The company at the heart of the AI bubble

What motivates Mark Zuckerberg these days? It's a question Decoder guest host Alex Heath posed at the end of his interview last week, after he and Zuckerberg had spent an hour talking about Threads, Zuckerberg's vision for how generative AI will reshape Meta's apps, the Quest 3, and other news from the company's Connect conference, which kicked off today.  After spending the past five years as a wartime CEO, Zuckerberg is getting back to basics, and he clearly feels good about it. "I think we've done a lot of good things," he said. "But for the next wave of my life and for the company — but also outside of the company with what I'm doing at CZI [Chan Zuckerberg Initiative] and some of my personal projects — I define my life at this point more in terms of getting to work on awesome things with great people who I like working with." For Zuckerberg, "awesome things" means figuring out how to combine his company's AR, VR, and AI ambitions into new products.    This rare interview with the Meta CEO also includes details on his ongoing feud with Elon Musk and the quest to beat X/Twitter using Threads, his perspective on open source, and his vision for decentralized social media. Okay, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Here we go. Links: Mark Zuckerberg is ready to fight Elon Musk in a cage match The three reasons Twitter didn’t sell to Facebook Threads app usage plummets despite initial promise as refuge from Twitter Threads isn’t for news and politics, says Instagram’s boss You can now verify your Threads profile on Mastodon In show of force, Silicon Valley titans pledge ‘getting this right’ With AI Meta is putting AI chatbots everywhere A conversation with Bing’s chatbot left me deeply unsettled Custom AI chatbots are quietly becoming the next big thing in fandom Meta’s Smart Glasses can take calls, play music, and livestream from your face Meta’s $499.99 Quest 3 headset is all about mixed reality and video games The Meta Quest 3 is sharper, more powerful, and still trying to make mixed reality happen Here’s what Mark Zuckerberg thinks about Apple’s Vision Pro Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

27 Sep 20231h 11min

TechCrunch is one of the most important trade publications in the world of tech and startups, and its annual Disrupt conference is where dozens of major companies have launched… and some have failed. Matt has been the editor-in-chief of TechCrunch for essentially a decade now, and he and I have been both friends and competitors the entire time. We’ve competed for scoops, traded criticisms, and asked each other for advice in running our publications and managing our teams. So when Matt announced last month that he’s stepping down from his role at TechCrunch it felt important to have him come on for what you might call an exit interview — a look back at the past decade running a media outlet at the center of the tech ecosystem, with all of the chaos that’s entailed. Links:  Why We Sold TechCrunch To AOL, And Where We Go From Here | TechCrunch (2010) TechCrunch founder leaves AOL in a cloud of acrimony | CNN Money (2011) SB Nation Sacks AOL in Raid of Former Engadget Team for Competing New Tech Site, As AOL Zeroes in on New EiC | All Things D (2011) Why Every Company Needs A 'No Bozos' Policy | Forbes (2012) Artificial Intelligence Nonprofit OpenAI Launches With Backing From Elon Musk And Sam Altman | TechCrunch Just buy this Brother laser printer everyone has, it’s fine | The Verge Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Nick Statt and Kate Cox. It was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

19 Sep 202351min

The Six: The Untold Story of America's First Women Astronauts, from longtime space reporter and Verge alum Loren Grush, is out today. It’s been 40 years since Sally Ride became the first American woman in space — but she was far from the last. In the early 1980s six women — Sally Ride, Judy Resnick, Kathy Sullivan, Anna Fisher, Rhea Seddon, and Shannon Lucid — would get a chance to fly a mission on one of the space shuttles… including, unfortunately, the ill-fated 1986 Challenger launch. The story of the six may be history, but it’s far from ancient, and there’s a lot going on here that ties directly to today. And of course, what’s an astronaut story without some high-flying hijinks in it? Listen to the end for Loren’s favorite. Links: Nichelle Nichols - NASA Recruitment Film (1977) Top Black Woman Is Ousted By NASA | The New York Times (1973) The Space Truck | The Washington Post (1981) NASA Artemis Five former SpaceX employees speak out about harassment at the company | The Verge Why did Blue Origin leave so many female space reporters out of its big reveal? | The Verge ‘We better watch out’: NASA boss sounds alarm on Chinese moon ambitions | Politico Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule | The New Yorker US Takes First Step Toward Regulating Commercial Human Spaceflight | Bloomberg Apply to attend the Code Conference Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

12 Sep 202357min

Okta is a big company, a Wall Street SaaS darling. For most of us, it's the thing we have to log into 50 times a week just to get any work done. But from Okta's point of view, Jameeka Green Aaron told us, it's an identity company. I spoke with Jameeka about what "identity" really means — in the digital space, in your real life, and at work — in 2023, and how an identity-based approach might be more or less secure than other approaches. I’m also gearing up to host Code in September (apply to attend here), and I’m thinking a lot about AI — very much a challenge for the future of security, even in a biometric-based era. Links: Apple IDs now support passkeys — if you’re on the iOS 17 or macOS Sonoma betas How to use a passkey to sign in to your Google account Windows 11 tests letting you sign in to websites with a fingerprint or face Apple, Google, and Microsoft will soon implement passwordless sign-in on all major platforms Microsoft called out for ‘blatantly negligent’ cybersecurity practices Okta Faces Long Road Back At Okta, CTO and CISO collaborate by design Apply to attend the Code Conference Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

29 Aug 20231h 13min

Perkins Miller is the CEO of Fandom, which both hosts thousands of wikis for everything from Disney to Grand Theft Auto and also runs several publications. Millions of people contribute millions of pieces of content to the platform, and Fandom surrounds all that content with ads and uses all that data to generate insights about how fans think about their favorite games, TV shows, and movies. While you might enjoy the content, a lot of people have complaints — especially about the sheer number of ads. We talked about what it means to host user-generated content in 2023; content moderation; and the general state of media, especially games media, which is pretty rocky right now. I’m also gearing up to host the Code Conference in September (apply to attend here), and I’ve been thinking a lot about AI, search, and the web — all very much big challenges on the horizon for Fandom. Links: Layoffs Hit GameSpot, Giant Bomb Just Months After Fandom Buys Them - Kotaku How Fandom's first-party data, FanDNA, is expanding to improve recommendations for advertisers and audiences - Digiday The AI feedback loop: Researchers warn of 'model collapse' as AI trains on AI-generated content - VentureBeat How Reddit crushed the biggest protest in its history - The Verge ‘Not for Machines to Harvest’: Data Revolts Break Out Against A.I. - The New York Times Someone keeps accusing fanfiction authors of writing their fic with AI, and nobody knows why - The Verge Massive Zelda Wiki Reclaims Independence Six Months Before Tears of the Kingdom - Kotaku Official Minecraft wiki editors so furious at Fandom's 'degraded' functionality and popups they're overwhelmingly voting to leave the site - PC Gamer Trials and Tribble-ations (episode) - Memory Alpha Apply to attend the Code Conference Transcript: Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters, and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

22 Aug 20231h 10min

We have a little surprise in the feed today: An episode of "Land of the Giants," which is all about Tesla this season. Former Verge transportation reporter Tamara Warren and former Jalopnik EIC Patrick George, who are both deeply sourced in the world of cars, host, and every episode has reporting and insight about Tesla that really hasn’t been shared before. It was ahead of the EV competition in basically every way for a long time. But the question Tamara and Patrick want to answer is: Is Tesla still winning by default? And where is the competition pulling ahead now that every carmaker is doing EVs? I joined them in this episode to discuss how modern cars, especially EVs, are being totally rethought as rolling computers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

15 Aug 202338min

AWS is quite a story. It started as an experiment almost 20 years ago with Amazon trying to sell its excess server capacity. And people really doubted it. Why was the online bookstore trying to sell cloud services? But now, AWS is the largest cloud services provider in the world, and it’s the most profitable segment of Amazon, generating more than $22 billion in sales last quarter alone. By some estimates, AWS powers roughly one-third of the entire global internet. And on the rare occasion an AWS cluster goes down, an unfathomable number of platforms, websites, and services feel it, and so do hundreds of millions of users. Adam Selipsky was there almost from the start: he joined in 2005 and became CEO of AWS in 2019 when former AWS CEO Andy Jassy took over for Jeff Bezos as CEO of Amazon. Even with big competitors such as Microsoft and Google gaining ground, he estimates that only 10 percent of his potential customers overall have made the jump to the cloud.  That leaves lots of room to grow, and I wanted to know where he thinks that growth can come from — and importantly, what will keep AWS competitive as the word “cloud” starts to mean everything and nothing. AWS is going big on AI, but it has some challenges. Adam and I got into all of it and into the weeds of what it means to be an AI provider at scale. It’s uncharted territory. Links: Big Three Dominate the Global Cloud Market Amazon’s server outage broke fast food apps like McDonald’s and Taco Bell Amazon names former exec Adam Selipsky as the new head of AWS AWS is ready to power AI agents that can handle busywork instead of just chatting Nvidia reveals H100 GPU for AI and teases ‘world’s fastest AI supercomputer’ Amazon plans to rework Alexa in the age of ChatGPT Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/23824200/ai-cloud-amazon-aws-adam-selipsky Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

8 Aug 20231h 9min

ActivityPub is back in the news, thanks to Meta’s Threads launch and Elon’s continued immolation of Twitter — now X. That makes this the perfect time to dig into the Decoder archives to hear what Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko thinks about the future of social media. Mastodon got a head start as the most well-known of the rising decentralized social networks, but that’s changing fast. Bluesky, on a competing protocol, is picking up steam and Threads promises to decentralize in the future, using the same ActivityPub protocol as Mastodon. That’s a big deal, with big potential. Verge Editor-at-Large David Pierce has been covering all this very closely. Before we jump into the interview with Rochko, I spoke with David to help update everyone on what ActivityPub even is, and what it could mean for the future of social media. Links: More than two million users have flocked to Mastodon since Elon Musk took over Twitter - The Verge  A beginner’s guide to Mastodon, the hot new open-source Twitter clone - The Verge Elon Musk - The Verge Benevolent dictator for life - Wikipedia Mastodon Social Eugen Rochko (@Gargron@mastodon.social)    Erase browser history: can AI reset the browser battle? - The Verge    Twitter alternatives for the Musk-averse - The Verge We tried to run a social media site and it was awful | Financial Times Denial-of-service attack - Wikipedia   Can ActivityPub save the internet? - The Verge  Five reasons Threads could still go the distance - The Verge What's next for Threads - The Verge Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23422689  Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. It was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright.  The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Director is Eleanor Donovan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

25 Jul 20231h 21min