Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Welcome to episode 56 of Tech DECIPHERED. In this episode, we will discuss big tech going into artificial intelligence and why the recent announcement on integrations matter to you.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

AI is now literally everywhere, in our mobile phones, laptops, chipsets, et cetera. As integrations increase, what are the implications for everyone involved, Bertrand?

Bertrand Schmitt

Yes, it’s exciting days in AI space. I mean, I guess you can say that every week.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

And scary. It’s exciting and scary.

Bertrand Schmitt

Yes, depending on how you like AI and how you support the current development of this industry. For sure there are new questions being raised because what’s new is not just that big tech is going AI, it’s big tech and all its supporting platforms is going AI. I mean, in a matter of weeks, we got news about Android, about Chrome, about Microsoft Windows, about Apple and all its platform, iOS, iPad, macOS, all going AI. Of course, we have the supporting hardware going AI.

Bertrand Schmitt

We have witnessed a Qualcomm AI PC launch recently. We have Apple announcement that their latest hardware is AI-compatible with our their platform. It’s really exciting days and a lot of change. In some ways, I would say that might be the point where AI is going mainstream in some ways, in the sense that it’s baked into our hardware, baked into our operating systems, and it’s becoming a way to differentiate new devices that are being launched by pushing their AI capabilities.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Maybe we start with getting us all on the same page and why maybe this matters. The first piece is AI years ago, when there was AI being used and there wasn’t that much, but when there was AI being used was relatively hidden, right? Obviously there were features in certain products that use some mechanisms of AI, but they were not very obvious to end users, to prosumers, to whoever was using them. Then we went into a world where AI is somehow separate.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

I think the recent things that we saw when ChatGPT basically launched Gemini, et cetera, it was like there’s this standalone thing. Now I go to the website, or I have the app, and I’ll use it for this. It’s like a different instance. The problem with integrations, it again obscures it, but it obscures it in a way that is super pervasive. To your point that you were making earlier, it’s everywhere. There are things that we didn’t know were using AI that are now using AI. The more it gets integrated into our day-to-day experiences in our mobile phones, laptops, and it goes into the level of chipsets, for example to get optimized performance.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

How much is too much? How much is too much? How much are we willing to take as end users, prosumers, et cetera, out of this use?

Bertrand Schmitt

What’s really changing is that in the past when AI was used, I would say as a consumer, because B2B side, it could be used and quite hidden. Usually it was different type of AI, very specific. But if you look at in the consumer space when AI was used, it was really hidden away in some features, like fall detection, when you have a watch detecting you are falling, some abnormal heart rate detection was to take better pictures. In the B2B world, it would be optimizing ad pricing.

Bertrand Schmitt

The other option for AI was very specific. You say, “You know what, I want to use ChatGPT, I’m going to open the app, open the website, and interact with this app.” We also had a few apps from Photoshop to DaVinci Resolve to GitHub Copilot, where you would have these features that become part of the app experience.

Bertrand Schmitt

But I will say what is new now is that it’s coming at operating system level like never before. Before, again, it was separate. Now it’s going to be everywhere trying to check what’s going on with you, with your usage of the device, and try to support you in some way, provide you new features, whether you like it or not, in some ways.

Bertrand Schmitt

That’s probably the big question. We make a sudden leap from features of very limited use or features in a very specific app to whether you like it or not, it’s baked into the operating systems and in a way, part of your day-to-day usage of your computing devices.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

That’s precisely the problem, though, whether you like it or not, because there’s a lot of data going through the operating system that is deep data that’s being interpreted, and there’s stuff being done about it. We’ll talk about use cases later on in user flows. There’s obviously sometimes in that, but what exactly is being done with our data, with our user flows, for example, as consumers, or even in an enterprise environment? What is exactly the operating system doing with it to serve back these amazing experiences to us?

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

There’s no doubt the experiences from an end user perspective will be much better, both in consumer and enterprise. But at what cost and how much discoverability and visibility do we have? We talked about privacy in previous episodes. I mean, this is sort of like, what is the rumour of privacy? We’ll talk later in the episode that there’s some reassurances being made by some of the platform owners like Apple, et cetera. But really, if you are embedding certain experiences at an operating system level, again, thinking as a computer engineer, this is the deepest layer, the layer that is closest to the hardware, and that then serves everything else to the apps on top of it, to the applications on top of it.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Again, great value in many cases in terms of use cases and user flows, but at what cost exactly to us and what control will we have over those levels of integrations?

Bertrand Schmitt

Yeah, I think this question of controls, this question of what’s enabled by default or not, will be a big question. It’s key also to make consumers safe or businesses safe using this product. If you take businesses, I mean, they might have some pretty big surprise to discover their data is being used in some ways, and that can be a real issue for them.

Bertrand Schmitt

I will say another piece of the puzzle is that in some ways, and especially when you look at some news about the new Microsoft Copilot PCs, feels like, okay, AI is good, we are going to build some hardware, and we’re going to figure out what to do with this new AI hardware. But it doesn’t feel they were very clear about what’s going to be developed. Honestly, it’s underwhelming. It’s not as if it’s very exciting features that normal people will really care and will make them change their buying decisions.

Bertrand Schmitt

Don’t get me wrong, I think some features can be useful. Better cameras, better tracking of your face when you’re in front of a camera, better noise-cancelling for your mic. But that’s the stuff we had before, it’s just better, more efficient, more power efficient.

Bertrand Schmitt

But in terms of really transformational, when you see all the hype that happened with ChatGPT, doesn’t seem like a lot. In terms of Paint, okay, you can draw some stuff and generate something better. That’s great, but could do that with ChatGPT, doesn’t need to be embedded at OS layer. We’ll talk more about this. But for me, it’s raising a lot of questions.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

At the end of the day, they’re trying to sell more stuff. If you’re a software developer, you’re trying to sell more software products. If you can embed more things into the operating system, which by the way, you control. Microsoft controls operating systems. Google controls operating systems. Apple controls operating systems.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

If you can embed more things into it, there’s more value. It’s more value to end user, but then there’s more value to you because you can sort of start cross-selling, upselling on other products, other experiences that you have out there. The key of the matter is not so much why is this valuable to others? Why is it valuable to the big tech companies, et cetera. I mean, it’s clear why it’s valuable to the big tech companies because of more products and more services that they can sell down the line.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

The interesting thing is this, and maybe switching gears, actually matters to you. If some of you dozed off and said, “Well, why am I listening to this episode at this stage? Because this seems like there’s this AI stuff going on.” This actually matters to you, and it matters to you at two levels, the positive level and the negative level.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Maybe we start with some of the positives and product implications, but as we discussed before, the user flows can be greatly enhanced, either if you’re just a consumer or using it as a consumer or using it a professional. They can be greatly enhanced because it can give you much better, accurate recommendations, predictions on things you need to do, information on your schedule, things that we’ve been dreaming about for over a decade or two that can now be done with a higher level of integration across operating system and apps, because I know a lot more about you.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Think about the early days of Google Assistant. We’ll get back to this later. But it’s actually funny that now Google, if you’re using an Android experience, when you’re calling that instance, it gives you the option to switch from Google Assistant to Google Gemini. I’m sure many of you have noticed this. You have the option to instead of using Assistant, you want to use Gemini. Gemini is better.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

For some reason, it has the male voice only. I don’t know what happened to that, but it’s better. Then after you use Gemini once with that, when you call Google, I don’t know if you’ve noticed as well, Bertrand, but magically it says, “Do you want to download the app?” Because I guess the app has other things and other features that it doesn’t get served by the OS instance by itself or something like that.

Bertrand Schmitt

I have not seen the app download but for the assistant…

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

It prompts you. It tells you, “Switch to Gemini,” and then you use Gemini. With Gemini, it’s like, “Do you want to download the app to have more features?” I’m like, “Do you want me to do something else? Or at this point in time, is there anything you can’t see in my phone?” I’m being funny, but there is value. Let’s start with a positive. There is value, there are positive use cases. The whole thing about figuring stuff out for you that is done if there’s higher integration with the operating system in the apps.

Bertrand Schmitt

Sometimes it also feels very frustrating because sometimes you have the impression once you are using your phone, your PC, your tablet, bit, Android, iOS, or others, it feels like some very basic stuff are not done today that could have been done for a long time in terms of detecting basic stuff like from your calendar to alerting you that you have an appointment, and you are far, doesn’t require any AI to detect that. It can be simply automated based on accessing the apps. That also for me, sometimes I feel the day-to-day frustration that basic tasks are not simplified, and they try to automate with AI some very complex stuff that for sure will never be very precise and will have issues. I hope they also take care about some simpler use case that they should have taken care years ago in some case.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

For example with Waze, you have this thing. You should leave by whatever time because I looked into your calendar, you gave me permission, and this place is whatever, yeah. Now the cool part is then if it’s reading your emails as well, it says, “By the way, it’s actually been changed, you have 15 more minutes,” in your always-on-device mode. It could tell you, “By the way, we just got an email.” Then forget assistance. I’m joking, but there’s obviously value in that. I agree that there’s use cases that maybe were easier to have been implemented a long time ago and some of them haven’t. But this is now a throw of you can do whatever you want, literally assuming that there are permissions required from the user.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

The other point is around advertising. I mean, we’ve seen how silly advertising was over the years, relatively inaccurate then sometimes maybe a bit too accurate when it was effectively trespassing our privacy in all sorts of ways. But this may allow for a rebirth of advertising. More targeted advertising, more targeted suggestions that don’t look like advertising, nano or very personally targeted. Now, I’m not sure this is a good or bad thing, but there’s certainly value there at the table.

Bertrand Schmitt

Advertising, I’m always on the fence because I usually prefer to have more targeted ads because at some point it becomes more useful. Sometimes I’m scared to see how well targeted on the app because sometimes it feels so extremely targeted. You are really worried. That’s when you realize how much you are tracked ultimately online.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Does it promote consumption in you, do you feel? Do you feel you consume more because of advertising? I would say it does for me, so that’s why I’m asking.

Bertrand Schmitt

Many times it’s pushing me some stuff I already consider. Usually it doesn’t mean much for me. If I already consider it, then either I stop considering it and I won’t go back because of an ad. I will go back because that was my plan all along. This one has retargeting as little value for me, I would say. But sometimes I discover new stuff that might be of interest to me. That’s when it’s probably a bit more valuable. But I know retargeting works, so maybe for some it’s working not for me.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Okay, so you’re still in denial.

Bertrand Schmitt

Maybe.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Fair enough. Fair enough. We all want to be like Bertrand.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Honest issue with all of this level of integration, which you already have a bit of a glimpse on when we did the introduction and talked a little bit about getting us all on the same page is privacy. What is private and what is not? How much control do we have over privacy or not of our user flows, whatever we’re using. If I’m doing something maybe I shouldn’t be doing in my operating system, how much is it being translated back to insights or predictions in the usage of the operating system itself and apps that work on it?

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

How much can you control, I feel is a bit of an issue. What are the boundaries of privacy? Are we moving to a world that has expectations of no privacy if you use certain systems? If you accept or use certain AI, add-ons and Copilot kind of systems, we just say, “Well, so much for privacy or for core privacy.” Where are we at?

Bertrand Schmitt

We might talk more later about the details of Recall, for instance, and there’s a new feature that was widely touted by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. I mean, Recall was, I mean, for me at least, totally scary. I was shocked about what they proposed. I was shocked at the lack of preparation about such a feature and ultimately how it was implemented. It was so poorly designed. That part gets me really worried, seeing that some of these guys, considered some of the best in the business, can get it so bad. That’s something visible, because it was really touted very publicly. But can you imagine the rest of what they do if they can completely fuck up such a big visible feature? I mean, the leading feature for the new Microsoft AI PC. It gets me certainly worried.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

I feel everyone now is a little bit under the Facebook motto of yesteryears, of move fast and break things, and that’s not good. It’s not good for various reasons, because to your point, there’s a lot of unintended consequences that I’m not sure these guys are aware of, in particular, the product managers that are working on some of these things. To your point, I mean, even well-prepared or relatively well-prepared companies like Microsoft do blunders like the whole experience around Recall. Can people just slow down a little bit and figure out, is this all working fine?

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Even in an environment where, for example, security is not a given, cybersecurity is not a given, at some point, are we going to start having worse backlashes than we’ve had until now? Where the hacking thing is, they didn’t get my Social Security numbers, they got a bunch of things they shouldn’t have had. I don’t know. I feel that right now we’re going through move fast and break things.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

With technologies as important as the ones we have at the table right now, that is definitely one of the pieces that scares me the most.

Bertrand Schmitt

What’s scary is that the operating systems guys are actually trying to insert themselves deeply into all your data. If you build features that can break things, I mean, we’re talking about systems that access all your data. It’s really crazy how some seem to be building it with that mindset of moving fast, breaking things. Honestly, I respect Facebook for doing this in the early years.

Bertrand Schmitt

You’re a small company. You’re not that big. Anyway, you are just a website in some ways. I mean, it was not the same risk that a trusted trillion-dollar corporation having access to all your files, that’s really not the same game. You cannot play that game in that situation, is my belief. You have to make it way more careful and one player playing badly, we say, “I can have a big impact on the rest of the ecosystem because suddenly it looks very broken for everyone.”

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Effectively, the biggest risk of it all that we see is when you stop knowing at a very high level what your operating system is doing and what your apps are doing with your data. We’ve had this issue in the past, but now, if it’s more deeply embedded, all your interactions are being seen, what is being done with that? Given all that information, how is it being sent for other purposes to apps that are on top of that operating system?

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

I’m more scared, to be honest, about the apps done by the operating system owners because they’re going to limit access to stuff by other apps. Then I am by other apps or third-party apps, and that gets really scary. Now, what’s Microsoft doing with my data in terms of the apps on top of it? What’s Google doing with Gmail, Waze, Google Maps, et cetera, on top of Android, if I’m running on Android? Now we start having all sorts of funky conversations like anticompetitive behaviour. There was already some stuff going on because of teams in office in Europe that was announced today that I believe the European Commission for competition was looking into this.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Where does this stop? Because there’s more and more bundling. The bundling and integrations are getting even heavier. Are we going to see people, regulators, et cetera, saying, “Well, guys, you have to stop for a bit here because you can’t do all this stuff. Even if consumers are willing to accept it, we’re not. We don’t think it’s in their best interests,” because they don’t know what they’re doing either.

Bertrand Schmitt

And it’s interesting that you talk about that because I guess you saw the news a few days ago where Apple announced that they were not going to release a new AI features in Europe. I guess they are worried about unclear regulations in Europe. I think it’s a smart move on their side. Why take the chance if regulations are not clear enough? At the same time, it would be trouble for Europeans who cannot benefit on the potential productivity gains and simplify their life. At the same point, for sure, it’s raising big questions in terms of anticompetitive behaviour, expansion of the wall garden.

Bertrand Schmitt

When you think about it, some of these features can really displace applications. In the past, you want to have access to specific things. You open this app, you deal with it, you close it. Now potentially, you don’t even see the apps you are using. You are just interacting with an assistant like Siri. You don’t even see the UI of the app that is providing in the background, the data, because it’s orchestrated by the operating system.

Bertrand Schmitt

In a way, you forget step by step, an app exists because you are not opening it. You are not seeing the advertisement, you are not seeing options for paid services. The whole model actually, of some players might die. If you’re at the operating system level, you might not care because you know what, you are going to rebuild some of these features if your app providers are not able to do it competitively anymore. That’s really scary actually, when you think carefully about that.

Bertrand Schmitt

I’m not sure people realize the changes in UI that might happen if some of these truly work, and what would be the implication for app developers doing all the hard work to surface data? Are we moving more and more today where so much is coming from the OS that you have less and less needs for external services and apps? But personally, I feel quite scared about such a feature where everything is being handled by Microsoft or Apple and there are no certain space for third-party providers.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

I think there’s an extreme, which is the one you’re mentioning, which is this extreme of Super OS. The apps that are there are just to provide information, but they’re not the channel. I’m not opening the app to see information on that app. The OS, through the mechanisms that I use, be it Siri, Google, et cetera, et cetera. Google Assistant or Gemini or whatever it is, is serving me that information. I just need to have the app installed, but I’m not really going into the app besides just initiating or instantiating it at some point. That’s one extreme. The super OS or channels go away from the app’s scenario.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

The other extreme is that we have the rise of super apps, and guess which super apps are going to win. The super apps that have better integration, which is what led us to many, many anti-competitive discussions in the past. How we integrated our things into operating systems. Like, if I’m Microsoft, if I’m Google, how much am I integrating my own apps into my operating system experience, and how much unfair advantage do I have to APIs that others don’t have the access to?

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

The rise of super apps is also potentially around the corner, and maybe these two scenarios are one and the same. Maybe they just manifest themselves in a similar way, right? Gemini, et cetera, own the world.

Bertrand Schmitt

Yeah. When you think about Apple, that has been their strategy, step by step, to improve their apps, make them better and better. It’s tough to complain. But where it’s shocking is that it’s more and more apps are part of their app portfolio, and it’s not just that, it’s that it’s a walled garden.

Bertrand Schmitt

It means that switching away from an Apple environment is becoming harder and harder and harder. Because it’s not just that you are used to UI, it’s not just that your phone integrates well with your Mac. It’s you are using that file-sharing system, you are using this note application, you are using your Apple email address, you are using so many pieces of the Apple puzzle now.

Bertrand Schmitt

Even if your movies, your TV shows, they are on Apple TV+, you won’t be able to access anymore if you leave the Apple ecosystem. I mean, step by step, it’s truly a golden handcuff type of situation. Yeah, it’s nice and good, but it’s still a jail. You cannot exit, and that, for me, is more and more shocking.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

And it’s a very different jail than the Google jail. The Google jail also exists across apps and operating systems. But the Apple jail includes hardware.

Bertrand Schmitt

Yeah.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

You are stuck to hardware because the operating system that Apple does, iOS, only runs on their devices. For mobile, the iPhone and the iPads, et cetera. That’s it. At the end of the day, it’s even more integrated.

Bertrand Schmitt

Yeah. And I’m much more appreciative of Google products because I know that they typically work everywhere. Windows, Mac, PC, iOS, Android, many of them are free, or they’re cheap. So it’s a totally different situation. It’s a situation where I’m not locked, I can pick and choose what app I can use, where I use it, and it’s not a lot of money where Apple, it’s like, “Yeah, you want to still get access to your show, too bad. You still want access this? Too bad.”

Bertrand Schmitt

Now I can tell you I’m much, much more mindful to make sure that if I’m using an app or service, it’s something that works across anything I’m using today, or I could be using in the future. I don’t want to be linked to any operating system, any device. So usually I like to use third parties, including some Google services. But yeah, I’m very careful, and by default, that means I’m making sure I’m not using a single Apple app or service or tools because I don’t want to be linked to any other device operating system. That’s it.

Bertrand Schmitt

To be clear, some of their products are pretty good. I’m not saying they are bad quality or anything. I’m just saying I’m totally tired of this walled garden. And maybe the biggest walled garden of all is around FaceTime and iMessage. You could argue that most people in the US where iMessage is probably only in the US, iMessage is so prevalent, they cannot leave the Apple ecosystem, mostly because of iMessage and FaceTime. They don’t want to lose that connectivity they have built with other people they know, and they don’t dare to do that. Apple, on purpose, never proposed iMessage or FaceTime on other platforms.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

There is now an integration of RCS of rich communication suite by Apple that got launched. Apparently, it’s crap.

Bertrand Schmitt

Yes.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

We’ll see how that evolves. But they finally committed to the RCS standard as well as integration. I agree with you. The iMessage thing is so prevalent. It’s not just the US, there’s a couple of other countries where it’s super prevalent. I agreed. I had this formulation and maybe 3, 4 years back, maybe more than 3, 4 years back, I had to make the choice, which prison do I want to be in?

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

I decided I’m going to be in Google’s minimum security prison. I’ll use Google Photos across all the platforms, and I’ll use backup, and I’ll use Drive, and I’ll use Google Docs, and I’ll use all these things and Google Workspaces for work, et cetera, et cetera. Instead of being in the max security Apple prison, which you really can’t get out of. I accept that sometimes people will get texts from me which will be green instead of blue, and it’s fine.

Bertrand Schmitt

Yes, I cannot accept to stay so locked. That lack of choice, that lack of competition, that will be a story for another day. But I think it is making actually Apple pretty lazy ultimately as a company because they are not fighting anymore for the users, because the users don’t have freedom.

Bertrand Schmitt

They don’t have freedom to choose a phone with a different form factor, like a foldable. They don’t have the freedom to have a screen with a different form factor for an iPad. They cannot get a super light laptop with an OLED screen. So they are limiting you in a way because you are locked into the Apple ecosystem. You stick there. But I truly believe as a company, that approach ultimately make you lazy.

Bertrand Schmitt

That’s really my worry today about the Apple ecosystem, that full mindset of unlocking everyone into my system. Therefore, I fear stress competition, which is good for attention and stuff. I don’t think ultimately it’s so good for you as a company. You are going to be less innovative. It might not be immediate, but I think it’s a done wild SPL, and my take is that they’re already there, actually.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Agreed. We’re going to stop beating up on Apple and Microsoft, at least for just a bit. We might beat up on them later on. The final notion of what we talked about and why this matters to you is all of this can be abused beyond what we just talked about, beyond privacy, user flows, data, et cetera.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

For example, if your PC or if your Mac is compromised, someone accesses it. We’ve had issues on compromises in day zero faults and issues and bugs, et cetera, et cetera, your information can go somewhere. If it exists, it can be taken. That’s part of the issue. If people around you, colleagues, spouse, et cetera, have access to your system somehow because they know your passcode, et cetera, then accessing a lot more information on you becomes easier than ever.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Then finally, legally, if your information is subpoenaed and people require that you submit all the information that you have on your files, your professional laptop, et cetera, you might have more stuff there than you thought you did. That creates its own issue.

Bertrand Schmitt

In some way. All of what you listed is not new per se. What is new is that there is, the ease of access is totally different. Someone can get access to all your most secure information much faster, much cheaper just by asking versus having to stream gigabytes of data, and that’s what’s changing the game. Or as you say, that might still be tough. You had no idea it’s still there because it has not been deleted as you expected. It’s still retained in that new AI engine, that sort of stuff.

Bertrand Schmitt

That would be really the question, and that’s why I think companies, Apple, Microsoft, Google, has to be very careful about how they organize the safety of all of this. How do you make sure that it’s only the user that I shared this data with is the only one that can truly access. Yeah, you have to think about more difficult situation like a PC compromised when you’re paying with a payment system, you have to be as careful as you can. It cannot be all this user, locked 5 minutes ago, and that’s good enough for me. I can give it access to anything.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

I think right now cybersecurity still is a bit of an afterthought in a lot of platform development, which is totally shocking, not a bit shocking, and it needs to be at the centre, privacy. Security needs to be at the centre on how you build these things. We still have this issue with logging in. Now all we found, two-factor authentication.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

It’s the biggest discovery of the last few years. I mean, really. So we’re always behind on security levels and in some ways what we have, to your point, with deeper integration, more data available, easier to access, security can’t be an afterthought. Maybe switching gears to some announcements that have happened that we think are important and maybe starting, we’re not really sure if this is moment zero or not, but starting with OpenAI launching 4.0. Bertrand.

Bertrand Schmitt

Yeah. It’s certainly pretty exciting about the recent OpenAI launch, not just because it impacts OpenAI, but impacts everyone downstream of OpenAI. It’s pretty impressive what they have launched. You can see that natural interaction with voice, which is quite new. It’s this reasoning across vision as well.

Bertrand Schmitt

All of this in real-time before you had this constant delay. So the real-time edition is a big difference. I guess we have all seen the movie Her, where you have this guy who is constantly talking to his AI assistant, and obviously, Sam Altman referenced her before the launch. Might not have been good for him to do that, but that’s another story.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

The aftermath with Scarlett Johansson was not positive, as we’ve now seen in the news because they were trying to get her to be Her again, and then they dropped her, and apparently, the voice is very similar to her voice in all puns intended.

Bertrand Schmitt

On this one, I’m not sure if the voice is so similar, to be frank, and two, there is a question of does it mean that she has exclusivity on everyone having a voice similar to her, which I find completely unacceptable.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

But it feels a bit, let’s call it Douchey, to go and talk to someone, to put her voice into the system, not get to an agreement, and then launch with a voice that might be similar.

Bertrand Schmitt

I feel it’s business personally.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

I would say I disagree there. I don’t think so. I am on Scarlet’s side in this case.

Bertrand Schmitt

No, I think you do that every day in a movie. You do a movie, you check a few actors, you want to see if they work. You see 20 of them for one role, and then you pick one, and guess what? They probably look a bit the same because you were looking for that.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

You wanted that voice. You chose a voice that was similar.

Bertrand Schmitt

But that’s the same with actors. These actors that are small, brunette, blonde, with a specific style. You have 20 of them that look the same, behave the same, talk the same, look the same.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

I don’t know. I think we’re going to disagree on this Bertrand. I’m Team Scarlett on this.

Bertrand Schmitt

I don’t think so. For me, it’s a very bad precedent.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

I don’t know the merits of the lawsuit, but I think it was, at the very least, Douchey, I am Team Scarlett on this.

Bertrand Schmitt

That I agree. At the very least can be Douchey, or you could argue it’s the opposite. She should have agreed. Why say no to the team that was proposed to her?

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

No, no, no. I think they were discussing amounts, and they probably couldn’t come to an agreement.

Bertrand Schmitt

I don’t know.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

We will soon sign and find out. I’m sure this will go to court. I’m sure it’ll go to court unless they settle. We’ll see. But anyway, OpenAI, the 4o which stands, just to be clear, the o stands for omni. It’s the multimodal piece because it uses voice, text, images, et cetera. If this sounds sort of familiar. Gemini, when they did this huge announcement which we now know was sort of state, et cetera, they were talking about multimodal modes.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

We talked about it in one of our previous episodes. The Gemini multimodal model approach was quite interesting and unique. That’s what 4o is, and it goes beyond GPT-4 Turbo, from what I believe. So it’s sort of one step beyond it. It made everyone move. Everyone had to respond.

Bertrand Schmitt

Yes. Of course, it’s also cheaper. It’s a lot of benefits. It was announced mid-May, as we say, a lot of other companies benefit downstream, like Microsoft, who is very closely working with OpenAI. So some of the tools Microsoft are using will benefit from this product. Even Apple, as we know, is going to benefit. For some features, you will be sent to OpenAI ChatGPT product.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Maybe we’ll talk a little bit about Microsoft has been doing. Obviously, they have the integrations with OpenAI. They also have their own AI programs. But maybe more important to the integration discussion that we have in this episode, they’ve announced the partnership with Qualcomm with AI chips for PCs. Can you tell us a little bit more about that, Bertrand?

Bertrand Schmitt

Yeah, this is pretty exciting because Qualcomm launched in partnership with Microsoft, Snapdragon X Elite and Plus chips, especially for ultralight laptops. Basically, they are trying to build finally, a neutralite competitor to the MacBook Air. This one is clearly obvious. That’s the direct competition and target for this product. Officially, there is a new brand for this PC. It’s called Windows Copilot+ PC. I hope I got it right.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Cool.

Bertrand Schmitt

Sounds cool, huh? I must say, what’s special? It’s one: it’s an arm type of CPU which is very different from the previous architecture used for Windows PC, which is X86, X64; and two: it’s actually the same architecture you will find in fonts, tablets that you find in the new MacBooks since the launch of Apple Silicon.

Bertrand Schmitt

It’s pretty exciting. Of course, at the end of the day, the question it’s good if it’s exciting from a geek perspective, but it’s even better if it has end-user benefits. One if it works and two if it has end-user benefits.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Let’s start with if it works.

Bertrand Schmitt

If it works. That’s a fair question because it’s been 10 or 12 years actually that Qualcomm has been at it with Microsoft to have an ARM version of Windows. I can raise my hand and say I was there first because of course I bought the first Windows ARM PC. It was Windows RT at the time. It was a special version of Surface that could only run a part of Office, and if I’m not mistaken, Edge. So it was a very slow, crappy device, I must say.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

You know how many times I used my Surface? I used it two times. Two times I used my surface.

Bertrand Schmitt

So you got a Surface RT as well?

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Yeah, at the beginning. The first surface that they launched, I used it two times. Yeah, I still have it. I should do a museum of these things. The things that never really got much used.

Bertrand Schmitt

I usually get rid of them at some point, but yeah, it was pretty sad. It stayed sad, including when was it? 2 years ago, 18 months ago when they launched Surface Pro X, I believe, which was the latest iteration from Qualcomm. It was still crap, to be frank. But this year it’s not crap anymore.

Bertrand Schmitt

First, it’s well integrated, it’s fast enough that you don’t feel crazy using these laptops, and it seems to be mostly working. So of course it’s not perfectly working. We don’t have the same high-quality transition we got from Apple, which was amazing to say the least. No issue whatsoever when you transition.

Bertrand Schmitt

You might not get the best speed of everything because not everything is optimized. The transition was amazing, it was working. You didn’t get the impression to do two steps forward, one step backward. It was really two-step forward with a ball.

Bertrand Schmitt

Here, it’s probably still two steps forward, one step backward because some apps still need translation layer, but this translation layer is working well, so it’s not too bad. But you still have apps that don’t work, and MIDI games are still very slow, actually.

Bertrand Schmitt

You could argue that’s one benefit of Windows laptops is that they can run many games compared to Mac laptops. So I think it’s a big miss. I’m not totally surprised to be frank, but I will say that at this stage it’s already an amazing feat to finally have an ARM CPU working well on Windows. So I will say this stage I upload.

Bertrand Schmitt

Maybe the second question is, okay, cool, it’s working. What’s the user benefit? So hopefully the user benefit is that it provides longer battery, and it’s more energy efficient, and as a result, not only you get a longer battery, but you also have less use of the fans. I must say personally, I love not to hear my fans, and since Apple Silicon, that has been God-sent in a way.

Bertrand Schmitt

So on these two aspects, better battery life, better fan, it looks like it’s better, but it also looks like it’s not as amazing as what was promised by Qualcomm as some of the first benchmarks were sharing. At least what I see from some end user, it might not be fully there. So I will say at this stage I will call it more an early adopter type of product.

Bertrand Schmitt

Maybe the last piece of course, is that at the time of its launch, it was the most powerful NPU, neural processing unit ever made on a personal computer, even beating the equivalent Apple chip. That part is what makes the release of a new version of Windows optimized for AI concomitant. That’s what is supposed to make stuff exciting.

Bertrand Schmitt

Again, as we said, it’s not as if on Windows there is so much that’s going to change here and there are some bits and pieces that will benefit: better camera, better mic, that sort of stuff. But in terms of true change for Windows, we’re going to talk more about this, maybe not so much.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Maybe just close the chapter on Microsoft. Two things. One, obviously as we know AMD intel are also launching UA-optimized CPU’s. So there’s a bunch of things happening around chipsets that will be important to the Microsoft ecosystem in particular. But I’ll go to the topic that you love the most, maybe just to close the Microsoft bookend or the Microsoft book rather to be a bookend for the Microsoft book. Recall. I know you want to talk about Recall.

Bertrand Schmitt

Recall was total recalled.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

It was recalled.

Bertrand Schmitt

That’s a bad joke, of course, but yeah, it was shocking. I think we discussed about it.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Do you want to explain again what it is? Recall and what happened?

Bertrand Schmitt

Yes. Recall was supposed to be a new feature of this new AI PCs. It was the most put-forward feature by Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. From far it looked great. You can type, the system will remember anything you have done on your PC, and be able to organize your search, whatever it is. So if you remember you were in a file talking about a topic, but you don’t remember which file, or if you want to remember something you saw, like a picture, you will be able to type and search for it, and we’ll be able to find it. So it goes way deeper than just finding text in a file, which is a standard feature of an operating system since a long time.

Bertrand Schmitt

The only issue is that Microsoft was taking screenshots of your work every 5 seconds and this stuff was conveniently put in a very lightly protected database. It’s unbelievable how an attacker could take advantage of this to steal your most important information on your computer in a matter of minutes instead of taking hours to transfer a gigabyte of data. Because it’s screenshotting it would have taken screenshots of your password.

Bertrand Schmitt

It’s just unbelievable. When I saw that, why I was shocked is that I was looking at that in real time and I was, “No, that’s not true. They cannot have done that. They will not have implemented this way. No, that’s not possible.” They’re like “Seriously, all these guys at Microsoft. No one saw the potential for abuse of such a system.” We’re talking about an OS with millions of users who have been exploited thanks to virus and other stuff. So it’s just totally unbelievable they did not realize the additional security risk of such a feature.

Bertrand Schmitt

Not just that it was supposed to be enabled by default on the new Windows. As a consumer user, as a business user, it was so unbelievable, this arrogance of a product that just announced, and it was supposed to be released in weeks, and it was the most advanced, controversial security risk ever built in Windows, and they were giving it weeks and not even sharing it in advance as a beta for users to try out discovery issues.

Bertrand Schmitt

If you see Apple, between the announcement of a new OS and the release, you have a period of from June to September. So you have 4 months to test it, beta test it, get feedback from the community. Microsoft was doing it in a matter of 4 weeks between the news and the release. That was insane. There is no other word for it.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

I have to confess, the small part of me that’s still a computer engineer and software developer was rolling on the ground laughing, just like, “Who the hell came up with this crap?”

Bertrand Schmitt

I mean it’s very scary because-

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

To be clear, I started my career developing B2B systems that today would be called Vertical SaaS. The first simulator developed for the Portuguese railroad system would be called the Vertical SaaS Play. It was all Microsoft ecosystem, right? It was all visually basic using Microsoft SQL server, et cetera, so I was deeply embedded in it. I discovered some significant bugs that they have in SQL Server. I got it acknowledged for it, et cetera.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

But anyway, long story short, the computer engineering was just rolling on the ground. I can’t believe that someone decided, even before the protection thing and the cybersecurity thing, right? That someone decided the right thing to do… A solution like this recall was to take screenshots. Someone decided that and some product managers were like, “This is the right way to implement this.” I was like, “Really?”

Bertrand Schmitt

No. For me, what’s shocking is that when you think about it, the whole hierarchy of Microsoft executives felt it was good and right. I don’t understand. I mean, Satya Nadella is an engineer. He’s a software engineer by training. I’m really dumbfounded. It’s not like some hidden stuff that nobody noticed. But no, it was the most widely touted feature of this new Windows AI PC.

Bertrand Schmitt

Going back to our points, it’s great to see that we have new CPUs coming to market that are AI-optimized. We talk about Qualcomm, but AMD is launching new CPUs actually in July that would be also very AI-optimized. Intel is coming in September or October. It’s coming as a whole PC ecosystem. Of course, Apple’s icon was already AI-optimized, so in a way, it’s putting everyone on par. It makes things very exciting, very interesting, but at the same time, in some ways, it’s also showing that it’s not that clear what will be the benefits.

Bertrand Schmitt

I mean, again, beyond some tiny pieces of the puzzle, better image quality on your camera, better audio, maybe upscaling of your videos, some live translation… I mean, live translation. Honestly, when’s the last time that I need to have live translation of some things?

Bertrand Schmitt

That’s where you start to be like, “Okay, what is it really useful for?” When I saw the list of features, I was like, “Okay, this one, I get it. This one, I buy it.” But with many features, I was like, “What the hell?” I mean, is it like targeting 1% use case at best?

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

I think the first big pieces are going to be cross-app integrations, right? In particular, if they belong to the same walled garden, be it Microsoft, Google, or Apple in particular. The level of integration that we were discussing earlier, the fact that it has access to my emails, it has access to my calendar, and it has access to a bunch of things depending on permissions. Again, hopefully, depending on permissions given by users, can it do stuff with that? Then, over time, I think we’ll see more and more cool things coming over. But I feel the beginning is always a little bit tougher.

Bertrand Schmitt

Sorry, to your point, because I think you made a point joking about how Recall was architecture, basically working from screenshots. It’s really shocking because we’ll talk more about Apple. But Apple did, I mean, the hardcore approach you described, which is these apps would be more integrated, there would be API, so that’s a cleaner path. But taking such shortcuts with screenshots is really, I mean, pretty insane, actually.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

But I’d say product management-wise, Apple has always been more top-down. How they think through things and platforms is maybe, sometimes, too top-down. That’s why it feels that it lags in terms of innovation at times, in terms of just putting stuff out because it takes a long time. It’s very platformy in how it looks at development.

Bertrand Schmitt

You’re right.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Google being sometimes the opposite, right? Not in everything, but sometimes they are a little bit the opposite, a little bit more bottom-up.

Bertrand Schmitt

In a way, it’s good that we have multiple approaches, and we will see which one works, but it’s clear that Recall doesn’t seem to work.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Moving to Google, obviously, there are a lot of announcements at Google, at the software layer, and everything that’s going on. Interestingly enough, their developments with a Chromebook and further integration and bundling of Google One AI, which are now repurposing, they’ve just stopped the VPN product on Google One, which, actually, is pissing me off a bit because I did enjoy having the VPN product, but they just sunset it. But now there’s going to be a Google One AI product. They’re bundling it with Chromebooks. Gemini is coming out of the box with Chromebooks.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Obviously, Chromebooks, as we know, it’s one of these product lines that has never been really at the scale it probably should be that everyone expected it to be at. This is maybe another attempt of integration at that level. We know they’re doing stuff around semiconductors and chipsets. We know that for a fact, right? I think we’ll see some interesting things coming out of Google in the next six months to a year.

Bertrand Schmitt

It feels like Google is less ready. They launched something with very limited utility. Initially, no integration with the calendar and no integration with third parties like Spotify. It’s getting back there. But it’s quite surprising because if you take Google Assistant, it was reporting some of this for about ten years. It goes back to, as you said, that it also moves fast and breaks things.

Bertrand Schmitt

It’s just pretty shocking to see a trillion-dollar corporation doing that, taking a chance with a product we need to use for our daily lives and taking a chance with our data. Because if what you see from the surface is so broken, good luck about what’s behind the surface that you cannot see. I certainly hope for the best, but it’s worrisome.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Being in the US and having obviously the part on top of Google search that shows us information that gets served, from what I understand also from Gemini, the Gemini integration now with Android, et cetera. It feels to me, they’re not as behind as people think. I would agree with you, they’re less well-bundled, right? Therefore, their propositions are a little bit all over the shop, but certainly, I use it more than I use any other tool out there. I feel as tools they’re actually pretty good compared even with ChatGPT and others.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

I’m a little bit more positive. I agree on the bundling of products, but I don’t think that’s ever been Google’s forte. In some ways, their Achilles heel is that they’re a little bit poor at what I’d call super app deep integration of products and making very polished products out of the market. But to your point, exciting times.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

I mean, some of the movements that are bottom-up will be very positive. Some of them, sadly will be negative. Hopefully, nothing that will be transformational for the world where we have massive leaks of information, et cetera, at the very core level by any of these players happening.

Bertrand Schmitt

I must say, to your point around the new Google default result coming from Gen AI for search, when you have it working, for me, so far, it has been, I would say, quite disappointing. I’ve seen some… First, I know by default I cannot trust anything that it’s showing me. The value, I feel is quite limited as you always have to double-check. Anyway, that’s how I use it.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

It shows you sources, right? It shows you articles that it’s feeding into, et cetera. In some ways, it’s as discoverable as ChatGPT. I feel a lot of the answers are better. At least for the searches I do, maybe for the searches I do.

Bertrand Schmitt

Yeah. I think my point is that because I feel the need to check, it’s not saving me time on anything because I go back to the source and check.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

But with ChatGPT, you have to check as well, right?

Bertrand Schmitt

Yes.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

It’s not like ChatGPT is super accurate either.

Bertrand Schmitt

Yes, but I would use ChatGPT for more than just one search. ChatGPT ultimately will save me more time in that scenario where I have to double-check anyway, what’s the value? I have had so far, strictly zero value from this product. With ChatGPT, I can ask to do long tasks, and yes, I have to verify some bits and pieces, but ultimately, I get a return on my investment here. I don’t see any value. I stop reading what it’s providing me. I just want to go to the source. If it’s a mash-up of multiple sources done without understanding and wrong, it has no value for me.

Bertrand Schmitt

We’ll see, if it gets good, it’s a different story for sure. But at this stage, I will say personally, not so impressed. By this, maybe when we talk about Android, there’s always Samsung. Samsung is also trying a lot of features and services that are being upgraded. I think there are bits and pieces that are helpful on Android devices. But again, it doesn’t feel so far life-changing as has been ChatGPT in some use cases, at least from my perspective.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Finally, on the responses, let’s start with what led us to actually do this episode in the first place, which was Apple and their announcements around AI, the integration of ChatGPT based on an opt-in. We’ll see how that works on their core workflows, AI-enhanced, Siri, all these things. Interesting. I mean, my view is that Apple definitely, got the right angle. They’re clearly behind in their own AI development in-house, and I feel they just acknowledged that. They said, “We’re behind, and so let’s again make a better product out there that uses what’s best in class right now.”

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

But I really do feel they’re doing a bunch of things in the background to catch up on a lot of these platforms because they realise a little bit what you were saying earlier. If you control interfaces, if you control how users interact with these devices, and if it becomes more voice-based, more image or video-based, et cetera, then they need to be at the core of those interactions and can’t just let ChatGPT be in the middle, and other tools be in the middle, so very interesting. I felt a lot of people were negative on it.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

I think there was a lot of FUD put out there. Some interesting ex-posts from Elon Musk. “You’re integrating this and the privacy and whatever.” I didn’t see that as the key issue. I feel it’s really Apple saying we’re going to create a good product experience that is relatively unified with what we think is currently best in class. Given that we’re behind ourselves.

Bertrand Schmitt

Yeah. I feel, honestly, I was quite impressed by the demo. I feel that compared to Microsoft and Google, they were thinking way more carefully about what are the good use I can get from Gen AI. How can I put Gen AI to really good use and be helpful to users? In some ways, I think they went back to the drawing board and think, “Okay, in different products, let’s come with stuff that will benefit from this hardware, but let’s only focus on stuff that will have some real value.” I mean, summarizing an email, summarizing your alerts on your phone, creating some special emoji. I feel there was a lot of very practical stuff they were proposing to do that made a lot of sense.

Bertrand Schmitt

In some ways, to be Frank, it was putting by comparison the Windows announcement of AI PC, Copilot AI PC to share. I could see a lot of value from the Apple services that were demoed. However, the problem is that the more useful it is, the more anti-competitive it can become by hiding all the apps and services that are being leveraged by this system, destroying potential business models, and again building more and more services that are never compatible with other platforms.

Bertrand Schmitt

That part gets me worried that the Apple walled garden is becoming less and less of a garden per se, but the size of a playground now is becoming more and more, and the walls are becoming higher and higher. You cannot escape, in some ways, because the products are good, but that part was scary in a way. But I must say, that I was impressed that there were many more thoughts put into how do we make better products. Thanks to AI, we have this cool AI stuff. What the hell can we do? Let’s try to randomly show stuff, and let’s see what sticks. I feel Microsoft and Google had more of this approach.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

More top-down again from Apple. What are the, so what’s, of all of this? We talked a lot about why this matters to you. We talked about some of the announcements and some of these announcements to the general audience that doesn’t care deeply about technical or technology implications, probably went and passed them without a lot of notice. But what’s the so what?

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Since some of it we’ve already mentioned, we are going under rapid innovation, rapid movements with a technology that is transformational whether we like it or not. It still feels like Mickey Mouse at times because there’s all these issues happening still with AI. It’s giving us results that sometimes hallucinations, as we discussed in previous episodes. It’s giving us results that sometimes we need to fact-check like we discussed in this episode. But it’s a technology that is transformational. The scale of productivity that can be untapped because of it is transformational.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

The so what is a lot of these players, as we’ve discussed in today’s episode, are moving fast and breaking things. They’re just trying new things and seeing what sticks and what doesn’t. On the one hand, it means that we have rapid innovation. On the other hand, it means, that if it breaks, the implications could be severe and structural.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Hopefully, nothing dramatic will happen. But is it scary, is it good? I vote for its probably going to be mostly good. It is a bit scary. It’s game theory, right? Everyone’s going to do it because it’s an arms race and everyone has to show something out, right? Their latest conference or announcements have to one-up the previous companies’ conferences and announcements. This is, I think, the world that we’re in right now.

Bertrand Schmitt

Yes. It’s exciting times. Never have I seen things moving so fast. Faster than the embrace of the Internet. That conversion of incredible software and incredible hardware change to support all that’s happening at the same time. Maybe the one thing we have not talked much about today is all of this has created a new giant. I mean, Nvidia has been the past few weeks, at least for a few days so far, the number one, not just tech company in the world by market captain, but the number one company by market cap.

Bertrand Schmitt

This is because nearly everyone relies on Nvidia today, maybe not 100%, but 95% to develop their AI algorithm. That level of investment that Apple, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are putting into AI and many others, Facebook and Tesla, has propelled Nvidia as the AI kingmaker. Depending on how many GPUs you can get from them, you will be the winner or the loser. It’s very impressive what’s happening. It’s not something consumers see, but it’s definitely happening in the background and changing everything.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Before we move to the closure, I would just state this one data point that I think is incredibly telling. Last I checked, I think it was last week, the top ten market cap companies in the world, seven are tech companies. Top ten market cap companies in the world, seven are technology companies. I mean, if this doesn’t mean that tech won and this is the age of tech, I don’t know what does, but it’s incredible. It’s absolutely incredible.

Bertrand Schmitt

In some ways. It’s been a while, I don’t know the stat on the last decade, but it’s definitely been a while. We’re in that situation. I mean, it was there briefly in the late ’90s and early 2000s. Microsoft, Cisco, and Intel were really big. That’s the stat when a few tech companies managed to get into the top ten.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Seven out of ten.

Bertrand Schmitt

Yes.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

It’s just Saudi Aramco, Berkshire, Halfway, and Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical company. That’s the only three there that are not tech. I mean, it’s incredible.

Bertrand Schmitt

It’s incredible for our industry. It’s why so many resources are going there. It’s definitely transformational. It has changed the way we live and work for the past 30 years for sure. AI is possibly going to bring that to the next level.

Bertrand Schmitt

To conclude today, we talk about the latest announcements around Gen AI by most of the big tech players that consumers and businesses use, Apple, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI. A lot has happened in the past few weeks. Definitely, the stage is set for a very interesting 2025 where base hardware is AI-enabled and where the OS is also AI-enabled. My take is that we will see a big refinement for this platform. The question is, will security safety of our data be protected? We will discover that in the coming months, I guess.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

We will indeed.

Bertrand Schmitt

Thank you, Nuno.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro

Thank you, Bertrand.