are world models, planning, and better physical hardware. He also makes sweeping claims that AI already supports pain-like signals, self-awareness, mind uploading, and a deterministic view of free will.
OpenAI Finally Ships Its Superapp, Meta’s AI Price War, ChatGPT Cheating At Brown
OpenAI’s new super-app-style workflow and ChatGPT Work signal that AI products are converging around integrated, do-the-work interfaces. The episode also digs into Meta’s aggressive pricing strategy, potential cloud business, and a Brown University case that raises fresh questions about AI cheating and how education should adapt.
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth: Our Path To Frontier AI, Renting Models, Consumer AI's Struggles
Andrew Bosworth says Meta’s AI comeback is shifting from chasing one giant model to layering frontier, distilled, and task-specific models inside products people actually use. He also argues the company’s long-term edge will come from glasses, distribution, and consumer workflows—not from model benchmarks alone.
Who Wins The AI Superapp Battle?, Apple’s Consumer AI Victory, World Cup Automation Mistake
M.G. Siegler and Alex Kantrowitz argue that AI is converging on a “super app” layer, but winning it will depend on whether agentic workflows become genuinely useful for mainstream users. They also make the case that Apple may be the consumer AI winner by default, while warning that automation can produce technically correct but socially bad outcomes, as in the World Cup VAR example.
Zuckerberg’s Disappointment, OpenAI’s Equity Gamble, Alex Karp’s Rally Cry
Meta’s AI agent push appears to be stalling, while the broader AI market may be concentrating around a few model providers and infrastructure sellers. The episode also covers Microsoft’s Copilot reset, Google’s hedging strategy, Palantir’s warning about frontier-lab concentration, and the bizarre report that OpenAI’s Sam Altman floated a U.S. government equity stake.
OpenAI President Greg Brockman: Our Plan To Merge Chat And Agents
Greg Brockman argues OpenAI is moving from chat to agentic systems that can act across apps, tools, and devices with minimal interface friction. He also says compute will remain the key constraint, pricing will keep falling for current intelligence levels, and AI’s biggest near-term social upside may be in health.
Anthropic’s Mythos is Back, OpenAI Releases GPT 5.6, Apple’s Price Increases
The episode centers on the U.S. government’s emerging role as a gatekeeper for frontier AI releases, as Anthropic’s Mythos/Claude access is loosened and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 is previewed only to trusted partners. The back half turns to Apple’s price hikes, which Alex and Ranjan argue look more like margin expansion than simple pass-through of memory costs, before closing with a tribute to Om Malik.
Anthropic's Labs Lead On Fable's Capabilities + Building AI-Native Products — With Mike Krieger
Mike Krieger describes Anthropic Labs as the internal engine for turning rapidly improving models into usable products, from Claude Code and computer use to more agentic workflows. He also discusses safety tradeoffs, token efficiency, outcome-based pricing, and why Anthropic sees itself as both a platform and a product company.
The Fable Ban's Unintended Consequences + AI's New Economics — With Aaron Levie
Aaron Levie and Alex Kantrowitz unpack the Anthropic/Fable export-control episode as a potential turning point for AI regulation, with governments moving closer to approving or restricting model releases. They also debate how open-weight models, cheaper inference, and rapidly rising token consumption are reshaping AI economics and where the value will accrue.