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0:16

I had an AI experience this week.

0:19

I just started seeing a new doctor. And

0:22

I go to my first sort of intake

0:24

appointment with this doctor. And the doctor comes

0:26

into the room, nice guy. And

0:29

he puts this little thing down on the

0:31

table next to him. It's basically

0:33

like a phone, but the screen is off and it's got

0:35

a little microphone attached to it. And

0:37

I'm thinking, okay, he knows I'm a podcaster. He's

0:40

trying to make me feel comfortable. In

0:42

case you have anything you want to say and want to

0:44

kind of get it down, you can do it in

0:46

the office. Exactly. And then he tells me,

0:48

this is my AI scribe. A scribe? Yes.

0:52

We haven't seen scribes as a job in this country for thousands

0:54

of years. Since medieval times. No,

0:56

but the scribes are the people who accompany

0:58

doctors when they're meeting with patients

1:00

and write down what people say. Yeah. So

1:03

now this job is being taken over by AI. And

1:05

the doctor explained to me that he has this

1:07

app that just sits on this little phone that's

1:09

purpose built for this kind of thing. And

1:12

it will take notes on everything we say during

1:14

the meeting. And it'll condense our notes

1:16

down into a visit report and a summary.

1:19

And it'll put it into my file. And like that will

1:21

save him tons of paperwork. And

1:23

sort of based on everything that it

1:26

writes down about you, that's all fed

1:28

into Facebook so that it can show

1:30

you targeted ads on Instagram. Is that

1:32

right? I think HIPAA protects that, but we

1:34

should check on that. I didn't read the fine print. We should

1:36

change that rule. I'm

1:41

Kevin Roos, a tech columnist at the New York

1:43

Times. I'm Casey Newton from Platformer. And this

1:45

is Hard Fork. This week, Apple's got a

1:47

brand new mixed reality headset and Kevin and

1:50

I tried it. Then a dramatic

1:52

hearing over child safety in the

1:54

Senate. And finally, how a single

1:56

car accident took down the self-driving

1:58

car company, Cruze. Casey,

2:17

we went on a field trip last week. We

2:19

did, you know, as much as we

2:21

enjoy being in this studio, this beautiful environment that

2:23

we're in right now, it is awesome

2:25

from time to time to leave the confines

2:27

of the studio and go out into the

2:29

world and get our hands on some new

2:31

technology. Yeah, so we were both invited down

2:33

to Cupertino, California, to the headquarters of Apple

2:35

to try out the Vision

2:37

Pro, which goes on sale this week. We've

2:40

talked about it on the show before. This

2:42

is Apple's, what they're calling a spatial computing

2:44

device, essentially a VR or an AR headset,

2:47

although they don't use those terms. And

2:50

it's attracting a lot of attention, first and foremost,

2:52

because it costs $3,500 for the

2:55

base model. But this is,

2:57

I would say, the biggest hardware release

2:59

of the year. And so

3:01

I was very excited to go down to Cupertino and

3:04

try it out myself. Yeah, I was. Now, we should

3:06

say, you know, a bunch of journalists did get their

3:08

hands on this before we did. You know, I would

3:10

say that we were sort of brought in as the

3:12

kind of cleanup crew of the journalists. They were saving

3:14

the best for last. They saved the best for last.

3:17

We were the last ones to get our hands on

3:19

this. And I think we'd like to

3:21

share some impressions. I would say

3:23

that, you know, I think we have some positive things

3:25

to say about it. I know that sometimes when some

3:27

of our listeners are journalists saying positive things about technology,

3:30

it sends them into a rage. So I just want

3:32

to say sort of preemptively that we will also continue

3:34

to criticize Apple. But sometimes

3:36

people do cool things. Yeah. Yeah.

3:39

So first, let's just talk about what this headset is. Yeah.

3:42

So Apple calls it a spatial computing

3:44

device. And in many ways, they've set

3:46

it up to be the eventual successor

3:48

to the Mac computer. So that is

3:50

sort of the level at which Apple

3:52

is thinking about it. Of course, it's

3:54

still very much in exploration mode. We

3:56

don't know if it will get all

3:58

the way there. But the Vision Pro is

4:00

an effort to see, can you

4:03

move away from laptops with keyboards

4:05

and this sort of one physical

4:07

display, put a helmet on your

4:10

face, stay in it all day,

4:12

have essentially infinite displays, manipulate

4:15

objects with your fingers, navigate the

4:17

device with your eyes, and invent

4:19

a kind of new paradigm of

4:21

computing. So this is like a

4:23

really big swing, Kevin, right? Like

4:25

Apple's got a lot of recent

4:27

successes, whether it's the watch,

4:30

the phone, the iPad, you name it, all

4:32

of those are pretty big businesses, but I

4:34

think all of them were easier to accomplish

4:36

in their own ways than what Apple is

4:38

trying to do with the Vision Pro. Totally,

4:40

it's a very ambitious kind of project. It's

4:42

been many, many years and billions of dollars

4:44

in R&D in the making, and

4:46

it really felt like it.

4:49

Like it's a beautiful device. It looks

4:51

like a pair of ski goggles. It's

4:54

not kind of bulky or clunky

4:56

like other VR headsets that I've

4:58

worn. It really looks like an Apple

5:00

product, and it has the

5:02

price tag to match. Yeah, and at

5:05

the same time, Kevin, I think the

5:07

most important question about this device, which

5:09

I do think remains mostly unanswered, is

5:12

what is it for or who is it for?

5:14

Where somewhere in there, I think, is the real

5:16

question about this device, and I think as Apple

5:18

guided us through some demos, they tried to answer

5:20

those questions for us. Yeah. Yeah. And I think

5:22

we should also just say, as sort of a

5:25

blanket caveat to this segment, this

5:27

is not going to be a full review because

5:29

we did not get a chance to really take

5:31

this thing for a full test drive. My

5:33

demo was about 45 minutes. I think yours

5:35

was about the same length. We were

5:37

not allowed to actually take one home and test

5:39

it in our own sort of home environment. We

5:42

couldn't throw it down a flight of stairs to see if it broke.

5:44

Exactly. And I would say

5:46

it was a heavily curated experience. Like Apple

5:49

definitely had a set of things that they

5:51

wanted to show, at least me,

5:53

and so it didn't feel like I actually got

5:55

to play around on my own terms. Yeah, that's

5:57

right. So these are impressions from a very guided.

6:00

very curated look at this new device. Yeah,

6:02

so we went down, you know, at least,

6:04

it was interesting. They had us come in

6:06

separately. It was like we were too powerful

6:08

if we had our demos at the same

6:10

time. They didn't want us to combine forces.

6:12

That was actually by my request. I want

6:14

to thank Apple for accommodating me on that

6:16

one. So

6:18

at least my experience, you know, I

6:20

meet the Apple sort of minder at

6:22

the gate. I get walked in, sort

6:24

of past this manicured lawn into the

6:26

Steve Jobs theater, down a set of

6:28

stairs and into this, like, what is

6:30

essentially like a fake living room. So I

6:33

sit down. I have

6:35

basically two Apple employees in the room with me. One

6:37

is sort of giving me the demo and one is

6:39

just kind of there keeping tabs on the situation. And

6:42

the first thing you have to do is kind of do a

6:44

little setup tutorial thing to sort of calibrate

6:47

it to your eyes because your face. They

6:49

scan your face because there are no controllers

6:51

with this thing. The way that you control

6:53

your cursor, essentially, just by looking around. So

6:56

once I got set up with the eye tracking

6:58

and all the gestures, then Apple

7:01

showed me these. What I thought was

7:03

the highlight of the demo, frankly, were

7:05

these things, spatial photos and video. Did

7:07

you see these? Yeah, this is really,

7:09

really cool. So

7:12

you can either take these photos with your

7:14

iPhone or you can take them with the

7:16

headset itself, although it seems like in just

7:18

about every case, you're better off taking these

7:20

things with a newer iPhone. Well, they only

7:22

work on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro

7:24

Max. If you don't

7:26

have last year's iPhone, this doesn't work. So

7:29

these are essentially 3D photos and

7:31

videos and you can view

7:33

them in 3D in the

7:35

Vision Pro itself. And

7:38

I don't know, have you spent a lot of time playing

7:40

around with 3D photos and videos? No,

7:42

I mean, not really. I can remember going down

7:44

to Facebook years ago and having them show me

7:46

3D photos and sort of telling me this was

7:48

the future and you just kind of tilt your

7:50

phone around and be able to shift the perspective

7:52

a little bit. Not that impressive. On the Vision

7:54

Pro, it does feel a little

7:56

bit more of like a black mirror situation where

7:59

you're sitting inside somebody else's memory particularly with these

8:01

videos like they showed me this spatial video about

8:03

family having breakfast and of course everyone's like a

8:05

young family and everyone's very adorable and they're poor

8:07

and orange juice or whatever and you just like

8:09

feel like you are there with them and

8:12

as I was looking at this I thought like

8:14

I could see how this would be some family's

8:16

cherished memory and 20 years from now

8:18

the kids are all grown up and they strap on a

8:20

helmet and they revisit this and that that is like a

8:22

special thing for them. Yeah I mean this blew

8:24

my freakin mind I'll be totally honest I was

8:27

like very ready to be skeptical because I have

8:29

played around with a lot of 3d cameras in

8:31

the past I used to take 3d photos and

8:33

videos just sort of like because I wanted to

8:36

like relive I'm like a camera dad you know

8:38

and like I have a kid and yeah I

8:40

just take a lot of videos and so I've

8:42

wanted something that feels a little bit more immersive

8:45

I see and this thing is

8:47

incredible I mean I saw the same demo

8:49

you did it sounds like there were a

8:51

couple photos and videos there was you know

8:53

what looked like a birthday party there was

8:55

a mom sort of making bubbles with

8:57

her kid and we should explain it's

8:59

not these are not sort of like

9:01

just projected at you in like a

9:03

dark environment you can see these kind

9:05

of overlaid on the real world because

9:07

of this pass-through display that Apple has

9:09

built so I was in this living

9:11

room this fake living room you know

9:13

with these Apple employees around me with

9:15

sort of this coffee table in front

9:17

of me and this memory this video

9:19

just kind of popped up you know

9:21

amidst all of that and

9:24

you're right like it really did trick my

9:26

brain into thinking that I was there in

9:28

this scene it was I've never seen anything

9:30

like it and like I'll be honest I

9:32

got sort of a lump in my throat

9:34

because I was picturing like capturing my son

9:36

like first steps this way and like revisiting

9:38

it 20 years from now and like you

9:41

know that kind of thing I think will make

9:44

this more compelling for

9:46

especially parents yeah it is powerful and I think

9:48

particularly if you've already got a phone in your

9:50

pocket and you can take videos like this it

9:52

winds up being pretty easy to take the video

9:54

and maybe if you don't even buy the first

9:57

vision Pro which most people are absolutely not going

9:59

to do maybe three or four or five

10:01

generations from now, you still have these videos

10:03

saved in your iCloud somewhere, and you're able

10:05

to relive them again. So it's actually like

10:07

an interesting development. Right, so after this spatial

10:10

photo and video demo, I got

10:12

this demo of basically a movie theater

10:14

experience where they showed me a clip

10:17

from Super, did you get the Super

10:19

Mario Brothers 3D clip? And

10:22

then a clip from Star Wars, and

10:24

you could kind of transform your surroundings

10:27

in the headset so that it

10:29

looked like you were watching the

10:31

Star Wars trailer on Tatooine, or

10:33

you could be in a volcano

10:35

in Hawaii watching Super Mario Brothers

10:37

in 3D. Yeah, and an interesting

10:40

aspect of this is that like

10:42

the Apple Watch, the Vision Pro has

10:45

this little control feature that Apple calls

10:47

a digital crown, and this little wheel

10:49

that you can spin. And

10:51

on the Vision Pro, you can dial

10:53

the level of immersion up and down.

10:56

So if you want to watch a movie while

10:58

pretending that you're sitting in a volcano crater, you

11:00

can sort of crank that dial all the way

11:02

up and look all the way around you in

11:04

360 degrees and you see

11:06

a volcano crater. Or if you just kind

11:08

of want like a hint of that, you

11:10

can make it semi-transparent, and the cameras in

11:12

the Vision Pro will show you your surroundings

11:15

in really high definition. Yeah, and it actually

11:17

works pretty well. They call this feature pass-through,

11:19

which is a little bit of a misnomer

11:21

for reasons that maybe we should take a

11:23

minute to explain. It's not actually like the

11:26

display is not becoming transparent. It's just

11:28

it has cameras on the outside that

11:30

are sort of capturing the room around

11:32

you and then piping it into the

11:34

headset as your video feed. So it's

11:36

a cool trick. It didn't

11:39

bother me. Like it actually felt like I was looking

11:42

through a semi-transparent display, which

11:44

I just thought was a very impressive

11:46

technical accomplishment, and did actually feel like

11:48

I could kind of control the sort

11:50

of immersiveness of the experience. Yeah, so

11:52

you mentioned these videos

11:54

they showed us, and I want to

11:56

say that to me, it was

11:59

the entertainment. focus stuff that they

12:01

showed us, and mostly just watching video, that

12:03

was the most compelling stuff that I got

12:05

to try during this demo. You know, there's

12:07

a moment where we started, I started to

12:09

watch the Star Wars trailer, and you

12:11

have this like light seal that presses into the device

12:13

that blocks out all the light around you. And so

12:15

everything goes black in the exact same way when you're

12:17

like sitting in a movie theater, and right before they

12:19

start to show the movie, everything goes black, and you

12:21

sort of have that moment of like, okay, now I'm

12:23

just gonna focus on a movie for two hours. I

12:26

felt that way in the Vision Pro. And I like that

12:28

because I don't know about you, Kevin, I am somebody who

12:30

can like barely watch a movie on my TV without

12:32

just scrolling on my phone the entire time. And I

12:34

had that sense of relief of like, oh gosh, like

12:37

maybe if I had one of the things, I

12:39

actually watch a movie from start to finish. Wow,

12:41

yeah, this piece of technology will definitely save your

12:43

attention span. That's,

12:46

that always works. Okay, so that

12:48

was the entertainment piece. Then

12:50

what I was really curious to see was

12:52

the productivity piece, because Apple is not just

12:54

billing this as a very cool sort of

12:56

way to watch movies at home

12:58

or take these spatial photos and videos.

13:00

It really wants office workers to buy

13:02

this and use it for work. So

13:05

in a lot of the promotional material, they would

13:07

show these scenes of people at their desks, and

13:09

they've got their Mac monitor in front of them,

13:11

and then they put on their Vision Pro, and

13:14

they can sort of open up windows in space

13:16

and kind of move them around and resize them,

13:18

make them as big or small as they want.

13:21

And basically, people can create their own

13:23

ideal desk setup and take that with

13:25

them, whether they're at a coffee shop

13:27

or on a plane or sitting at

13:29

their desk. So I was

13:31

excited to try this stuff, and I wanna

13:33

hear your impressions. My impressions were this stuff

13:36

is not quite there. So

13:38

on the positive side, I would say

13:40

that this has the

13:42

best visual fidelity of any headset I've ever

13:44

used. These are really high-end displays. And so

13:47

at one point, they told me to open

13:49

Safari, the web browser, visit any website you

13:51

like. I, of course, entered platformer to see

13:53

how that was gonna look in mixed reality,

13:57

the text was very crisp. You know, you

13:59

can... roll through, I visited some other

14:01

web pages, like the photos looked really great.

14:03

And yet I thought like the

14:06

amount of ingenuity that has gone

14:08

into recreating digitally an experience that

14:10

was already working perfectly fine for

14:12

me in a laptop feels a

14:14

little bit crazy here. And

14:17

so while I appreciate all of

14:19

the skill and the creativity that

14:21

went into making this thing work, I still couldn't

14:23

figure out why I would wanna do all my

14:25

web browsing and typing in the Vision Pro as

14:28

opposed to just like my MacBook. Well, I've always

14:30

had the thought while browsing platformer and reading

14:32

your articles, like I wish I could have

14:34

this just way bigger and closer to my

14:37

face. If

14:39

this could just be on my face, that

14:41

would be the ideal way to read my

14:44

favorite tech newsletter. I could direct feed into

14:46

your digital cortex. I'm very excited for this

14:48

feature, but in seriousness, I thought this was

14:50

the least impressive part of the demo. I

14:53

also asked if I could see like something else

14:55

in the kind of productivity world, like what else

14:58

you got for the office worker? And

15:00

they showed me this part of the demo. They don't

15:02

think they showed you, that's right. Wow. But

15:05

it was a feature in Keynote,

15:07

the slideshow app. You got the

15:09

Keynote demo. I did. And

15:13

so this is their like sort of

15:15

PowerPoint equivalent. And they showed me this

15:17

thing where in the Vision Pro you

15:19

can practice giving a presentation to

15:22

like an empty conference room or an empty

15:24

theater. I would love to see you spending

15:26

more time just practicing talking. I think it

15:28

would have really improved the podcast. And

15:31

I didn't think it was that great a feature. It

15:33

felt sort of like a giving to me, but it

15:35

is exactly the kind of thing that office workers are

15:37

going to try to use to convince their bosses to

15:39

let them expensive Vision Pro, which I did appreciate. Well,

15:43

while you were getting that demo, I

15:45

was getting another productivity demo, which was

15:48

Algoritum's DJ app. Now this

15:50

is an app I've used for many years. I've

15:52

DJ'd my friend's weddings using this app. Wait, really?

15:55

Yeah, there is. I didn't know you were a DJ. I'm

15:57

not a good one, but like for a close friend, I'll DJ your wedding. What's

16:00

your DJ name? Um, DJ TaskRabbit. No,

16:04

that really is. That's what I could be getting. Wait,

16:08

really? Yes. Wow.

16:11

So yeah, DJ TaskRabbit was the best around. I've got

16:13

my kid's birthday party is coming up. Are you available?

16:15

Yeah, but DJ TaskRabbit was very expensive. Just keep that

16:18

in mind. It's an easy

16:20

assignment. All you have to do is play the Cocomelon version

16:22

of Wheels on the Bus 72 times. Okay,

16:24

I think I can do that. Okay,

16:27

so anyway, you were looking for

16:29

productivity enhancements for your side gig as

16:32

a DJ. Exactly. And so we pull

16:34

up this app and you sort of

16:36

immediately see a couple of turntables, a

16:39

couple of records. And

16:41

I should say, in 2022, Meta released its highest-end

16:43

headset today, which is called the MetaQuest Pro. And

16:45

when I went down to try that, I also

16:48

got to use a DJ app. And, you know,

16:50

there was some cool stuff about it. It

16:53

was not the DJ app that I used when I was

16:55

in Cupertino. But one

16:57

of the things that I don't love about the MetaQuest

16:59

Pro is that the visual fidelity is like,

17:01

okay, but it's not great. It doesn't really

17:04

feel like you're standing in front of the

17:06

wheels of deal. Well, in

17:08

this DJ app on the

17:10

Vision Pro, the visual quality is so good

17:13

that you could just kind of pretend that

17:15

you were DJing. And

17:17

once I got the music going, I just

17:20

intuitively reached down to scratch, you know,

17:22

do a little bit of wika-wika, and

17:24

it worked perfectly. And like, you know,

17:27

just as you would want it to. And

17:29

so there was part of it that was like, you

17:31

know, just pure eskumorphism of like, we will make a

17:33

DJ rig and you can DJ on it here in

17:36

mixed reality. Well, but they also had

17:38

this sort of enhancement, which I can only

17:40

describe as like a kind of 3D

17:45

box that sat on top of the wheels of

17:47

steel. And you could reach

17:49

your hand into it. And as you just sort of

17:52

moved your hand around, you can manipulate the sound. So

17:55

you sort of felt like a DJ

17:57

wizard that was just kind of distorting.

18:00

and changing the music that was playing. Did

18:02

it sound good? No. Would I be

18:05

asked to leave a wedding if I were using

18:07

this technology in DJing? Yes, I would. But did

18:09

I enjoy it during my demo? Kevin, yes, I

18:11

absolutely did. I'm so glad for you. Wow. I'm

18:14

still reeling from the revelation. You've been holding out

18:16

your secret side career as a DJ on me.

18:18

I love music. Music's very important to me. Wow.

18:21

Okay, so that's the demo that we got. We

18:23

also have to talk about what we didn't get

18:26

to try, which is I wanted

18:28

to FaceTime call you and see how

18:30

our personas would look. So personas. Yeah,

18:32

tell us about these personas. So personas

18:35

are this feature, Apple reminds people, it's

18:37

a beta feature for reasons that will

18:39

shortly become clear. Basically trying

18:41

to solve the problem of how do you

18:43

do a video call using one of these

18:45

headsets? Because if you are

18:48

just doing a normal Zoom call or a FaceTime

18:50

call, like your face is covered

18:52

by this headset. How are you gonna look

18:54

normal on a video call? And Apple's answer

18:56

to this question is do you basically create

18:58

a deep fake of your face called

19:00

a persona? I would probably

19:02

say an avatar over a deep fake. Well,

19:06

you know, potato patata. But basically,

19:08

you scan your face and then Apple

19:10

sort of renders this 3D model of

19:12

your face that it then uses

19:14

as kind of a virtual stand-in for

19:17

you on video calls. And we were

19:19

not able to try this, but

19:21

several other reviewers have been able to.

19:23

And I will just say, they look

19:26

very funny. They do. People,

19:28

I was reading on threads yesterday, people were

19:30

saying that your persona sort of makes you look like

19:32

the PlayStation 3 version of yourself. Where

19:35

it's like, it's recognizably

19:37

you, but like it's a

19:39

little blocky, you know, it feels like

19:41

some of the individual polygons are like

19:43

almost visible. And of course, you're

19:46

like less expressive in this form than you would

19:48

be like, you know, using a real face. And

19:50

so, yeah, people were having a lot of fun

19:52

yesterday looking at the personas. Yeah, one person I

19:54

saw compared them to like NPCs in like a

19:56

video game who are gonna offer you a side

19:58

quest. Yeah. And

20:00

I just think like, you know, clearly this is

20:02

a product that's going to get better over time. Like this

20:05

is the V1 but

20:07

I think you know if someone showed up in

20:09

a meeting with me as a As

20:13

one of these personas like the meeting agenda

20:15

is over like we're talking about that And

20:17

it's like not going to go unnoticed by

20:20

anyone in the meeting at least at first

20:23

There's there's so much in the vision

20:25

pro that is like it

20:27

is sincerely cool There is some stuff in the

20:29

vision pro that I think might be the best

20:32

way to do things particularly consuming video Although even that

20:34

is kind of still a question mark for me And

20:36

then there is stuff that is so

20:38

much more complicated So

20:41

much more expensive and still obviously worse and

20:43

in the social features are really where I

20:45

think that is the most true So again,

20:47

can all of this get better over time?

20:49

Yes, I'm sure it will But the the

20:51

current state of the art this feels a

20:54

little bit more like a party trick than

20:56

a way that people are gonna be So

20:58

let's do a little summary. What was your favorite thing

21:01

about the vision pro and your least favorite thing?

21:03

so And this

21:05

is another demo that a lot of people

21:07

have talked about already But we did this

21:09

little dinosaur demo where in the in the

21:11

mock beautiful living room There was a blank

21:14

wall and as I looked up with my

21:16

vision pro we started this app and basically

21:18

Imagine it's like it's like the

21:20

wall opens up and all of a sudden you're

21:22

looking at this prehistoric Landscape and a butterfly flies

21:25

out and you raise up your finger and the

21:27

butterfly just flies over and it just sits right

21:29

on your Finger and you know, you move your

21:31

finger around the butterfly moves with you. So

21:33

that's using the eye tracking capabilities, right?

21:36

Then a dinosaur gonna help you in

21:38

your career as your side career as

21:40

a butterfly tender Yeah as a huge

21:43

leopard optorist. Let me just say Yes,

21:46

it's the word. Oh, hey what leopard

21:48

opera? That's the study of

21:51

butterflies I hope

21:53

you know college anyways,

21:56

so after the butterfly Do

22:02

you know Vladimir Dubokov, in addition to being one

22:04

of the great writers, was also a Lepidopterist and

22:07

named him any species of butterfly. You

22:09

contain multitudes, my friend. So then

22:12

the dinosaur walks into the frame and

22:14

there's like a little, you

22:16

know, they're dancing around on the prehistoric rocks or

22:18

whatever and then, you know, one of them gets

22:21

chased away and then the, and I don't know

22:23

that these are velociraptors, but they basically look like

22:25

velociraptors, would you say? Yeah. And

22:27

then, you know, one kind of comes up and you can like sort of, you know,

22:29

try to pet it and like maybe it'll let you pet it

22:31

or maybe it'll roar at you. Why am I talking about

22:33

this at length? Well, to me,

22:36

I saw this, I thought like this

22:38

just feels like new storytelling experiences will

22:40

be enabled. And I truly did believe

22:42

after using the Vision Pro that as

22:44

the technology gets better, cheaper, more widely

22:46

adopted, it's going to enable all sorts

22:48

of new kinds of storytelling experiences and

22:50

you know, may eventually change like the

22:52

kinds of stories that get told and

22:54

how they are made. And

22:56

this is the stuff that I saw that I thought like,

22:59

oh, there's really something here and I believe

23:01

in it more now that I have tried the Vision

23:03

Pro than I did before I had previously. And what

23:05

about your least favorite thing? My

23:07

least favorite thing is I don't

23:10

know if this thing would be comfortable on

23:12

my face for even an hour and a

23:14

half. When I have used

23:16

VR headsets in the past, there was never

23:18

a day when I wasn't relieved to be

23:20

taking the headset off of me where I

23:22

didn't immediately feel better when I was taking

23:25

it off. And even though we

23:27

didn't use the Vision Pro that long, I

23:29

still did basically have that feeling. I

23:31

just kind of had like a little bit of tension like at the temples

23:33

of my head. It was not a

23:35

headache and it went away very soon after I took this

23:37

thing off. But it did make me wonder like, if I

23:40

just want to like watch, you know, Star Wars on this

23:42

thing, how am I going to feel at the end of

23:44

two hours? I don't know the answer to that question. And

23:46

I got to say, Kevin, until I know the answer to

23:48

that question, I don't know if I want to spend $3,500

23:50

for the stacks. Yeah. Yeah.

23:53

Okay. I loved the spatial

23:55

photos and videos. I thought, okay, if this

23:58

were $1,500. Maybe

24:01

that's worth it just for the

24:03

home movie potential alone. At $3,500,

24:06

that's a very expensive home movie collection

24:08

to start building, but I

24:10

think that's by far the most compelling part of

24:12

the demo, at least for me. Yeah. And how

24:14

about the worst? And I would

24:16

say the worst was for me the productivity stuff.

24:19

Like, I understand that for some people, if

24:21

you are a person who works, you know,

24:23

with a multi-monitor setup and you like having

24:26

tons of windows all over the place while

24:28

you work, you are probably the

24:30

prime candidate for using something like the Vision

24:32

Pro, but I'm not a person who likes

24:34

a bunch of clutter and chaos in my

24:37

visual space when I work. I

24:39

like focus. I like full-screen windows. I like not

24:41

a lot of other stuff going on. And

24:43

so for me, it would just be too distracting, and that

24:45

would keep me from using it for work. All

24:48

right. So what do we think the prospects of

24:50

this device are? Like, a year from now, what

24:52

do you think we will be saying about how

24:54

the Vision Pro did and like where it goes

24:56

from here? I don't know. Like, it would not

24:59

surprise me if this is a fairly,

25:01

you know, slow launch for Apple. It

25:04

is a very expensive device. It's a brand

25:06

new category. You know, people,

25:09

it really is one of these things that you need to kind

25:11

of see for yourself to fully understand. You can't really just like

25:13

watch a video or read a couple of reviews and get a

25:15

sense of what it's going to be like to have one of

25:17

these things strapped to your head. The first

25:20

version might not be for everyone, but

25:22

pockets of people will kind of find it and

25:24

adapt it to their own use cases. Yeah, that

25:26

sounds right to me. You know, I think some

25:28

of the analysts before pre-orders went on sale

25:30

thought that maybe Apple will sell like

25:32

half a million of these in the

25:34

first year. Of course, you

25:36

know, Apple sells hundreds of millions of iPhones in a year.

25:39

So this is very small relative to

25:41

that much, much bigger business. And,

25:44

you know, on one hand, that's not a lot.

25:46

On the other hand, that's going to be over

25:48

a billion dollars in revenue. And that I think

25:50

is going to be enough for Apple to say,

25:52

we are going to continue to invest in this.

25:54

Obviously, Apple has essentially unlimited resources to keep investing

25:56

in it. And I think we

25:58

do have enough reason to believe. that

26:00

there will probably be some sort of

26:02

successor platform to the laptop over time

26:05

and you know the best

26:07

way to control the future is to invent it so

26:09

I think Apple is gonna kind of keep going in

26:11

this direction what I am the most curious about is

26:14

what creative types do with this are

26:16

there filmmakers and designers that get their

26:19

hands on one of these and think

26:21

oh I could actually make a really

26:23

cool 10 or 15 minute

26:25

little miniature story and I'm gonna put

26:27

that in the vision Pro App Store

26:30

and you know maybe see it see if kids like

26:32

it and just kind

26:34

of see where that goes maybe in this

26:36

first year the install base is just gonna

26:39

be too small for anyone to justify that

26:41

kind of investment but I do

26:43

believe the technology is good enough that if some

26:45

people took it really seriously and tried they would

26:47

make something really cool that people might spend a

26:50

lot of money to do yeah I can see

26:52

that I also think for me the most interesting

26:54

question about all this is like how is this

26:56

device going to be received like out in public

26:58

because if you remember the Google Glass period where

27:00

Google had just released this amazing like you know

27:02

computer that sat on your face and could do

27:04

all these things it was not that amazing but

27:06

they were

27:08

billing it as this amazing thing and then they you know

27:10

they sent it out to people and people started showing up

27:12

in the real world with them and it

27:14

was mocked and derided and one guy even

27:17

got punched for wearing Google Glass on the

27:19

streets of San Francisco and

27:21

people started calling them glass holes and it became

27:23

this sort of social stigma like I don't think

27:25

that is probably going to happen with the vision

27:27

Pro because like a it looks a little bit

27:29

cooler than Google Glass and be like it's not

27:31

the kind of thing that people are gonna want

27:33

to you know wear around on the street walking

27:35

to and from work all day no and if

27:37

you see somebody wearing one you snatch it off

27:39

their face taking rest you just made $3,500 but

27:43

that is like my question is like yeah you

27:45

sometime in the next few months you

27:47

will get on a plane and see

27:50

someone wearing a vision Pro probably in

27:52

business class and I think

27:54

a very open question and a very important

27:56

question is like how will you feel about

27:59

that six months Will you be like,

28:01

oh, that's so cool. I want one of those or

28:03

will you be like that person is a loser? Yeah,

28:06

I mean, I don't know how anybody's gonna

28:08

feel when they see these things Are

28:11

you gonna buy one? Not

28:14

right now I think The problem

28:16

I had with some of these previous headsets that I would try is

28:18

that they would seem compelling for a week or two And then I

28:20

would throw them in a drawer and I never turn them on ever

28:22

again And I'm not willing to spend

28:24

almost four thousand dollars with packs to have that experience,

28:26

you know This thing we're like $9.99. I

28:29

think it becomes like yeah, I'll just sort of

28:31

try that for like research purposes at 35 $3,800

28:35

I don't want to do that my caveat is

28:37

in two or three months if some of these

28:39

experiences that I was talking about start to get

28:41

made if maybe people actually Find an interesting productivity

28:44

use or a people like rediscover a love of

28:46

movies because it truly turns out to be one

28:48

of the greatest Sort of virtual home theaters around

28:51

then I might do it But this is one where

28:53

I'm just gonna let other people kind of take the

28:55

lead here and then they can tell me in a

28:57

couple Months whether this thing is awesome or not in

28:59

the meantime. I'm gonna save my money. I'm

29:02

tempted Yeah, I gotta say I gotta say I'm

29:04

tempted Yeah, like I'm not gonna buy one right

29:06

now because like I don't have $3,500

29:09

just like burning a hole in my pocket But

29:11

if I did have like a distant relative who

29:13

who died and unexpectedly left me $3,500 Like

29:18

I would be very tempted because it is cool When

29:23

we come back social media went to

29:25

Congress this week talk about

29:27

child thing. I'll tell you what happened You

29:55

Hey, it's Anna Martin from the New York Times and

29:57

I'm here to tell you about something from New York

30:00

home's news subscribers. And

30:02

honestly, if you're a podcast fan, you're going to

30:04

want this. It's an app

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called New York Times Audio,

30:08

where you can get the latest dispatch.

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It's 10 a.m. in teeth, because it

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splash of soy sauce, and then a lot

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and we are over here pretending not to

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be amazed by that. It has exclusive shows.

30:26

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30:28

Storytelling from serial productions in This American

30:30

Life, Act 2, a fiasco involving

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those big moments she puts the

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Times Audio. Download it now at

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nytimes.com. Audio app. Casey,

30:56

this week, the CEOs of many of

30:59

the biggest tech companies in Silicon Valley

31:01

flew to Washington to be dragged before

31:03

Congress and grilled by a bunch of

31:05

senators. We've seen a number of these

31:07

kinds of hearings before, but this was

31:09

a big one. The CEOs

31:12

of Meta, TikTok, Snap, Discord,

31:14

and X all showed up

31:16

in person in front

31:18

of the Senate Judiciary Committee for a

31:20

hearing about harms to children on social

31:22

media. Yeah, this has been an issue

31:24

that has been burbling up for a

31:26

couple of years now. More and more

31:29

states are passing laws intended to improve

31:31

child safety online, and now Congress is

31:33

tackling it head on by

31:35

bringing all those CEOs you mentioned and

31:37

confronting them with some hard questions. Yeah,

31:40

I think you and I have both

31:42

gotten a little bit jaded about these

31:44

kind of tech hearings over the past

31:46

five or six years. We've seen it

31:48

just time and time again. Attack platform

31:50

screws up. Its executive is hauled before

31:52

Congress. A bunch of senators or congresspeople

31:54

sort of pepper them with angry questions

31:56

that are more like statements they

31:59

promise to look at it more and

32:01

pass some laws and then nothing happens. The

32:03

executives go back to Silicon Valley, Congress focuses

32:05

on other things, and nothing really changes. This

32:08

one I think is potentially

32:10

very different than that for a couple reasons.

32:12

One is it's about kids. Republicans

32:16

and Democrats disagree about all manner

32:18

of tech problems and solutions to

32:20

those problems, but I think on the issue

32:22

of child safety, this is one where there's

32:24

actually mostly bipartisan agreement that

32:26

this is a real problem. And

32:29

I also think it comes at a time where

32:31

there is actually the potential that something could come

32:33

out of this. We've seen Congress

32:35

trying to pass the Kids Online Safety

32:37

Act COSA, we talked a little bit

32:40

about that on the podcast last year.

32:42

That's a bill that would sort of

32:44

force social media platforms to be more

32:46

active in preventing harms to minors. We've

32:49

also seen a bunch of other laws

32:51

proposed and states that are taking action

32:54

to, for example, require social media companies

32:56

to get parental consent before permitting children

32:58

under 16 to use their platforms. So

33:00

Casey, I know that you, like me,

33:02

have seen a number of these hearings

33:05

come and go without much in the

33:07

way of action, but did this feel

33:09

different to you? Well, I think one

33:11

way that it felt different was the

33:14

way that it shook up the cast

33:16

of characters. So we're sort of used

33:18

to Congress focusing a lot

33:21

on Twitter and Facebook in

33:23

particular. Now we have

33:25

some newer platforms up and coming. Snap,

33:28

Discord, and X, the former Twitter,

33:31

all appeared before Congress for the first

33:33

time. Their CEOs appeared before Congress the

33:36

first time. And so it showed

33:38

that Congress is sort of probing

33:40

at new parts of the ecosystem in

33:42

an effort to kind of trace how

33:45

these problems are flowing across platforms. Yeah.

33:48

So let's go through some clips from the

33:50

hearing because it was pretty dramatic. The

33:52

first one that I think everyone is

33:54

talking about after this hearing was a

33:56

moment where Mark Zuckerberg from Meta was

33:59

asked to apologize. Apologize to a

34:01

number of parents in the room

34:03

whose children had been either Victimized

34:06

or had in some cases taken their

34:08

own lives After being

34:11

bullied or harassed or otherwise

34:13

exploited on social media and

34:16

he did he stood up from his chair

34:18

He turned around and he directly addressed the

34:20

parents in the room. Let's roll that clip

34:23

Let me ask you this there's families of victims here

34:25

today. Have you apologized to the victims? I

34:29

Would you like to do so now? Well, they're

34:31

here. You're on national television Would you

34:34

like now to apologize to the victims who have

34:36

been harmed by your father show them the pictures?

34:39

Would you like to apologize for what you've done to

34:41

these good people? Things

34:51

that your families have suffered and This

34:54

is why we invest so much and are

34:56

going to continue doing industry leading efforts to

34:59

make sure that No one

35:01

has to go through the types of things that your family If

35:07

you can't exactly hear him because he's off mic

35:09

he's basically apologizing he's saying I'm sorry for the

35:11

things people experienced He says no one should have

35:13

to go through what you went through and then

35:15

he says this is why we're investing so much

35:17

in Trying to prevent these harms to children Casey.

35:20

What did you think of this? So this is

35:22

a really dramatic and a sort

35:24

of very rare moment when one of these sort

35:26

of titans of industry Actually has

35:28

to be in the same room and be

35:31

confronted by people who feel like they've Experienced

35:33

really harm as a direct result of the

35:35

the software that that mark and his teams

35:37

have built So I think that that's one that we'll

35:39

remember for a long time. Yeah. All right next

35:42

clip This one was about COSA

35:44

the kids online safety act and

35:47

Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut Who was one

35:49

of the creators of COSA? Basically is

35:51

going down the row of CEOs one

35:54

by one asking them whether they support

35:56

this bill. Yes or no mr.

35:58

Sticker There

36:01

are parts of the act that we think are great. No,

36:03

it's a yes or no question. I'm going to be running

36:05

out of time, so I'm assuming the

36:07

answer is no if you can't answer yet.

36:10

We very much think that the national privacy

36:12

standard would be great. Mr.

36:16

Siegel? Senator, we strongly support

36:18

the Kids Online Safety Act and we've

36:20

already implemented many of its core provisions.

36:22

Thank you. I welcome that support along

36:24

with Microsoft support. Mr. Chu? Senator, with

36:27

some changes, we can support it. In

36:30

its present form, do you support it? Yes

36:32

or no? We are aware that some groups have

36:34

raised some concerns. It's important to understand how this

36:36

is. I'll take that as

36:38

a no. Ms. Yacarino? Senator,

36:41

we support COSUM. We'll continue to

36:43

make sure that it accelerates and make

36:45

sure it continues to offer community for

36:47

teens that are seeking that voice. Mr.

36:51

Zuckerberg? Senator, we

36:53

support the age-appropriate content standards

36:55

but would have some suggestions about

36:57

how to implement it. Do

37:00

you support the Kids Online Safety

37:02

Act? Senator, I think these are nuanced

37:04

things. And I'm just asking whether you'll

37:06

support it or not. These

37:08

are nuanced things. I think that the basic spirit is

37:11

right. I think the basic ideas in it are right.

37:13

And there are some ideas that I would debate how

37:15

to best out on them. Unfortunately. Okay.

37:18

So essentially, two of

37:20

the CEOs in the room, Evan

37:23

Spiegel of Snap and Linda Yacarino

37:25

of X, have broken from the

37:27

other tech companies and decided to

37:29

support COSA, this bill that has

37:31

become extremely controversial in the tech

37:33

industry. Why do you think they did that?

37:36

I think, you know, in Snap's case, they

37:38

just think it will cost them nothing because

37:40

a lot of COSA has to do with

37:42

like algorithmic amplification and stuff that just doesn't

37:45

really concern Snap as a company that's primarily

37:47

focused around messaging with X.

37:49

And this is not based on reporting. This is just

37:52

speculation. But I think X probably just wanted kind

37:54

of an easy win at a

37:56

time when they're facing some very serious

37:58

and important questions about why. they led

38:01

deepfake synthetic nudes of Taylor Swift to

38:03

spread unchecked on the platform until they

38:05

were getting tens of millions of views

38:07

just this past weekend. This at least

38:09

enables them to say, well, look, we

38:11

did something. We supported your bill, Senator.

38:13

You know, I have a lot of

38:15

thoughts about this. But let me just

38:17

say wait until Elon Musk finds out

38:19

what is in COSA, because I suspect

38:21

he's gonna have a strong disagreement with

38:23

Linda Yakarino about excess support for that

38:25

bill. Okay, the last clip I want

38:27

to play is from Mark Zuckerberg, who

38:29

is talking with Amy Klobuchar, the

38:31

senator from Minnesota, about why he

38:33

thinks that the responsibility of verifying

38:36

users ages should not fall to

38:38

meta and other social platforms, but

38:40

should instead be handled by Google

38:43

and Apple who run the app stores.

38:47

I don't think that parents should have to upload

38:49

an ID or prove that they're the parent of

38:51

a child in every single app that their children

38:53

use. I think the right place to

38:55

do this, and a place where it would be actually

38:58

very easy for it to work, is within the app

39:00

stores themselves, where my

39:02

understanding is Apple and Google already, or

39:04

at least Apple, already requires parental consent

39:06

when a child does a payment with

39:08

an app. So it should be

39:10

pretty trivial to pass a law that requires

39:13

them to make it so

39:15

that parents have control any time

39:17

a child downloads an app, and

39:19

offers consent of that. And the

39:21

research that we've done

39:23

shows that the vast majority of

39:25

parents want that, and I think

39:28

that that's the type of legislation, in addition to

39:30

some of the other ideas that you all have,

39:32

that would make this a lot easier for parents.

39:34

Yeah, just to be clear, I remember one mom

39:36

telling me, with all these things she could maybe

39:38

do that she can't figure out, it's

39:40

like a faucet overflowing in a sink, and she's

39:42

out there with a mop while her kids are

39:44

getting addicted to more and more different apps than

39:46

being exposed to material. We've got to make this

39:48

simpler for parents, so they can protect their kids,

39:50

and I just don't think this is going to

39:52

be the way to do it. I

39:54

think the answer is what Senator Graham has been

39:57

talking about, which is opening up the halls of

39:59

the courtroom. So that puts

40:01

it on you guys to protect these parents

40:03

and protect these kids. And then

40:05

also to pass some of these laws that makes it

40:07

easier for law enforcement. Okay,

40:10

so that's the hearing in a nutshell. Congress

40:13

really wants these tech platforms to

40:15

do more to protect underage users.

40:18

And a bunch of senators sort of

40:20

don't think they're doing enough and want

40:22

to use new legislation or maybe the

40:24

courts to go after them

40:26

for not doing enough for

40:28

underage users. The tech platforms all say,

40:31

well, we're doing all these things already.

40:34

And some of them say we would support

40:36

legislation like COSA. Some of them say, well,

40:38

we don't think that's the right approach, but

40:40

we also agree that more needs to be

40:42

done to protect underage users. Basically, everyone is

40:44

agreeing that there is an important problem to

40:46

solve here. There's just some disagreements about how to

40:48

solve it. I think it

40:50

is tricky to talk about. It is very

40:52

emotional. Everyone wants children to

40:54

be safe online. I think we

40:57

have very little agreement at this

40:59

point about what does safety

41:01

mean. And I think the

41:03

fact is that there are just always

41:05

going to be some risks associated with

41:07

being on the internet. But if

41:09

you accept all of that, what is

41:11

a path forward? Well, the path,

41:13

I think, look different depending on

41:15

what problem you're talking about. But

41:18

one place to start that I think would actually

41:20

be productive is talking about this

41:22

issue of age verification that Zuckerberg brings up in

41:25

the last clip. Well, let's talk about it. So

41:27

do you think this should be a responsibility

41:29

of tech platforms to verify how old their

41:31

users are? Or do you agree with Mark

41:34

Zuckerberg that Apple and Google should take that

41:36

on? So I wanted to

41:38

take a quick step back and say

41:40

like we have never been able to

41:42

mandate age verification in this country because

41:44

the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that

41:47

it is a violation of the First

41:49

Amendment, not because of what it does

41:51

to kids, but because it places too

41:53

high of a burden on every adult

41:55

user of the internet to have to

41:57

verify their age every time they want to use

41:59

it. a website, okay? So that's why we've

42:01

never had that in this country. So

42:04

that brings us to what Zuckerberg says, which is,

42:06

well, why don't you make Apple and Google do

42:08

it? And I have to say, I

42:10

think that this solution is obviously correct.

42:12

Because imagine that your child has come

42:15

of age where they now have a

42:17

smartphone, and they start downloading apps. And

42:19

it's not just one app. And it's

42:21

not just 10 apps, it's 40 apps.

42:24

And now all of a sudden, you're being asked

42:26

as a busy parent with a job to, in

42:28

40 different cases,

42:30

verify your child's identity. That

42:32

seems obviously way too onerous

42:35

for me to pass.

42:37

We talk so often on the show, Kevin,

42:40

about the dark side of living in a

42:42

world where there's only two major smartphone platforms.

42:44

This is actually a silver lining, because now

42:46

you have two gatekeepers that can say,

42:48

you know what, we can actually take it upon

42:50

ourselves to do the verification. And in fact, as

42:53

Zuckerberg points out, Apple is already doing this, if

42:55

you have an Apple wallet, it's going to ask,

42:57

Hey, are you older than 12? So I want

42:59

to quickly say,

43:01

it does not have to be Apple and

43:03

Google who are doing this, you could also

43:06

imagine some sort of industry body that is

43:08

passing along some sort of token through an

43:10

API that is made available through iOS and

43:12

Android, right? So I'm not saying 100%. It

43:15

has to be Apple and Google. But that is

43:17

the basic level at which this needs to occur. Not

43:19

at the level of the app. What do you mean?

43:22

I mean, I think I agree with that.

43:24

I think it's just easier to run age verification

43:26

through the app stores. You can imagine, you know,

43:28

you take a new iPhone out of the box.

43:30

And while you're setting it up, it sort of

43:32

asks you to verify the age of the person

43:35

who's going to be using that. And

43:37

then, you know, that sort of

43:39

birth date kind of sticks and

43:41

is passed through to other applications

43:43

as you download and register for

43:45

them too. But I also think

43:47

like, it's, it's good for social

43:49

platforms to have, if not a

43:51

an exact number, then then just a

43:54

general sense of how young their users

43:56

are right now. You know, a

43:58

lot of people just lie. when they register for

44:00

a new Instagram account or a new Facebook

44:02

account if you're underage, you'll just say, you

44:04

know, I'm 18 and that gets you in.

44:07

And I think that it's good that tech platforms

44:09

will soon have to have a better idea of

44:11

how old the people using their apps are. Yeah,

44:14

and we should say, like, there is clearly an

44:16

element of passing the buck in what Zuckerberg says,

44:18

right? Because the moment that this becomes Apple and

44:20

Google's responsibility, he basically never has to think about

44:22

it again. He just flips a switch that says,

44:24

hey, iOS, if this user is under 13, they

44:27

don't get to download Instagram and move on with

44:29

his life. So I can understand why

44:31

they want this. The thing is, I just think

44:33

that would probably be a world where kids are

44:35

made more safe. Yeah, this is,

44:38

as you said, a very emotional topic and one

44:40

where people, especially parents, have a

44:43

lot of strong feelings. We

44:45

did a segment on the show last

44:47

year about COSA in which we sort

44:49

of raised some potential objections to it.

44:51

And you especially said that you were

44:53

opposed to it because it can

44:55

allow state attorneys general to basically try

44:57

to crack down on any content

44:59

that they considered offensive or

45:02

harmful to children, whether that's

45:04

pro LGBTQ content or affirming

45:06

gender content targeted at kids

45:09

who may be experiencing some

45:11

gender dysphoria. You really

45:13

worried that COSA would have all these unintended

45:15

consequences. After that

45:17

episode, we heard from a ton

45:19

of listeners who disagreed with us,

45:21

some of them agreed with us,

45:24

basically talking about what it's actually like

45:26

to have kids who use social media

45:29

platforms, which neither of us, frankly,

45:31

does. And I wanted to just

45:33

bring up two emails that we got in

45:35

the wake of the COSA segment from listeners

45:38

and see if any of your views have shifted

45:40

on this stuff over time. One

45:43

was from a listener named James who

45:45

wrote to us and basically said, look,

45:48

you guys, you talk about

45:50

this stuff, you analyze this proposed

45:52

legislation, you do not understand how

45:54

bad the internet is for kids

45:57

and how many kids are being

45:59

hurt. online. And this

46:02

is sort of a point that you'll hear from people

46:05

who are activists on this stuff. They'll say, you

46:07

know, this is not some small

46:09

number of teens who are being victimized

46:11

by horrible things online. This

46:14

is in fact, millions and millions of

46:16

teenagers. There are studies

46:18

that have been done by

46:20

SNAP that found that two

46:22

thirds or 65% of teens and young

46:26

adults in six countries reported that they

46:28

or their friends had been targeted by

46:30

some of these online sextortion schemes. There

46:33

have also been internal studies that

46:35

have been published from

46:37

meta claiming that one

46:40

in eight Instagram users under age

46:42

16 said they had

46:44

experienced unwanted sexual advances on the

46:46

platform in the past week. So

46:50

these are the kinds of numbers that I

46:52

think make parents really start to freak

46:54

out because all of a sudden, this is

46:57

not just a few isolated incidents. This is

46:59

a real epidemic. Yeah. And those are all

47:01

terrible things that are worthy of legislation that

47:04

reduces those problems. But that's not

47:06

what COSA says. What COSA says

47:08

is the platforms need to protect

47:10

minors from harmful content. Well, who

47:12

gets to define what harm is,

47:14

it is going to differ state

47:16

by state, attorney general by attorney

47:18

general, political party to political party.

47:21

And one of the reasons that the founders of

47:23

this country passed the First Amendment was to

47:25

prevent these questions from being put

47:27

into the hands of politicians. So

47:30

if COSA said we want to

47:32

create a legal framework for ensuring

47:34

that platforms prevent sextortion, I would

47:37

be 100% in favor

47:39

of it. But Kevin, I think anybody who

47:41

thinks that COSA is going to solve the

47:43

problems that you're describing is kidding themselves. Because

47:45

I think in practice, this is going to

47:47

turn out to be primarily a mechanism for

47:49

partisan state attorneys general to launch political stunts.

47:52

I believe Republican AGs are going to sue

47:54

platforms for showing information about abortion in states

47:56

where it is illegal and then they'll wash their

47:58

hands with the whole thing and say, see. We did

48:00

something to protect the kids. We prevented them from harm.

48:03

Well, I just want to clarify that

48:05

the text of COSA has gone through

48:08

a bunch of changes in response to

48:10

some of these concerns, like the one

48:12

that conservative attorneys general could potentially weaponize

48:15

it to sort of go after a speech

48:17

they don't like or a speech that is

48:19

sort of pro-LGBTQ plus in some way. And

48:23

they do seem to be open to further changes.

48:26

Earlier this month, Senator Blumenthal actually told

48:28

Politico that he would be open to

48:31

giving the Federal Trade Commission

48:33

the sort of enforcement authority when

48:35

it comes to COSA instead of putting

48:37

it in the hands of state AGs,

48:40

the idea sort of being that since the

48:43

FTC is federal, maybe it's

48:45

less prone to kind of politicization

48:47

than state attorneys general would be.

48:50

But I agree that the text of the bill,

48:52

as it is written today, does seem

48:54

to give state AGs some authority to

48:57

go after tech platforms if they deem

48:59

them to be sort of not taking

49:01

enough steps to prevent minor users from

49:04

encountering harmful content. And

49:06

I would just say that my views

49:08

on this stuff have been kind of

49:10

in flux recently because I agree with

49:12

you. I think there are problems with

49:14

COSA as it's currently written. I worry

49:16

about unanticipated consequences. We are

49:18

also starting to learn so much more

49:21

about the fact that these tech platforms

49:23

knew they had a problem with minors

49:25

being exploited, harassed, bullied, and harmed on

49:27

their platforms and that they didn't do

49:29

enough to prevent it. The

49:31

Wall Street Journal has been doing a series of really

49:33

great stories on this

49:36

stuff specifically related to Instagram

49:38

and Facebook. They reported

49:40

on this internal meta presentation from 2021 that

49:42

was included in one of these state

49:46

lawsuits against the company that estimated that

49:48

100,000 minors every day receive photos of

49:53

adult genitalia or other sexually

49:55

abusive content on Facebook and

49:57

Instagram. They also describe an internal meta presentation.

50:00

document that was circulated

50:02

at meta, noting that its own

50:04

recommendation algorithms, in particular this algorithm

50:06

called people you may know, which

50:08

sort of tells you people that

50:11

you might want to connect with,

50:13

was known among employees to be

50:15

connecting child users with potential predators.

50:18

And it also says that Facebook

50:20

executives were alarmed about certain features

50:22

in their apps that were harming

50:24

teens, like these photo filters that

50:26

mimic the effects of plastic surgery,

50:28

and that some meta executives actually

50:30

wanted to ban these filters, but Mark

50:32

Zuckerberg refused. So I will say as

50:35

we learn more about what was going

50:37

on inside these platforms over the past

50:39

few years when it comes to child

50:42

harms, I am becoming much more sympathetic

50:44

to the view that these platforms need

50:46

some regulation to force them

50:49

to pay more attention to this stuff.

50:51

Yeah, I think your points are well

50:53

taken. It is true that these companies

50:55

have a lot to answer for. They

50:57

have contributed to a lot of harm.

51:00

Often the voices inside these companies

51:02

that were raising these issues are

51:04

drowned out. And it

51:06

sucks. And I have become much more open

51:08

over the past several months to the class

51:10

action lawsuit that was filed by the Attorney's

51:12

General seeking to hold meta accountable

51:14

for everything that you just said. This is

51:17

just the point where I as a journalist

51:19

and somebody who relies on the First Amendment

51:21

to do my work, I just really don't

51:24

want to live in a world where the

51:26

government is writing laws as broadly written so

51:28

as to put the government in charge of

51:30

deciding what speech is harmful. I think that's

51:33

an extremely dramatic step with a lot of

51:35

obvious downsides. And if we wanted to target

51:37

any of the number of very real problems

51:40

that you just described, we could take a

51:42

much more surgical approach. Yeah. So Casey, where

51:44

do you think we go from here? We've

51:46

had this hearing. We now know where the

51:49

tech companies stand on this one particular piece

51:51

of proposed legislation, COSA. What

51:53

do you think happens now? Well, I think

51:55

we're gonna see a continuation of what we've

51:57

already been seeing, which is more states passing.

52:00

legislation on this subject. In Congress, we have

52:02

this perpetual gridlock, but there are many, many

52:04

states where there is single party control of

52:07

the entire legislature. That is why we are

52:09

seeing so much legislation being passed at the

52:11

state level, and more and more

52:13

states are taking a crack at a variety

52:16

of pretty restrictive things. Montana has tried to

52:18

just ban TikTok in the state altogether.

52:20

That has been blocked by a federal judge. But I

52:22

think you're just going to see state after state taking

52:24

swing after swing. All of this stuff is going to

52:27

go up to the Supreme Court. And then the question

52:29

is just going to be, will the

52:31

Supreme Court actually agree to

52:33

any of these things that

52:36

the previous Supreme Court absolutely

52:38

dismissed? This is where my jadedness

52:40

comes in. I do not think anything is going

52:42

to happen at the federal level. This stuff has

52:44

been in gridlock for years. I think that that

52:46

is going to continue. We're heading into an election.

52:49

Who knows what's going to happen in 2025? But

52:52

I do think you're still going to see

52:54

a lot of movement at the state level

52:56

and in the courtrooms. Remember, that class action

52:59

lawsuit against META is really starting to

53:01

pick up some steam. And I do

53:03

think it is going to cost that company in particular in the end.

53:05

But what do you think? Yeah, I think

53:07

this is going to be maybe the biggest

53:09

challenge that social platforms face over the next

53:12

few years. I think this is an area

53:14

where the big platforms are really vulnerable. I

53:16

think legislators and activists and lobbyists know that.

53:19

And that is why we're going to see them

53:21

continue to hammer the tech companies on these points.

53:23

Yeah, I just want to say, like, I do

53:25

worry. I read this great essay by Dana Boyd,

53:27

who's this researcher who's studied social media for a

53:29

long time. And she was saying that

53:31

there is such a risk in the

53:33

legislation that is now being proposed of

53:35

falling victim to this idea of techno-solutionism,

53:37

right? Which is that social networks cause

53:40

all of our problems with children and

53:42

tech companies can solve all of our

53:44

problems with children. Social

53:46

networks have a huge role to play. Let's

53:48

also remember, kids are suffering for a lot

53:50

of reasons that have nothing to do with

53:53

who said what to them on Instagram, right?

53:55

Kids get bullied in schools, actually. Schools have

53:57

not actually done a lot to solve the

54:00

bullying problem over the past three years. decades.

54:02

So I just want us to keep all

54:04

of that in mind too, because it is

54:06

so easy to fall victim to the same

54:09

thing that critics accused journalists of falling for

54:11

the hype that, you know, tech can save

54:13

the world. If you think that tech can

54:15

solve all of our problems that tech has

54:18

created, I also think you're kidding yourself. Yeah,

54:20

I think that's right. I think there is

54:22

a danger of sort of being too deterministic

54:24

about how the decisions that platforms make affect

54:27

the experiences that kids have on them. And

54:30

I actually like, I don't blame

54:33

tech companies for having

54:35

underage users or even for, you know,

54:38

exposing inadvertently those users to some harms just

54:40

by virtue of the fact that they're massive

54:42

platforms that can't keep tabs on everything that's

54:44

happening on them. What I do

54:46

fault them for and what I do think a lot

54:49

of parents are going to fault them for is

54:51

that after they learned that teenagers

54:54

and young people were having bad

54:56

experiences on their platforms, they

54:58

just didn't do enough to stop it. And

55:00

in some cases, they rejected proposals that would

55:03

have helped kids on their platforms have a

55:05

safer experience because they cost too much money

55:07

or they involve too much bureaucracy or oversight,

55:09

or they just worried that calling attention to

55:12

the fact that there were underage users on

55:14

their platforms would open them up to new

55:16

forms of scrutiny. So I think this was

55:18

a huge mistake tactically that a lot of

55:21

these platforms made and not talking about this

55:23

sooner. And I think those days

55:25

are over because now parents are pissed off

55:27

and they want answers. Well, Kevin, what would

55:29

you say if I told you that there

55:31

was another company that knew about a huge

55:33

problem and when confronted with it did not

55:36

do the right thing? Come on.

55:38

That's right. Coming up after the brief. We'll have a

55:40

clear accident. We'll have a clear accident. Hey

56:21

Kevin, remember that one time we interviewed

56:23

the CEO of Cruise? Yes, the self-driving

56:26

car company. Yeah, nice guy. Whatever happened

56:28

to that? Well,

56:30

it's interesting you ask. It's been a

56:32

very rocky few months for the cruise

56:34

company and Kyle Vought, the CEO who

56:36

we interviewed on the show last year,

56:39

stepped down in November following

56:41

a big scandal involving regulators

56:44

and a serious accident and

56:46

a cruise vehicle called Panini.

56:49

And it all culminated recently with

56:51

this big report that was prepared

56:54

about that incident and kind of

56:56

what has led cruise to the

56:58

place it is now. So as

57:00

of today, the company has lost

57:02

its license to operate driverless vehicles

57:04

in California. It has suspended its

57:06

operations across the country. The company's

57:08

basically entire leadership has been replaced.

57:10

A quarter of the staff of

57:13

Cruise has been cut. It's

57:15

being investigated by the DOJ and the

57:17

SEC. And now, as

57:19

of this week, GM announced that

57:22

they are cutting their investment in Cruise

57:24

by half, about a billion dollars this

57:26

year. So what I'm hearing is that

57:28

this is a story about how one

57:31

car accident destroyed an entire company.

57:34

It's sort of about that, but I

57:36

think it's also about kind of self-driving

57:38

technology as a whole and

57:40

some of the tradeoffs that we're

57:43

going to see as these cars

57:45

become more widespread. And

57:47

I really think we should talk

57:49

about the cruise incident today because

57:51

it's not only just kind of like

57:53

a juicy story, but I think it

57:55

also really symbolizes the issues with this

57:57

kind of move fast and break things

57:59

mentality. that a lot of tech

58:01

companies have, even in areas

58:03

like self-driving, where the costs of

58:05

a mistake are so grave.

58:08

Yes, and I should say, I have read the

58:10

report that came out of this, and it is,

58:13

so there's some really disturbing stuff in

58:15

there, and I think it is worth

58:17

going through it. Yep, and it really

58:19

matters what happens to Cruise. This was

58:22

one of only two companies that was

58:24

offering self-driving sort of halable rides in

58:26

San Francisco and other cities. The other

58:29

one, Waymo, is still

58:31

operating. You can take their cars today

58:33

in San Francisco, but Cruise was a

58:35

big player in a company that GM

58:37

in particular had bet a lot of money

58:40

on sort of being the first

58:42

to bring this technology to market.

58:45

And I'm a person who thinks that

58:47

driverless cars are one of the most

58:49

important technologies out there today. I think

58:51

that roads are tremendously unsafe, and self-driving

58:53

cars, if they work well, they could

58:55

make things a lot safer, but there

58:57

are also still some issues with them.

58:59

And so I think it's worth taking

59:01

sort of a closer look at what

59:03

happened at Cruise, because I think some

59:05

of these same dynamics could play out

59:07

across the industry in the coming years.

59:10

So let's get into it. So I

59:12

think to tell this story, we have

59:14

to rewind the clock to October 2nd

59:16

of last year. And

59:18

that night in San Francisco,

59:21

there was an accident. Now,

59:23

this accident was not caused

59:25

by a Cruise self-driving car.

59:27

It was caused by a human

59:29

driver who basically did a hit

59:32

and run on a pedestrian in

59:34

downtown San Francisco. That

59:36

pedestrian was flung by

59:39

this human driver collision into

59:41

the path of a Cruise

59:44

autonomous vehicle. The Cruise

59:46

vehicle tried to slam on the brakes,

59:48

but it ended up hitting her. And

59:51

then it tried to execute a pullover maneuver,

59:53

which is what it's programmed to do when

59:55

it- And when you say execute a pullover

59:58

maneuver, you mean pullover. Hee hee. I'm

1:00:01

just using the language that Cruz used in his report.

1:00:03

So it tries to pull over because that's

1:00:05

what it's supposed to do. And

1:00:08

in the process of pulling over, it drags

1:00:10

this poor woman about 20 feet

1:00:12

to the side of the road while pulling

1:00:14

over. Because critically, and

1:00:16

here's where the AI messed up, the

1:00:18

AI thought that the woman had hit

1:00:20

the car on its side, and so

1:00:23

that it would be safe to pull

1:00:25

over. In fact, the woman was in

1:00:27

the front of the car. And

1:00:29

so as the car pulled over, it dragged

1:00:31

the woman 20 feet. And

1:00:33

she was left in critical condition. Yes.

1:00:36

So very sad story. But what

1:00:39

happened next is that in responding

1:00:41

to this incident, Cruz was supposed

1:00:43

to meet with a bunch of

1:00:45

regulators to basically debrief the incident

1:00:48

and see what could be done to fix

1:00:50

this kind of thing in the future. And

1:00:54

in the process of those

1:00:56

meetings with government officials and

1:00:58

regulators, Cruz executives basically

1:01:01

left out the fact that their car,

1:01:03

while it had not caused the initial

1:01:05

injury, did drag this woman about 20

1:01:08

feet before coming to a stop. So

1:01:11

this winds up becoming the key

1:01:13

omission that winds up essentially causing

1:01:15

the company to collapse. In the

1:01:17

immediate aftermath of the accident, though,

1:01:19

Cruz really only wanted to communicate

1:01:21

one message, which was, hey, we

1:01:23

didn't cause this accident. Right. So

1:01:25

this is the narrative that they take out to

1:01:27

the media. This is the drum that they beat.

1:01:30

And they're so fixated on the fact that

1:01:32

they did not cause the initial accident that they

1:01:34

wind up making a bunch more mistakes. Right. So

1:01:37

the basic story is, you know, there's this accident. Cruz

1:01:39

responds, meets with all these regulators and

1:01:41

government officials to talk about what happened,

1:01:43

plays them footage from the cameras that

1:01:46

were on the car at the time

1:01:48

of the incident, but kind of glosses

1:01:50

over the fact that their car dragged

1:01:52

the woman about 20 feet before coming

1:01:54

to a stop. They get

1:01:56

caught sort of doing this kind

1:01:58

of selective presentation. And

1:02:00

as a result, GM, which

1:02:03

is the majority owner of Cruise,

1:02:05

sort of replaces the senior leadership

1:02:07

of the company and commissions a

1:02:09

law firm to basically investigate what

1:02:11

happened and come up with a

1:02:13

report. And this report

1:02:15

was made public just

1:02:17

recently and it is a wild

1:02:20

document. Did you read it? I did read

1:02:22

it and it was probably the most interesting

1:02:24

thing I've ever read that was written by

1:02:26

Quinn Emanuel or Carton Sullivan, the law firm

1:02:28

that did the report. Yeah,

1:02:30

I love these kind of lawyers reports because it's

1:02:32

like the precision in these documents, the time stamps

1:02:34

on all the Slack messages. It is just like,

1:02:37

you do not want this kind of thing to

1:02:39

happen to you. You don't and yet at the

1:02:41

end of the day, Cruise is their client and

1:02:43

they do pay for everything that's happening and so

1:02:46

I do feel like the law firm sort of

1:02:48

writes about it in a hilarious letting them

1:02:51

off the hook way that I would like

1:02:53

to talk about. Yeah, so let's talk about

1:02:55

this report. So the report basically says that

1:02:58

in the immediate aftermath of this incident, Cruise

1:03:01

was sort of worried

1:03:03

because initial media

1:03:05

reports suggested, some of them,

1:03:07

that Cruise's self-driving car had in fact caused

1:03:09

this accident, that this was a case of

1:03:11

a driverless car hitting a pedestrian, which would

1:03:14

be a big story. Yes, and it is

1:03:16

the sort of the story that the entire

1:03:18

press corps has been waiting for ever since

1:03:20

these self-driving cars got on the road. When

1:03:22

would one of them cause a potentially fatal

1:03:25

accident? And so now it happens and so

1:03:27

Cruise, which I'm sure already had

1:03:29

a full plan ready to execute the moment that

1:03:31

this happened, they spring into action. Right,

1:03:33

so on October 3rd after

1:03:36

this incident happens, Cruise executives

1:03:38

and employees are kind of trying to piece

1:03:41

together what happened. They're looking at the footage

1:03:43

from the cameras on these vehicles and

1:03:46

at around 3.45 a.m. according

1:03:49

to this report, a Cruise employee

1:03:51

first sees the full video of the

1:03:53

incident and learns that in

1:03:56

addition to kind of hitting this pedestrian

1:03:58

and stopping their car. also

1:04:00

pulled over and dragged the woman

1:04:02

with it. So the company's

1:04:05

senior leadership, including Kyle Vogt, meets to

1:04:07

discuss this new video and

1:04:10

tries to decide whether or not they're going to

1:04:12

sort of update the media with

1:04:14

this new detail and they decide not

1:04:16

to. Oh, that seems like a

1:04:19

mistake in retrospect. Yeah. Yeah, so

1:04:21

they also meet with the

1:04:23

mayor of San Francisco's transportation advisor.

1:04:26

They don't mention the dragging part of

1:04:28

the incident then. They

1:04:30

meet with a bunch of regulators,

1:04:32

including NHTSA, the DMV, and the

1:04:35

California Highway Patrol, and

1:04:37

same thing. They talk about this incident.

1:04:39

They show this video of the

1:04:41

footage from some of the cameras, but they

1:04:43

do not sort of proactively bring up the

1:04:45

fact that their car dragged this woman after

1:04:47

hitting her. And here's how this is described

1:04:50

by Quinn Emanuel, by the way. Quote, in

1:04:52

each of those meetings, Cruz had the

1:04:54

intent to affirmatively disclose those material

1:04:56

facts by playing the full video

1:04:58

and letting, quote, the video speak

1:05:00

for itself. Because Cruz adopted

1:05:02

that approach, it did not verbally point

1:05:04

out these facts. It's like,

1:05:06

that is such a hilarious word salad to

1:05:09

explain why after you drag a woman 20

1:05:11

feet and you're meeting with regulators, you do

1:05:13

not mention that you dragged a woman 20

1:05:15

feet. But you're leaving out the best part

1:05:18

of this, which was that apparently Cruz tried

1:05:20

to play video of the crash to officials,

1:05:23

but the person who was playing it,

1:05:25

their wifi was not up to the

1:05:27

task. They had bandwidth issues and a

1:05:29

poor internet connection that prevented

1:05:32

the regulators from seeing the complete and clear

1:05:34

full video of the accident. And not only

1:05:36

did this happen in one meeting, it apparently

1:05:38

happened in three different meetings. And I would

1:05:41

just like to say to this Cruz employee,

1:05:44

please call Comcast, upgrade your plan.

1:05:46

When you are showing a crash

1:05:48

video to regulators, you're definitely

1:05:50

gonna want the gigabit fiber. This truly is

1:05:52

the most dog ate my homework excuse for

1:05:55

not being able to show this video to

1:05:57

regulators that I can even imagine. And when

1:05:59

I saw... I really did

1:06:01

gag a bit. Unbelievable. So the

1:06:03

entire future of the driverless car

1:06:05

industry, we now know, may hinge

1:06:08

on one cruise employee's shitty Wi-Fi. Wait, I just

1:06:10

want to share a quintimaniels conclusion about this, which

1:06:12

is, quote, even after obtaining the full video, cruise

1:06:14

did not correct the public narrative, but continued instead

1:06:16

to share incomplete facts and video about the accident

1:06:19

with the media and the public. This

1:06:21

conduct has caused both regulators and the media to

1:06:23

accuse cruise of misleading them. Like, yeah, you think?

1:06:27

Yeah. So there's

1:06:30

a lot more in this report. It's very

1:06:32

detailed. It's many, many pages long.

1:06:35

And a lot of it is just kind of internal

1:06:37

fact finding. But basically

1:06:39

the overarching conclusion that this

1:06:41

investigation draws is that cruise

1:06:44

executives and leadership materially misrepresented

1:06:46

what happened on this October

1:06:49

2nd night with this

1:06:51

pedestrian to regulators, which is a very bad

1:06:53

thing to do if you are a company

1:06:55

in a heavily regulated industry like transportation.

1:06:58

So the law firm that did the

1:07:00

report, I think, disagrees with the idea

1:07:02

that this misleading was intentional. The report

1:07:04

says, quote, despite the failure to discuss

1:07:06

the pullover maneuver or pedestrian dragging with

1:07:08

regulators, the evidence review to date does

1:07:11

not establish that cruise leadership or employees

1:07:13

sought to intentionally mislead or hide from

1:07:15

regulators the details of the October 2nd

1:07:17

accident. Instead, they attempted to show the

1:07:19

full video of the accident in good

1:07:21

faith, but with varying degrees of success

1:07:24

due to technical issues. So I

1:07:26

would not say this rises to the level where you

1:07:28

can truly call it a cover up, but it does

1:07:30

sort of feel like a cover up by omission, right?

1:07:33

Where like the company did go out of its way

1:07:35

to just not say what had happened. And

1:07:37

when the inevitable happened, which was that

1:07:39

regulators finally see the full video, it finally becomes clear

1:07:42

to them what has truly happened. Well, of course, they

1:07:44

wind up being way more upset than they would have

1:07:46

than if cruise had just been honest with them from

1:07:48

the beginning. Yeah. And

1:07:50

I've talked to some people who were involved in

1:07:52

this situation over the past few weeks. And

1:07:55

the folks on the kind of GM

1:07:57

and regulator side of this just basically.

1:08:00

paint crews as this kind of reckless

1:08:02

startup that was more interested in kind

1:08:04

of scaling their business and getting as

1:08:06

many of their cars onto the road

1:08:08

as they can and sort of taking

1:08:10

market share away from Waymo than

1:08:13

they were about making sure that all

1:08:15

their vehicles were safe. And

1:08:18

people on the other side, the sort of

1:08:20

more cruise friendly part of this say, well,

1:08:22

we have our risk calculations all wrong when

1:08:25

it comes to driverless cars. You know, we

1:08:27

shouldn't be asking, are these things perfectly safe?

1:08:29

Are they never going to be involved in

1:08:31

an accident? Are they never going to hurt

1:08:33

someone? We should be comparing them against human

1:08:36

drivers who we know cause accidents and hurt

1:08:38

people all the time. And so in their

1:08:40

minds, this is just kind of like an

1:08:42

overly cautious set of regulators and an overly

1:08:44

cautious corporate parent kind of looking

1:08:47

over this with just the wrong set of

1:08:49

risk calculations in their brains. Well, I have

1:08:52

to say, I think that that that really

1:08:54

misses the point. I think that the real

1:08:56

story here is even sadder because look, Kevin,

1:08:58

the moment you decide to create a

1:09:00

self-driving car company, you have to prepare

1:09:02

for the extreme likelihood that at some

1:09:05

point there is going to be a

1:09:07

serious injury accident and even a fatal

1:09:09

accident. Right. And I'm

1:09:11

sure Cruz had done a lot of thinking

1:09:13

leading up to this moment about how it

1:09:15

was going to handle that situation. Again, human

1:09:17

driven cars are killing people every day. This

1:09:19

should not surprise anyone. Our hope is that

1:09:21

these things become safer. And

1:09:24

what this incident is really about is that

1:09:26

the AI made a mistake and probably a

1:09:28

mistake that a human being would

1:09:30

not make. And that is tragic. And that

1:09:33

is worth exploring. But that's

1:09:35

not why Cruz barely exists anymore. It

1:09:37

barely exists anymore because in the aftermath

1:09:39

of this, the company could not just

1:09:41

say like, oh, we made a mistake.

1:09:44

Let's own up to our mistake and let's

1:09:46

fix it and move on. If they had

1:09:49

done that, I truly think cruise vehicles would

1:09:51

still be on the road today. Yeah,

1:09:53

that's a good point. And we should say like Cruz,

1:09:55

it still exists. We're still

1:09:57

planning to expand their service.

1:09:59

I mean, they are, but

1:10:02

like, what happens? Like, is cruise going to continue

1:10:04

to exist in any meaningful way, do you think?

1:10:07

Look, I think GM has sunk

1:10:09

a lot of money into this

1:10:11

company. These driverless sort of taxi

1:10:13

services, they are just hemorrhaging cash.

1:10:15

It's very expensive to build and

1:10:17

maintain and, you know,

1:10:20

keep these cars on the roads.

1:10:23

And you know, they're not really making money

1:10:25

from them right now. And so I think GM

1:10:27

probably sees this as an opportunity to kind of

1:10:29

cut back some of its losses. But

1:10:32

look, I do think driverless cars are

1:10:34

not going away. The technology is here.

1:10:37

So what do you think happens now

1:10:39

to the dream of driverless cars? Like,

1:10:41

does this push the kind of timeframe

1:10:44

out by several years because now we

1:10:46

only have one driverless car company offering

1:10:49

rides instead of two? Or like, what

1:10:51

do you think happens to Waymo, for

1:10:53

example, as a result of this? I

1:10:55

mean, I have to believe that it

1:10:57

does slow the progress of this industry.

1:10:59

I think that competition makes industries grow

1:11:01

faster. And now that as

1:11:04

you point out, Waymo is the only self-driving

1:11:06

car company on the streets, that progress probably

1:11:08

is going to slow a bit. So that's

1:11:10

kind of what I'm expecting to see. I'm

1:11:12

very curious to see where cruise is

1:11:15

a year from now. Like on one hand,

1:11:17

I agree, GM has invested so much money,

1:11:19

you can't really imagine them pulling the plug.

1:11:21

But on the other hand, every accident that

1:11:23

they've taken since this happened has given me

1:11:25

the impression that they really are not thrilled

1:11:27

with this crew. So we'll have

1:11:29

to see. But it's

1:11:31

just a terrible black eye for the industry. And then

1:11:34

I do worry it could cause people's lives. What do

1:11:36

you think? So I think this is

1:11:38

going to slow the self-driving car industry less

1:11:40

on the kind of consumer adoption

1:11:42

side than on the regulatory side.

1:11:44

We're already starting to see evidence

1:11:46

that this is sort of expanding

1:11:49

just beyond cruise. Last week, the

1:11:51

city of San Francisco sued a

1:11:53

state commission for allowing Waymo

1:11:55

and cruise to expand

1:11:57

to the city. this

1:12:00

is going to result in collateral damage to

1:12:02

waymo to even though uh... that company appears

1:12:04

to have done nothing wrong and in fact

1:12:07

their safety record is quite good so we're

1:12:09

not going to go away even in san

1:12:11

francisco now you know that

1:12:13

remains to be seen i think there'd be people

1:12:15

who would be upset if that happened and i

1:12:17

also think that the people who would probably pretty

1:12:19

happy about it now i will be always try

1:12:21

to leave people with a bit of hope early

1:12:24

something you know practical that they do can use

1:12:26

here's a msa the next time that there is

1:12:28

one of these self-driving uh... car accidents and investigators

1:12:30

are trying to get to the bottom of it

1:12:32

and the person trying to show you the video

1:12:34

says i'm sorry my internet just isn't working so

1:12:36

you know what we're just going to pause the

1:12:38

meeting uh... once you go to a coffee shop

1:12:40

and just put the video in a drop box

1:12:42

for okay and then we'll download it and then we'll

1:12:44

look at the video then you can tell us what

1:12:47

you think happened in the video and that we can

1:12:49

sort of you know bypasses the

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the questions around retirement have gotten tiring

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instead of have you saved up enough shouldn't

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they be asking what is it that you

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