Down Round

Across timezones and many oceans, our intrepid boys commune via video chat to dig into the top story of the last week or so - Musk vs OpenAI. You may recall that Musk was a part of OpenAI in it's infancy as an AI safety org. Well, now it's gone from a not-for-profit organisation to a public benefit corporation, and Musk reckons he's owed his slice of the pie. Idk something along those lines, I don't know about this stuff, I'm just a truck driver.

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You've heard of Twitch, formerly Justin.tv, the website where you watch sweaty guys play Fortnite. But are you aware that there is a dark and twisted bizarro Twitch called 'Kick'? It's where some of our planet's greatest degenerates have decided to call home, with extremely lax terms of service allowing them to do and show much more than they could on the comparatively draconian purple app. Your children are watching this filth, mouth agog, and it's letting them vicariously experience what it's like to be the most annoying prick on the high street. Or worse, watching 'rapper' Drake mindlessly bet on slots with house money [allegedly].

Noted establishmentarians James and Raph stretched on their shoulder length rubber gloves to sort through one of the internets strangest pass times - watching other people exist.

But first, a quick run down on GameStop's offer to buy Ebay.

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Meta bought this company called Manus AI which is like some sort of computer thing? It's from China but they moved to Singapore? Anyway the deal was basically done but then the Chinese government was like "actually, nah". Kinda nuts.
Jimmy H and Rapho had a chat about that AND the new Deep Seek drop being a bit of a nothing-burger.

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ALERT, ALERT: Timmy Cook is officially stepping down from his CEO position, but it's more like a step to one side as he shifts into chairman mode. His replacement has been announced as John Ternus, Apple's current senior vice president of hardware engineering. So, what legacy is big Cookie leaving behind, and what will change with Ternus at the helm?

ALSO, a quick run down on that Allbirds AI thing from last week.

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Remember when Zuck chucked a hissy fit and started headhunting a bunch of AI weapons and offered them 9 figure salaries to work at Meta AI? Well, this crack team of computer geeks have gone and announced their first AI model. James and Raph pick through the details and try to discern just where Meta might fit in this whole AI debacle.
Plus, they made an AI clone of Mark Zuckerberg for their staff to interact with. Why? Not too sure.

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So, OpenAI bought a podcast? For possibly hundreds of millions? Most importantly, it wasn't us?

Our spurned hosts come together to question the decision with the jealous contempt of an ex-lover.

Moving through the stages of grief, we also interrogate Sam Altman's character, and whether he even deserved us in the first place, as some have recently called him duplicitous and sociopathic.

Lose our number, Sammy boy, we're going to ask Dario to the dinner dance instead. 💅

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Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has graced the land of plenty this week, opening an office in Sydney before swinging by Canberra to put the fear of god into our elected officials on big, spooky, scary AI bots coming to take your job and wife. The boys use this as a springboard to examine Australia's relationship with AI and data centres, whether these execs are trying to 'pull the ladder up behind them', and leaks possibly detailing Claude's next model.

Also, a brief chat about what will come of that Meta court case loss.

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Another week, another episode about OpenAI. The eponymous chatbot company has announced that it's video generation/social media app Sora is shutting up shop as they seem to be chasing Anthropic's enterprise focused success. This is important to discuss because it means the boys were sort of right again?

They also dipped their toes into the sloppy waters of AI Fruit Love Island, and wrapped back around to revisit private equity.

Warning: James' computer decided to switch his mic input from the gorgeous RODE mic he had plugged in to his crusty little airpods, meaning his recording sounded like dog doo-doo for the first 20 minutes of the ep. Please accept our sincerest apologies, and know that he will be severely punished for this malfeasance in due course.

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Week two of baby season and we're still out here, still feeding you content-starved little varmints hot and fresh intelligence. This week, we thought it was a good time for a general temperature check on the AI world. Who's leading, who's flailing, and who the hell is curing their dog's cancer with ChatGPT.

Join us for the first part here, then head over to DownRound.net to get Premium access and hear the other half of the chat, plus ad free listening!

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We come to you with an urgent alert for all Down Round subscribers.

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