Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson

On today’s show Andrew and Ben begin with reflections on big Apple news that feels relatively small alongside a world of growth and dramatic questions across technology in the AI era. Then: They turn to the news that OpenAI is pausing its Internet model training, the incentive structure that makes cybersecurity challenging and how AI compounds the challenge, two digressions from Ben on misalignment and a new AI use case, and why black hat and white hat cybersecurity actors are both doing the same thing in the AI era. At the end: More thoughts on bubble benefits that may survive, an emailer considers a financial planning career but is concerned about AI, two follow-ups on AI and the writing process, and European emailer thinks Americans who love sports love everything but the actual sport.

Ben and Andrew begin with Nvidia’s announcements of a new funding model for AI infrastructure, including the differences and similarities with railroad expansion 150 years ago, why LLMs were a gift and curse to Nvidia’s business, the pressure on Nvidia coming from Google and Amazon, and the expanded blast radius as Nvidia works to mobilize third party funding. From there: Why the turnover at Google may actually be a good sign for Google’s frontier efforts, and extended thoughts the future of AI-generated output, ideas and substantiation, and Anthropic’s plan to watermark outputs. At the end: A question about the Vision Pro, the obstacles for Starlink Mobile, and a cranky emailer yields a clarifying answer on why Ben is excited about his vibe coded app.

On today’s show Ben and Andrew begin with Microsoft, Meta and Google in the wake of their latest earnings reports. First: Microsoft’s push to be the middle layer for enterprise AI, threats to the company’s competitive position in the long run, and the subtext of the open weights open letter frenzy two weeks ago. Then: Parsing Google and Meta strategies as Google hedges its frontier bets, while Meta continues its frontier spending and announces questionable plans for an enterprise business. At the end: The future of the lending environment for Meta and the other hyperscalers, a bubble check-in, a rundown of what happened between Citadel and the Situational Awareness, close encounters with Ben’s vibe coded app, and an emailer offers a compelling theory on the push for Permanent Daylight Savings Time.

On today’s show Ben and Andrew begin with takeaways from OpenAI’s sandboxing snafu, including a reminder that the big bad wolf is real, OpenAI’s failures, and the timing challenge with warnings from AI labs. From there: Talking through Ben’s article on Kimi K3 and the future of open weights AI models in the U.S., including why the U.S. open source market has stagnated, the motives of various tech constituencies to drive competition with OpenAI and Anthropic, the difference between the training market and the inference market, intelligence as a commodity, and why OpenAI and Anthropic may have a more defensible lead than it seems. At the end: The government’s disagreements about how to handle Chinese models, the argument for encouraging U.S. distillation, the security risks of building atop Chinese infrastructure, an email about Chinese innovation, concerns over American credentialism, and a potential curveball from the CCP after a week of Kimi anxiety.

On today’s show Ben and Andrew begin with a raft of OpenAI news, including reactions to the first reports of what OpenAI’s first hardware product will be, the logic of OpenAI’s hardware business generally, the Codex push in the mac app, and a request for a Codex computer. From there: The Apple-OpenAI trade secrets lawsuit, including Apple history, a reckless OpenAI employee, and the funniest part of the complaint. At the end: IBM’s stock and the specific way AI may have affected mainframe spending, how AI will manifest in real-world software, an email about Meta’s messaging as a recruiting pitch, notification management, monetizing expertise, and a word about daylight savings time.