Bob Muglia is the former CEO of Snowflake, author of THE DATAPRENEURS: The Promise of AI and the Creators Building Our Future, and ex-head of Server and Tools at Microsoft. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss the latest in artificial intelligence, including Marc Andreessen's essay — Why AI Will Save The World — and the lessons in his book. We also go deep into the emergence of Azure at Microsoft, which he was present for, and how Satya Nadella was able to push it forward despite the cultural challenges.
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Mark Gurman is the chief correspondent at Bloomberg covering Apple. He joins Ranjan Roy and Alex Kantrowitz for a special episode focused entirely on Apple's Vision Pro announcement. We cover: 1) The Vision Pros trajectory over the next five years 2) Whether it will be the future of the computer vs. a complementary media device 3) What the device's impact on society will be 4) Why Tim Cook didn't wear the device at the event 5) Apple vs. Meta 6) The $3,499 price.
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Astro Teller is the CEO of X, Alphabet's moonshot division. He joins Big Technology Podcast for a taping in front of a live audience at Summit at Sea to discuss the calculations society must make around advancing AI research and how the technology can help the world. Listen for a dynamic discussion that digs into Teller's family history, the current 'moonshots' that X is taking, and whether AI moonshots should've stayed separate from Google for longer.
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Ranjan Roy of Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the week's tech news. We cover: 1) Tech stocks consolidating growth in the S&P 500% 2) The 'Asset Market Meltdown Hypothesis' 3) Amazon's entry into wireless. 4) Japan's threat to AI copyright law 5) The lawyer that used ChatGPT and looked like a fool 6) The Center For AI Safety's bold Statement 7) The fake 'simulation' where an AI killed a military operator 8) Meta's new Quest 3 headset 9) What to expect at Apple's big WWDC event
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Ryan Mac is a tech reporter at The New York Times, Bobby Allyn is a technology correspondent at NPR. The two join Big Technology Podcast for a wide-ranging discussion touching on: 1) TikTik's ban in Montana and its potential spillover effects. 2) The rise of Instagram Reels. 3) Twitter's Role in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. 4) Elon Musk as Republican kingmaker. 5) Elizabeth Holmes reports to prison. 6) AI regulation's long road ahead.
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John Herrman is a contributing editor at New York Magazine. He joins Ranjan Roy and Alex Kantrowitz to break down the week’s news. We cover 1) NVIDIA’s Blowout quarter 2) The emergence of Temu and Shein — in great depth.
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Jack Krawczyk is the director of Bard at Google. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss his vision for the chatbot, where it's heading, and whether this technology will be as impactful as many imagine. Join us for a fun look into one of the tech industry's most important generative AI initiatives.
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Ranjan Roy of Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the week's tech news. We cover: 1) Apple's mixed reality struggles 2) Whether the stock market is in an AI bubble 3) OpenAI's Sam Altman testimony in Washington 4) Montana's TikTok ban 5) The rise of Shein 6) Whether Musk or Bezos is in a better place today.
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Richard Mathenge was part of a team of contractors in Nairobi, Kenya who trained OpenAI's GPT models. He did so as a team lead at Sama, an AI training company that partnered on the project. In this episode of Big Technology Podcast, Mathenge tells the story of his experience. During the training, he was routinely subjected to sexually explicit material, offered insufficient counseling, and his team members were paid, in some cases, just $1 per hour. Listen for an in-depth look at how these models are trained, and for a look at the human side of Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback.
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OpenAI's response:
We engaged Sama as part of our ongoing work to create safer AI systems and prevent harmful outputs. We take the mental health of our employees and our contractors very seriously. One of the reasons we first engaged Sama was because of their commitment to good practices. Our previous understanding was that wellness programs and 1:1 counseling were offered, workers could opt out of any work without penalization, exposure to explicit content would have a limit, and sensitive information would be handled by workers who were specifically trained to do so. Upon learning of Sama worker conditions in February of 2021 we immediately sought to find out more information from Sama. Sama simultaneously informed us that they were exiting the content moderation space all together.
OpenAI paid Sama $12.50 / hour. We tried to obtain more information about worker compensation from Sama but they never provided us with hard numbers. Sama did provide us with a study they conducted across other companies that do content moderation in that region and shared Sama’s wages were 2-3x the competition.
Ben Smith is the author of Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral. He's also the editor-in-chief of Semafor. He joins Ranjan Roy and Alex Kantrowitz for our weekly news recap show. We cover: 1) New Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino 2) Tucker Carlson's move to Twitter 3) End of the streaming wars 4) Trump's CNN Interview 5) Lessons from Ben's book, Traffic 6) Mark Zuckerberg's jiu-jitsu prowess.
