GeekWire

This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we look at how Amazon is positioning itself in the emerging era of generative artificial intelligence. We play and assess clips of Amazon CEO Andy Jassy explaining the company's AI strategy on its earnings call this week.

We also discuss the history of AI usage by startups, and consider advice from investors and startup leaders at Seattle Tech Week for emerging tech companies looking to stand out with their own AI applications and solutions.

And finally, we reconsider our approach to interacting with machines and contemplate the possibility of artificial intelligence reflecting not just the worst but the best of humanity.

Related links and headlines

• Amazon’s online store sales dip below 40% of net sales for first time, and other earnings notes
• Leaked email shows Amazon formed a new group to work on the 'most ambitious' AI models
• How Seattle startups are ‘supercharging’ internal operations with AI
• Why Using a Polite Tone with AI Matters

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Blake Resnick built a fusion reactor in his garage at age 14, and interned at McLaren Automotive, Tesla, and DJI, before dropping out of Northwestern University in 2017 to launch drone startup Brinc.

Now, at age 23, he oversees a team of nearly 100 people making drones and other technology for public safety agencies, serving more than 400 customers.

On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, recorded on-location at the company's headquarters in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood, Resnick talks about Brinc’s origins, its move from Las Vegas to Seattle, the upcoming release of its Lemur 2 drone, his recent White House visit, and the geopolitical forces impacting its products.

He also explains the mind-blowing series of events that led OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to become the company’s first investor. Listen to the end for that.

Related stories and links

• Video of the Lemur 2
• Video of the Brinc Ball
• Drone startup Brinc prepares for take off with ex-Amazon engineers and geopolitical tailwinds
• Meet Blake Resnick, the 22-year-old engineer who just moved his fast-growing drone startup to Seattle

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Microsoft staked its financial claim in the AI gold rush this week, announcing the pricing for its upcoming Microsoft 365 Copilot technology: a whopping $30/user per month on top of its existing enterprise subscription license fees.

Wall Street loved it. One analyst called it "eye popping." Investors sent the company's shares to a new record on the day the pricing was announced.

The upcoming product, fueled by Microsoft and OpenAI technologies, is designed to integrate with Microsoft productivity apps and work with internal business data, going beyond the capabilities of web-based generative AI technologies.

But will companies see that much value in what Microsoft has to offer? Microsoft 365 Copilot is still in private preview, for now, but the pricing suggests that the company likes what it's seeing and hearing from early users.

It's part of a big week that also saw the company clear a major hurdle in its $69 billion Activision-Blizzard acquisition, winning a key court ruling and giving itself an extra three months of breathing room to complete the blockbuster gaming deal. 

But behind the scenes, Microsoft is grappling with shaky morale amid ongoing cutbacks, and growing questions about the gap between employee and executive compensation. Meanwhile, a high-profile U.S. government breach by a Chinese hacking group is raising new questions about the security of Microsoft products, and threatening to undermine a growing source of revenue for the company.

It's shaping up as one of the biggest years in Microsoft history, and this was perhaps the biggest week of the year so far for the company. Next up: Microsoft will make its quarterly earnings report on Tuesday. 

Stories discussed on this week's show: 

• Microsoft sees ‘massive’ economic opportunity in AI; stock nears record on business pricing news
• Microsoft, Amazon, other tech companies make commitment with White House for responsible AI
• Microsoft’s stock has risen almost 1,000% since Satya Nadella became CEO in 2014, netting him a reported $1 billion in compensation (Fortune)
• Google Tests A.I. Tool That Is Able to Write News Articles (New York Times)

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This week, we take a closer look at Amazon's Alexa in a world where generative AI is enabling increasingly sophisticated conversations with digital assistants. 

How does Alexa stack up against ChatGPT? Is that even a fair comparison? How will privacy play into all of this? And what's Amazon's commitment to Alexa in this era of corporate cutbacks. Those are some of the topics we discuss with Rohit Prasad, the longtime senior vice president and head scientist for Alexa, whose role has expanded in the past year to lead the entire Alexa business. 

With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited and produced by Curt Milton.

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If the use of generative AI in the workplace didn’t seem complicated enough already, just consider what it means for big cities and other governmental agencies.

The implications of common AI problems such as algorithmic bias and attribution of intellectual property are magnified in the public sector, and further complicated by unique challenges such as the retention and production of public records.

Jim Loter, interim chief technology officer for the city of Seattle, grappled with these issues as he and his team produced the city’s first generative AI policy this spring. Loter recently presented on the topic to the U.S. Conference of Mayors annual meeting in Columbus, Ohio, and he joins us to discuss the issue on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast.

With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited and produced by Curt Milton.

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For more than four decades, since the 1980s, pointing and clicking has been the primary method of using a personal computer. What if that changed to simply thinking, typing and doing? That's one promise of AI. Rather than remembering the keyboard shortcut to take a screenshot, or the setting to shift the screen into dark mode, you could just tell the computer what you want it to do in natural language.

Microsoft is moving in this direction with the development of Windows Copilot, an adaptation of its Open AI-powered Bing search chatbot integrated directly into the operating system, showing as a persistent sidebar once activated by users via a new taskbar button.

This week, the company started to give users in the Windows Insider preview program a very early look at Windows Copilot. 

On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we're featuring a conversation with Aaron Woodman, the Windows vice president of marketing, recorded shortly after Windows Copilot was unveiled a few weeks ago. 

Here is the full video of Windows Central's hands-on with the Windows Insider early preview of Windows Copilot, as highlighted in the intro to this episode.

With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop.

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"Our rule is, we risk capital — we don't risk people." That was the guiding principle for Everett-Wash.-based OceanGate, as described by its CEO, Stockton Rush, at the GeekWire Summit in October 2022.

Rush's engineering decisions, and his tolerance for risk, as reflected in his comments at our event, are getting new scrutiny after the apparent implosion of OceanGate's Titan submersible, near the site of the Titanic wreck deep under the North Atlantic Ocean this week, killing Rush and four others on board. 

On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we're joined by Alan Boyle, GeekWire contributing editor, who has been covering OceanGate for the past seven years. He tells the story of Stockton Rush and the company, discusses the tragedy of the past week, and contemplates what's next for OceanGate and the larger world of ocean and space exploration. 

• Now what? OceanGate sub tragedy sets off a torrent of questions without answers
• OceanGate submersible and crew declared lost after discovery of debris near Titanic
• Watch the full video: Stockton Rush at the 2022 GeekWire Summit
• Read an archived version of Rush's OceanGate bio, and a New York Times obituary.

With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop

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Our guest this week is Jason Del Rey, a business reporter who covered Amazon, Walmart and the business of online retail for more than a decade at Recode and Vox Media. His new book is "Winner Sells All: Amazon, Walmart, and the Battle for our Wallets," which takes an inside look at what he calls "the defining business clash of this generation—a battle waged for our loyalty and wallets, with hundreds of billions of dollars at stake and millions of jobs on the line."

With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; edited and produced by Curt Milton.

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This week: the origins of data, and the future of the digital species.

Our guest is business and tech leader Bob Muglia, a startup investor and advisor who played key roles in the emergence of Microsoft's database, server, and business software products, and served as the CEO of data warehouse company Snowflake Computing. He's the author, with Steve Hamm, of a new book called  "The Datapreneurs: The Promise of AI and the Creators Building Our Future," published by Peakpoint Press.

Muglia connects the dots between early data innovation and the emerging era of artificial intelligence; talks about lessons from one of his favorite authors, Isaac Asimov; compares Microsoft and IBM to Microsoft and OpenAI; explains why he's ultimately an optimist about technology and humanity; and tells the story of the data center he built in his house when he was a Microsoft executive. 

"We've gone from the verbal way of recording information ... to various forms of writing, to the printing press, to ultimately digital computers and the internet. And now data of every type is recording society in a way that essentially has a permanence attached to it. And these intelligent entities that we can create in the future will learn from all of this. ... It's a little scary, for sure, but it's pretty exciting."

With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; edited and produced by Curt Milton.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook on Monday unveiled the company's new $3500 Vision Pro headset, declaring a new era for spatial computing, and it was difficult not to notice the similarities to Microsoft's unveiling of its HoloLens headset back in 2015. 

The comparison of Vision Pro and HoloLens, and the way the devices match a certain historical pattern, is one of our topics this week in a broader discussion about the new Apple device and what it means for the future of technology and computing.

Our guest is John Tomizuka, co-founder and CTO of Seattle-based tech startup Taqtile, which makes augmented reality work instruction software for enterprise companies. Taqtile has been working on HoloLens applications since the beginning, and the company said this week that it plans develop for the Vision Pro, as well.  

Related Posts

• ‘Tears in my eyes’: Seattle startups sound off on Apple’s Vision Pro headset
• Analysis: Apple’s Vision Pro sets up a clash with Valve, Sony, Meta over future of VR/AR
• Apple vs. Microsoft: Vision Pro, HoloLens, and a familiar pattern in a classic tech rivalry

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