Tech News Weekly 351 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

0:00:00 - Mikah Sargent
Coming up on Tech News Weekly. I, Mikah Sargent, am hosting the show alone. This week we kick things off with a story of the week. It's all about Brilliant, the smart home manufacturer that makes little control panels for your home. Jennifer Pattison-Tuohy has a story over on the Verge talking about how it has found a buyer after almost going the way of the dodo. I take a moment to talk about what companies are worth investing in when it comes to equipping your smart home and those that you might want to. You know, just just let breeze past Afterward.

Engadget's own Devindra Hardawar joins us to give us his take on the Dell XPS 13 Co-Pilot Plus PC. He talks about how the device is pretty performant, but there are some considerations you should make before you buy an ARM-based machine. Then the Washington Post's Caroline O'Donovan joins us to talk about Amazon's plans for its virtual assistant. Apparently, the company will be launching a new AI-powered Alexa in October, but it will come with a subscription. Then we round things out with my final story of the week about SB 1047, the nation's first AI legislation, at least at this level. Some safety concerns about AI and making sure that in one part, the AI has a kill switch built in. It's all of that, plus so much more, coming up on Tech News Weekly.

0:01:27 - VO
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0:01:35 - Mikah Sargent
This is Tech News Weekly with me, Mikah Sargent, episode 351, recorded Thursday, august 29th 2024. Amazon to launch AI A-L-E-X-A this year. Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where every week we talk to and about the people making and breaking the tech news. I am Micah Sargent, and this week we are kicking things off with a story of the week.

That, for me, is it's close to my heart because I you may remember, some of you have probably watched Smart Tech Today here on the Twit Network, a show that I co-hosted with Matthew Cassinelli, and you know the smart home is still something that is very important to me. There was a company that was pretty doggone cool, a company called Brilliant, and Brilliant made these, I'd say, brilliant devices that you would replace your in-wall switch on the wall with, and then the brilliant device would let you control all sorts of smart home stuff in your home. The idea was to give you a centralized hub that is physical, that will let you control your devices. So many of the devices would have a little touchscreen portion and then a little part that had sliders and a camera, and the slider portion would let you raise and lower the brightness of lights in a room and the touchscreen would give you access to all of the other smart home devices in your home. So if you can imagine, long ago when I first started getting into the smart home, I sort of identified one of the biggest hurdles that came with smart home magic home. Who are not as enthusiastic about technology as you are, who would rather just have a switch on the wall to turn on and off the lights, who don't want to have to pull out their phone or scream into the void to get things to turn on and turn off Completely understandable. And I found over time that the way that you kind of let everything gel together and let everyone kind of be happy and exist in harmony is through hardware controls that are reminiscent of the controls that once existed. So Brilliant was the company that made one of these smart control panels and they, I think, did a very good job. Now here's the problem. About three months ago, as we record this show, in late August, the company started laying off its staff. It had to shut down its support center and it stopped selling brilliant control panels and switches. It stopped selling its products At that point.

Jennifer Pattison-Tuohy of the Verge wrote a piece about Brilliant and kind of talking about what's next for Brilliant. Is it gone? Is it staying? Are the people who have these Brilliant devices in their home going to continue to be able to use them? There were lots of unanswered questions and it was concerning Because for me it felt like a company that had figured things out. But that's the other issue.

When it comes to smart home devices, you have to be devices, you have to be. There's like an extra level of um of of purchasing decision foo that you have to do, because it's not as simple as going to the store and buying an LED light bulb, uh, from I don't know Sylvania or something like that, and being able to you know, screw it in, have it work for the life of the product and then responsibly dispose of it. There's not extra stuff involved. But when it comes to the smart home, not only are you getting a product that you you know, you want to find a product that you like. You want to find a product that looks good in your home. You want to find a product that works, but you also want to find a product that you like. You want to find a product that looks good in your home. You want to find a product that works, but you also want to find a product that has lasting power, that has staying power, that's going to stick around, know if the company that makes the device and in many cases runs the servers that are required for these devices is going to stick around in the long term. And so investing in that stuff is not easy. It is. It's a hard choice to make and it, I think, is particularly difficult and kind of upsetting when it comes to things that are done very well.

I can remember a company that made a kind of aftermarket backup camera and it was a little license plate frame that you screwed over your license plate as you would with a frame, and it had a solar panel strip at the top and the webcam or the backup camera was built into it and it had really clever software that would help notify you when things were going. But the way that it worked is you would take the little puck that it came with, plug it into the I should say dongle, plug it into the OBD2 port and that would power this little device that would create a localized Wi-Fi network in your car that you would connect your phone to. Then the app would display the backup camera and give you information that you needed regarding you know what was when you were backing up. It was so well made. It was made by some folks who used to work at Apple. I think that is a common kind of if folks used to work at Apple, they definitely bring it up, and in this case, it really held true. It was beautifully designed. It worked exceptionally well.

Unfortunately, though, that company went out of business, and it relied heavily on server-side stuff, most importantly when it came to sort of authentication whenever you were first installing, and so it's just it doesn't do anything anymore and it just sits there. And when you have stuff that is controlling the devices in your home, when you have stuff that you've taken the time to install in your wall, you really want it to be more than just something that sits there. Well, here's the thing. According to Jennifer Patterson Toohey, as of yesterday, brilliant is quote back from the brink. Some private investors dum-dum-dum. Some private investors Almeda, strategic Investments and Cullinan Holdings purchased the company in late July we don't know how, for how much and they appointed the former VP of Business Development and Sales as the new CEO. Wow, scooterx, by the way, found the backup camera. I was talking about the Pearl backup camera, but Lisa Petrucci, who was the VP of business development and sales, is now the CEO of the company, and just last week the web store came back online, and just yesterday as we record this, on the 29th the company announced the acquisition. It is now called Brilliant NextGen and the customer care center is back.

The company is apparently going to be able to purchase or other customers will be able to purchase devices, and the company is going to kind of revamp things, but Trucci says, and I quote going forward, brilliant will cease direct to consumer sales everywhere other than their website, so you could get it from Amazon, you could get it from Costco, you could get it from Best Buy. That's not how the company's doing it. Going forward, you'll need to buy the products from the website. They want to, though and this is where things are different they want to sell to professional builders, developers and integrators. So that is because the investors who have invested in the company are working on single-family communities, multi-family buildings, and so that is why they want to use these products for that, if you can imagine a new company that is available to provide sort of from the ground, from the get-go, integrations. Now that might be the case, but there will still be some integrations and focus for the current set of consumers. According to Petrucci, they are going to continue to evolve integrations so that you can access more of the devices in your home, and it does work with a lot of products, but you know they want to do more.

Now. The executive who used to be in charge of Brilliant is no longer an executive but is now an advisor says that they are pretty pumped about the future for Brilliant. So apparently a lot of the team is still sticking around and it will continue to be something that works. Because there's the concern, right when you have private equity that comes along and buys something. We've seen how that can impact things. And so he says quote from the perspective of our customers and partners, it will not have any impact that Brilliant is owned primarily by private equity investors rather than venture capitalists. We'll see whether venture capitalists or private equity investors are the right choice for the company going forward.

But I think that this is where I put out a little bit of caution to say that in this case, you just have to be mindful of what company you're choosing to invest in, and I mean that on a personal level, from an average consumer level, you know, do your due diligence about. How long has this company been around? Has this company faced security breaches in the past and how did they overcome those security breaches? Because many a company is going to face security breaches, but it's how they respond to those that matters. You know how many people own these devices? If you can find that out, what is the support structure for the device if it goes out?

There are lots of questions you have to ask yourself when it comes to smart home purchases, and as cool this is kind of me talking to myself as cool and shiny and awesome an idea as may come across, it doesn't necessarily mean that that's the right product to purchase and invest in for your home. Now, I do have a few brilliant devices. I have yet to install them in my new home, but I am considering doing so simply for the matter of keeping an eye on how things are going, how they might change over time, because this company was kind of a darling among those of us who do a lot of, you know, smart home control in our own homes. And again, with such a great idea, it is upsetting to see a company nearly die and then to kind of come back, but come back in a way that, for many of us, we are worried about the shaky foundation of private equity. So that's something to bear in mind.

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0:16:56 - Mikah Sargent
All right, we are back from the break, and that means it's time for our next interview. Microsoft has been touting the new way of things, has been touting the new way of things the co-pilot future, and part of that co-pilot future involves some PCs that are purpose-built to take advantage of some of these new technologies. Joining us today to talk about his review of one of these PCs is Engadget's own, Devindra Hardawar. Welcome back to the show, devendra. Hello, thanks for having me back. Yeah, so great to get you here. So let's kick things off. I was hoping that you could start by telling us about the Dell XPS 13. What makes it different from the? It's kind of built into the question, I'm realizing from the previous Intel-based. Yeah, those Intel XPS 13s.

0:17:49 - Devindra Hardawar
This is a very confusing time. So the one I just reviewed those Intel XPS 13s this is a very confusing time. So the one I just reviewed was the Dell XPS 13 Copilot Plus model. That's the one that has Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X Elite processor in it, and this whole thing, as you mentioned, came about because of Microsoft's Copilot Plus initiative that started with the Surface Pro and Surface Laptop and now we're seeing other devices that kind of fit into this mold and that's kind of the big thing. It's a new chip. It's the same exact machine I reviewed several months ago with the Intel chip. The big difference is that the Qualcomm chip is an ARM-based platform, so it's not x86 and x64 like Intel and AMD's chips. That means app compatibility issues. That's something I encountered when I reviewed the, the new surface pro. Um, it's better than it used to be.

Windows on arm used to be a complete disaster and pretty much they were functionally useless until the last surface pro came out. So, yeah, you can run most of the apps you're used to. Some apps will run in emulated mode, similar to Apple's Rosetta 2. You know older Mac software, same deal. I will say Microsoft's emulation is not as good as Apple's, so I noticed some slowdown in things like Evernote, but beyond that it's actually pretty good. The Intel chip, meanwhile, can run everything. It's just not as efficient, it's not as low power as these Qualcomm chips. Uh, also notable, the qualcomm chips can't run, uh, some games because they're not compatible with arm. So, um, thinking of games like fortnite, um that use, uh, you know, privacy tools or anti-piracy tools, and those just aren't compatible on arm at all. They just will not launch. So you're sacrificing a lot for having a lower power system with better battery life at least we're going to talk about battery life. But that's supposed to be one of the big draws for an ARM system.

0:19:41 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, now, speaking of performance overall, because I think, when it comes to, because I think when it comes to, I mean I feel like I see this a lot on the PC side. For sure is the draw of talking about the specs and talking about the capabilities there, and so I'm kind of curious, because there are pros and cons for going with an ARM-based architecture. Where does it soar, where does it fall?

0:20:10 - Devindra Hardawar
I think where it soars right now it's mainly like a conceptual thing, like hey, windows on ARM finally works, just like what Apple did with its M series chips four years ago. This is proof that you can have an ARM based Windows laptop. Do most of the things you can do that's kind of cool. Do most of the things you can do? That's kind of cool. But beyond that, though, it's mainly it's the fact that ARM chips are mobile based and they should be getting better battery life, and I did eventually see that on this XPS. It took some software updates to do that. Initially, when I ran battery tests, I got around like seven and a half hours, did a few updates, just reset the system a couple of times and that skyrocketed to 17 and a half hours. So that's kind of the big draw there. You're getting a lower power system with less fan noise. That can, you know, just last a lot longer.

There are some benchmarks, like I believe Geekbench worked out much better, for yeah, geekbench is higher on the Snapdragon chips compared to the old Intel ones, but it's mainly benchmark stuff and I do think functionally a lot of people will notice the actual slowdown for emulated apps like Evernote more than you would with whatever speed games you get for a benchmark. So it's kind of just like an even trade off right now. It's just kind of amazing this computer exists. It's amazing that we have ARM chips that can actually do a off right now. It's just kind of amazing this computer exists. It's amazing that we have ARM chips that can actually do a decent job. Now I felt that way when I read the Surface Pro. Still feel that here you just have to be aware of the limitations and for consumers it's super confusing. So you gotta be really careful about which one you end up buying.

0:21:44 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, interesting, yeah, that we'll have to touch even more on towards the end of this. I want to talk to you about the AI capabilities, because, of course, this is the big buzzword. This is the thing that people are kind of paying attention to. What does it offer in terms of AI features? And then can an Intel device offer any AI features itself? Like what sets this apart?

0:22:12 - Devindra Hardawar
I mean it's clearly the big difference is that this has a much more powerful NPU or neural processing unit compared to the last Intel chip. So those Intel chips were still AI chips but they had like an NPU that topped out around 10 TOPS or teraops per second. That's kind of the measurement we use for NPUs, and the Qualcomm chips reach 45 TOPS or teraops per second. That's kind of the measurement we use for MPUs, and the Qualcomm chips reach 45 TOPS. And I think that's for some things. If you're running things like generative image processing on your computer or other things that take advantage of the actual AI chip, that could be better. Right now it's all kind of theoretical. There are a couple features within Windows, within Paint, where you can, you know, draw a doodle and type in some text and it'll give you an AI image. That works here. It didn't work as well on the Dell, actually. I think a lot of those were waiting on updates. The big big AI feature for Microsoft is recall. That will only work on Copilot plus computers. Recall has not launched. Recall has even been taken offline for Windows Insider. So it's all kind of theoretical right now.

You know, ideally if you have a system with a really powerful MPU, you are ready for AI powered features down the line, but there really aren't that many right now. There's some stuff within the photos app where you can also generate some images. I'm personally not super sold on that feature at all. Like it's cool that I can make any image up here. What do I do with it? You know how useful is this to me in my life, other than plugging images into PowerPoint or something. Uh, I think like we're still waiting on a lot of that Stuff like Windows Studio Effects, which are the background. You can blur your background or do some tweaks to your video quality. That worked on the old Intel systems. That'll work on these Qualcomm systems too, and that's more useful because everybody does video chats all the time. But you don't need a brand new Copilot Plus PC for that.

Yeah, so we're kind of just sitting and waiting for AI to be a thing. So we're kind of just sitting and waiting for AI to be a thing. It's at least more of a thing than last year, when Microsoft was putting co-pilot features in all their applications. I wasn't fully sold on it last year. I'm still not really sold on it, but we'll see.

0:24:27 - Mikah Sargent
We'll see if Recall is actually useful or just a big privacy nightmare for them. Now you did talk about this a bit at the beginning, but I know compatibility is front of mind for people. In fact, we just got some calls recently on Ask the Tech Guys where people had asked you know, hey, I've got this new machine. I heard you all talking about it. I was really excited. I'm getting great battery life, this, that and the other. I tried to run this program and it's not working. Can you talk about how you foresee compatibility issues changing over time? What Microsoft, what Dell have said about how compatibility issues might be relieved? Like what should people wait until their program is read? Like what's the? What's your advice?

0:25:08 - Devindra Hardawar
This is a big transition point. I think that's where we are right now, and both Microsoft and Dell and a lot of people are just throwing up their hands, being like it's up to the developers to get their legacy Windows apps updated to either be native, so it'll work on. If it's a native Windows app, then it'll work on ARM natively. It won't have any problems. If they have an app that's not launching at all, that's up to the developer to fix, and Microsoft, dell, others can't really do much about that. I think I was at Build Microsoft's developer conference. They have talked a lot about getting devs engaged in updating their apps. That's really all they can do, and this really shows the difference between Microsoft and Apple when it comes to doing a full, you know, pc-wide chip change. Apple can get all their stuff done pretty quickly and force all the developers to kind of toe the line. But Apple also did a good job of introducing a better emulator that actually ran pretty quickly. That helped older apps speed up too. So maybe Microsoft could make its emulator faster down the line too.

If you have a legacy app that just refuses to launch on one of these systems, really all you can do is wait, ping the developer, hope and pray. Waiting is not a bad option. I would not jump headfirst into these things, especially if you need a new computer right away, and also, waiting means you can see what other alternatives come about. So AMD just announced their most recent AI PC chips, which have really powerful MPUs. We're expecting Intel soon, I think at IFA, maybe even next week we're probably going to, I think, like there was an event announced, so we're going to hear more from Intel soon, and then it gets really confusing. And then it's like you have another x86 chip that is fully compatible with everything and also has the powerful MPU. Maybe it won't get 17 and a half hours of battery life, but I think most people would rather. Okay, I'll get 12 hours of battery life maybe and not have to worry about these app compatibility issues. Waiting is always a good option, especially in a transition period like this.

0:27:08 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely. Yeah, Don't forget that, folks. It is an option. Now let's get into it, because originally, you know, in your review you talked about some battery life stuff. I don't want to spoil it here. I'd love to hear, kind of what your experience was in terms of battery life and if things have changed. Christian McDonaldson.

0:27:30 - Devindra Hardawar
Oh yeah, they've changed quite a bit. So typically we run PCMark's battery bench test I think it's the applications battery test, which mainly focuses on Microsoft Office. So it's supposed to feel like a real-world usage test, not just draining battery while you're playing a video or something. And initially I got around seven and a half hours battery life, which was really surprising because the older Intel chip was easily getting like 12 and a half hours or more. So I ran it several times. I kept getting that result.

I published the review and eventually Dell pinged me. I was like, hey, you should probably just keep updating the software. And I thought I did that. I thought I did all the Windows updates. I did the Dell software update app, which is this sort of like hidden thing which you have to do on Dell systems to make sure you have all the firmware and everything. And after I did that a couple of times, after we published the review, then the battery life shot back up.

So this is just the sort of stuff you'll see on early hardware like this. You know the software is not fully optimized. It could be you're running. When you buy a system. It may ship with something that is much older and may kill the battery more than just applying your Windows updates or whatever. So that's just the case. So now I'm seeing 17 and a half hours of battery life. I'm in the process of running that a second time to double check, but it looks like we're kind of getting there. So yeah, battery life not an issue, but do your updates people. And I wish it was easier for consumers to do that too, because Dell does not make their software update tool super obvious.

0:29:00 - Mikah Sargent
And then, speaking of kind of, you know, the unboxing experience, the overall design? How does it stack up in comparison to Dell XPSs XPSes of the past?

0:29:13 - Devindra Hardawar
Yeah, the new XPSs. So this is the new ultra-modern design that Dell is doing. This first came about with the XPS 13 Plus a couple of years ago and that was notable for being a computer with basically an invisible trackpad. It's fully blended into the wrist rest, so that was a cool design choice. There's no function row of keys above the keyboard. It is instead a capacitive array of buttons that can switch between function and feature buttons when you hit a key or something, but they're not pressable. There's no haptics, so just kind of things that light up. It's a really clean looking design and I was excited to test it out early on. A really clean looking design and I was excited to test it out early on and I learned that a lot of aspects of this design just aren't super functional.

Uh, that invisible track pad means uh, it is sometimes easy to lose, like where the edge is between the end of a track pad and the beginning and if you're at the the very edge of the track pad, you could just be tapping and just tapping normal wrist wrist pad part and it's frustrating because the usability just is not there.

That function row, I think I genuinely hate it because you can't really touch type. You can't remember where they are, you don't have a feel for the buttons, and you bring these computers out to direct sunlight or very bright indoor light and those keys just disappear because it's just like a really thin layer with lights popping up. Um, I need to be able to see my function. I need to be able to, like increase the brightness of the keyboard or mute the computer, and if I have to, like cut my hand over the computer to even see those things, that is a design fail, I'd say so I'm not a big fan of that. Um, the keyboard is interesting too. It's fully edge to edge, so it reaches the very ends of the computer and the key caps are really wide. But it's also, it feels, a little different than a typical laptop, so it may take some retraining if you're used to like older Dell keyboards or a MacBook or something too. So they did a couple of things that look really cool but I do think hurt the overall experience.

0:31:09 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, Got it. And then, um, last but not least, based on your review, um, who do you think the laptop is best suited for? And then this is where you can talk about confusion. You know who who should be cautious about making this purchase.

0:31:25 - Devindra Hardawar
I think everybody should be cautious about making this purchase. That's that's it, and I was. This goes back, I think, a lot of confusion that Microsoft itself introduced a couple years ago when they introduced the Surface Pro 9 and then the Surface Pro 9 with 5G, and that 5G model had a Qualcomm chip, and that was before Microsoft fixed a lot of the emulation issues. So that was a really terrible experience, and they were selling both of these devices as Surface Pros and the Qualcomm. One cost more and did less, and I was really, really just annoyed by that whole experience.

This isn't as nearly as bad, but you have to be careful when you're on the Dell site. Make sure you buy these things directly from Dell, so make sure you are looking at the correct chip set. Make sure you're looking at an Intel chip, not a Qualcomm chip, depending on what you're going for. If you specifically want the Qualcomm hardware, go for it, but just be aware that you are literally a guinea pig for this hardware and for the Windows. On ARM experience, keep an eye on Dell's pricing.

Something I just noticed is that, as of Monday, the Qualcomm version of the XPS 13 became $300 cheaper compared to just last Friday. So Dell dynamically changes prices too, so maybe that may factor into your decision. I think for a lot of people, if you run older apps, if you're worried about compatibility, if you just want to be able to play any light game that pops up on Steam or something, you want the Intel chip, or at least you want something x86. So I'd avoid the Qualcomm, unless you want to be adventurous and you really want 17 and a half hours of battery life.

0:32:55 - Mikah Sargent
Well, Devindra, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us today to talk through this new Dell XPS 13. Of course, folks can head over to engadgetcom to check out the work that you're doing. Where else should they go to keep up with what you've got?

0:33:10 - Devindra Hardawar
going. Yeah, you can find me on Twitter at @Devindra, and I'm also at the same handle on Blue Sky and Mastodon and Threads too, but I don't do Threads that much. And yeah, I do a movie podcast, the Filmcast, at thefilmcast.com.

0:33:23 - Mikah Sargent
Awesome. Thank you so much. We appreciate it. Thanks Bye, guys. All righty, we are going to take a quick break before we come back with another interview. This time, I will be talking to Carolyn O'Donovan of the Washington Post about Amazon's plans for its virtual assistant.

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All righty. Folks. We are back from the break and now it is time for that second interview I promised you, this time about Amazon's plans for its virtual assistant. Joining us to talk about it is the Washington Post's Caroline O'Donovan. Welcome back to the show, Caroline.

0:36:53 - Caroline O'Donovan
Thanks for having me.

0:36:55 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah. So I am very excited because we have heard rumor upon rumor upon rumor about Amazon's plans to kind of revamp as I call it, a-l-e-x-a, so that it doesn't get triggered by what you can say Amazon's virtual assistant. Whatever you want to say, but we've heard about Amazon's plans to revamp the virtual assistant for some time and it would appear that you've gotten some actual interesting details about it. So tell us what are the key features of the new AI powered virtual assistant that make it different from kind of its classical counterpart, and how can people expect that it would change their experience using these echo devices?

0:37:39 - Caroline O'Donovan
Is the A-L-E-X-A in the room with us right now?

0:37:44 - Mikah Sargent
You are okay to say it. We just kind of bleep it out afterward, we kind of no problem, I do.

0:37:50 - Caroline O'Donovan
also, I love that people are calling the original or vanilla, alexa, um, uh, classic, uh, which gives it a kind of like a retro preppy um vibe to me. Um, anyway, I think that in terms of the new version, which last we've heard is now supposed to be coming out in mid-october, which is a bit of a delay from like late sub, late summer, september, which was the original goal, which is fully a year, and now more than a year after they had announced the product was coming, I think one of the first things people are going to notice is that you have to pay for it if you want to use it. So that's going to be a big change. Classic will still be free to people who own a device, but this is going to be a new paid product. They're still talking about exactly how much that's going to cost or what the model of the subscription is going to be.

I think the most notable change will be one of vibes, in that the new right is going to kind of remember who you are. She's going to talk to you like a person. She's going to ask you questions about yourself and try to remember them and use the answers to inform future conversations. So they're using words like conversational, but also words like likable and charisma, which are different from how a voice assistant like a l**k operates today. Right, classic l**k is way more call and response response it's not scripted but, um, you're sort of having to use specific words and phrases to activate it. Um, and it's responding with sort of pre-planned responses based on what you're asking and the.

The new technology is going to sort of totally allegedly change, um, how you interact with the device and what it feels like to to own one and to talk to it. And then inside of that, there are specific features that we get into in the piece a little bit that people have been working on. So that could be anything from an AI summarized news briefing every day to a feature that helps you find recipes. So, if you go back to what I was saying before about it being a little bit more personable, the documents that I obtained sort of suggest that you'll have a setup conversation with your ALEXA the new version they haven't come up with or they haven't decided on an official name for it yet and maybe it'll ask you know who's in your family and do they have dietary restrictions? And then the device will remember that information and then later on, when you're saying oh, I don't know what to make for dinner tonight, can you help me? It will theoretically remember that information and help guide you towards recipes that suit your family.

0:40:29 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, so then let's. I actually am kind of curious when it came to learning about these new skills or this potential for when it would launch and what would be included. Is this just a simple sources familiar with the matter situation? But what did you comfortably share in the piece about how the Washington Post discovered a little bit more about the plans for its virtual assistant?

0:41:02 - Caroline O'Donovan
Yeah, I mean we didn't share too much, but the report is based on documents that describe planning, documents that describe, you know, what goes into the launch of a product. So obviously, as the launch gets closer, you know more information needs to be shared amongst all the different parts of a company when you're preparing to release something new into the world, which it seems like they are finally, maybe ready to do.

0:41:26 - Mikah Sargent
Definitely so. Let's talk about then releasing this into the world. How is this going to be positioned in terms of like? Do we know? Is Amazon going to say, you know what? Let's say, you get a new Echo device and, by default, you upon, you know, powering it up, you get the AI version and then, a month after that, you get to choose okay, I'm done with the free trial, I got to switch back to classic or I have to continue to pay for this. I know that there's talk of a subscription model. Do we know how much that might potentially cost? Has Amazon, have you discovered anything about Amazon's plans for how it will kind of push this forward and introduce it?

0:42:20 - Caroline O'Donovan
I would say that you know, based on my reporting, it looks like people inside Amazon this week are still debating a few specific things. One is what the public facing name will be. It has been referred to as Remarkable Alexa, and inside the company it's called Project Banyan, but the actual go-to-market name I don't think has been fully decided yet or hadn't been when the article came out the price and how the subscription is going to be structured, so whether it would be monthly or annual or quarterly, something like that, those final details are still being ironed out.

0:43:00 - Mikah Sargent
Got it, Got it. Now, when it comes to this, you mentioned that Amazon has kind of been slower than other competitors in launching these AI products, these AI projects, even these AI products, these AI projects. Even We've seen companies like Microsoft really step out there with, especially with its partnership with OpenAI. Apple now has joined the fray. We have seen Google, of course, really stepping forward, and people are looking to Amazon going and where are you in this whole thing? So what do you think kind of led to this timeline? The fact that it seems to have been that seems to have taken longer for the company. And does it? Does it? Is it going to be able to compete in a world where the other companies already have their AI products on the market?

0:43:51 - Caroline O'Donovan
For sure. I think this has been a really big question of the last year for everyone and a little bit of a frustration point for sure. I think this has been a really big question of the last year for everyone and a little bit of a frustration point for Amazon. I think the answer to can Amazon compete? Is pretty obvious, right? That's sort of their middle name, that's what they love to do, so I think they're definitely still in the mix here. I think that there's a couple different reasons why that happened.

Amazon's you know, pre pre existing, pre pre chat, gpt, pre generator, gen, generative, ai, boom, consumer facing assistant product was built on a completely different technology, right, like what I was talking about before, something that's a little bit more, if not scripted, a little bit more structured. It's not conversational, it's not creating responses from scratch, it's not intelligent, right, when it's responding to you and completely, it's not just a simple upgrade like switch of a button to upgrade the system that Alexa was built on to the thing that they're building now, right? So it's a little bit more complicated than you might imagine to just turn Alexa, which feels like something that you're talking to, into a chat GPT type technology, right, which it also feels like you're just talking to. On your end it's similar, but on the other end it's almost like a non-comparable technology. So it really is. It's a total revamp of what lies beneath the surface there. There's also the head of Amazon's devices division left. Within the last year the division had layoffs, so I think there's been a lot of changes within the devices division itself that have impacted how much work they're able to do over there.

That's the division that makes Alexa, and then I think another big problem for them is that the AI experts at Amazon for the most part sit within Amazon Web Services, within the cloud computing division, and reports from journalists who are not myself have made it seem like they've gone sort of back and forth trying to figure out how to blend all of those teams together. And you know there is a report by Jason Del Rey earlier this month about, you know, some of Amazon's core cultural tenants and how they've been challenged in the last year, and one of those tenants is that right now, teams should be larger than it would take to feed with two pizzas. But that can also mean that you kind of have a fractured workplace a little bit, and I think when you are needing to make these really fast shifts to catch up with your competitors, which isn't a position that Amazon has often found itself in, it seems like. Maybe one possibility is that it's been a little tricky to figure out how to get the people on Alexa and the devices division, who are doing stuff around machine learning and conversational technology, to sort of meld with the people who are doing some of the AI work within the cloud computing division. Because, you know, there's it's.

I think people, especially people who are consumers, read consumer technology news and report consumer technology news, find it very easy to look at Alexa and say, oh, amazon totally missed the boat, but they have a. They have a second, much larger AI business right Inside of the cloud computing division. That's maybe not as easy to talk about, but it is, you know, a whole other world of expertise that they can build off of. So I think a lot of people would say you know, there was the AI boom and now people are asking if that bubble is going to burst and how are people going to make money off of this? There's definitely what the PR geniuses at Amazon would tell you is that this is the very, very, very, very, very beginning of a much longer story about AI, so I think we'll definitely see what happens, but for sure, people have been waiting for this for a long time and I think we'll be eager to find its faults and press on its soft spots when it finally does launch.

Also, in response to your earlier question on the pricing, I also meant to say the Wall Street Journal had previously reported that the devices division and you know that people who actually build the Echoes and et cetera have lost a ton of money because the devices are relatively cheap and that was done on purpose to get them into everyone's home. Right, it's very Amazon low price point, get everyone addicted and then gradually ratchet up the cost with different subscriptions and additional features. And I think my colleague Shira at the Washington Post had a great story that followed mine this week about how companies like Amazon are turning to subscriptions like this to try to recover or recoup some of the losses that they've seen over the years, which you know. It's kind of a story about, I guess, growing up.

0:48:21 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, absolutely Wow. Yeah, one of the features that you mentioned in the piece is one that stood out to me and, I think, to others. It's a smart briefing feature. Talk briefly about it Letting people consume news and give them the ability to kind of get summaries of the stuff that's going on. How I don't know how to put this, I don't know how to put this Some companies, I think, would avoid having anything to do with the news, given that October, as the rumored date for the launch of the new ALAXA, is right before the election, and you know, apple, for example, is a company that doesn't like to touch any of that kind of stuff with a 10-foot pole, in the hopes of avoiding any kind of issues there.

So what are your thoughts, I guess? Do you think that it's going to be something that people are using regularly? Do you think that this is a dangerous place for Amazon to kind of step into? A dangerous place for Amazon to kind of step into? Or, given that it's taken so long for the company to release its version, maybe, just maybe, it's been working on this for a while and is really trying to narrow in on something that avoids any issues.

0:49:49 - Caroline O'Donovan
You know, that's one of the elements of this story that I really wish that someone at Amazon would have answered my questions about, because I's so easy to make a mistake and the cost can be so high and, frankly, the press so bad that you know why. Why take the risk? And they've just decided to not have the chatbots engage in specific questions about global elections, and we've sort of seen that from the beginning, to a certain extent, right Like by limiting the timeframe of certain news-based questions, companies have tried to avoid some of the natural pitfalls while keeping people engaged with their products. So I wish that I knew why Amazon seemed to be proceeding with this so close to the election. Maybe in practice, you know it might launch, but then people have to sign up for it and people have to pay for it. Maybe they're not envisioning, you know, a huge, massive number of people using it in those few days leading up to the election.

I do understand why a news product is compelling in this case.

The news is something that happens every day and I think it is a good driver of people returning to a technology on a daily basis, and that's kind of what the documents that I was looking at said is that this is a way news and daily news updates is a way to get people returning to a technology all the time, right.

And if you can build a news product that people want to listen to every single morning, well that gets them back into the world of the device and using it every day.

And in an instance where you're now charging people to use the service, right, that makes even more sense how it will actually all play out whether you know whether some people are going to be hearing smart briefings by AI A-L-E-X-A on the morning of when the election results are announced. You know, I don't know if that's actually how it will play out, but it is something that I had questions about just because of the struggles that we've seen in the past and the decisions made by other companies. And obviously, you know, throughout the last two years, we've seen people, like I said before, testing and pushing the buttons on and looking for the weak points on all manner of different generative AI technologies, and it's not that hard to find them right. They can hallucinate and they make mistakes, etc. So it's something that I would personally be careful with in such a crucial news moment and I guess we'll just have to see how it plays out, because Amazon didn't want to discuss it further with me to see Amazon, with this new way of doing things, focus heavily on shopping-related features.

0:52:57 - Mikah Sargent
That is, as you talked about, kind of the method there with Amazon get it into the home and then try different ways of getting them to engage and interact and buy our different products and services. Do you think that you know this aspect of Amazon's new ALEXA is going to be any more impactful than what we have now, which is on, for example, echo Show devices constantly popping up and showing me this is a product that you should buy and I'm going well, I just bought that exact same thing and so I don't need another one. That's just like it. I already have the one that I ordered and all of the kind of odd things that it does to try to get you to interact. Maybe it becomes more convincing when the AI is more conversational and suddenly you know you ask it a question about what's the weather like tomorrow and next thing you know you've purchased a new pair of galoshes that keep your feet nice and dry outside for the rain.

0:54:06 - Caroline O'Donovan
Yeah, that reminds me of that one tweet. Right, that was like Amazon's advertising algorithm seems to think that my recent purchase of a toaster wasn't because I needed a toaster but because I'm embarking on the hobby of collecting toasters Something along those lines. That's perfect. That is what it seems like. It's a total ripoff of someone else's joke. It's not my joke, but I still think about it and still think it was funny.

I mean, first of all, if you read the comments on the story that we published, you can see very clearly that users are frustrated by how many Amazon ads they are encountering in their lives. Amazon ads are now playing more frequently on Prime Video and they seem to be popping up on ALEXA all the time, and people seem quite frustrated by it. So that's an existential matter for the company to consider. I will say some of the shopping features that I saw described in these documents seemed pretty compelling. You could tell that you're in the market for headphones that are not so broken, and she will monitor prices for you starting at that point, and if there's a sudden drop in the price point of an item that you're looking for, she'll alert you and tell you to go buy them at that time, right, that seems like a totally smart, consumer friendly, interesting feature and one that, according to the documents you know, they're pretty excited about and think that people will love.

So it's not just, you know, trying to make you buy things that you don't need, and a lot of it seemed to be around, I don't know, using your ring camera to show if your packages are on your porch yet. Did it come yet? Okay, it came and I want to return it. And you're talking to it saying, oh, does it come in any other colors? Stuff like that. It's not just advertising new products to you, but it does seem like people don't want to be advertised to so much, or at least they would like to be advertised to better Um, and I think we'll just have to wait and see if the new um conversational, charismatic, likable is going to deliver that experience.

0:56:10 - Mikah Sargent
The last thing I'll ask you is Amazon for a long time kind of received the brunt of the negative press and attention for privacy concerns. Whether you know it was deserved or not, that did happen and the company, over time, in response to that regular criticism, started to, in every product launch and every introduction of a new thing, make privacy one of the tenets and an important aspect of what it was talking about and explain how it planned on protecting your privacy and showing you where you could go to make updates to your privacy settings, et cetera, et cetera. In the documentation or in any research that you did about this was there any? Was it? Was anything made clear about what Amazon is doing, plans on doing, plans on talking about, in terms of A just actual privacy, but also B talking to the potential consumers about how privacy comes into play with this new generative AI system?

0:57:34 - Caroline O'Donovan
Yeah, first, I would say that the documents are not marketing documents, so in terms of talking about messaging or talking about how we talk about things, that's not something I saw or know about. I would say that, though, in the list of features that I did see in these documents, yeah, I mean, some of them were about privacy and some of them were about security and safety and how to port those things over from classical exit to the new experience, and the place where I noticed that coming up the most is probably in the kids products. There. I think people generally know that kids kind of like Alexa, maybe even more than adults do. They kind of enjoy making her do stuff and asking her silly questions, and so there's a section that talks about the features that we'll be launching for kids, which is sort of something I would like to dig into more.

Frankly, I don't think we know enough about what it means for children to be interacting with an artificial intelligence, and do they understand what it is?

And you know, are we I'm not accusing Amazon at all of, like you know, handing over our children's education to this device, but I'm just like curious. I don't know that much about it and I'm intrigued to know that that is a major function of what they think might appeal to customers as sort of an educational entertainment device for kids. But in the section that described that and described the various questions kids could ask and how you wanted to have them answered, et cetera, there was a pretty chunky section about privacy and how you wanted to have them answered, et cetera. There was a pretty, a pretty chunky section about privacy and how you would ensure that the person you were talking to was a kid and how you would treat them and how you would keep their information separate from the rest of them and create a separate experience. So I saw it reflected there. You know, I don't know what that will mean necessarily in the long run, but it was definitely present.

0:59:32 - Mikah Sargent
That's good to hear. Well, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to give us an understanding of the potential launch of this new version of Amazon's virtual assistant, potentially in October. We will definitely be keeping our eye out for that true launch. And, of course, folks can head over to WashingtonPostcom to check out the work that you do. Is there anywhere else? They should go to follow along and keep up with what you are putting out there.

1:00:02 - Caroline O'Donovan
Smoke signals only for me.

1:00:05 - Mikah Sargent
I don't blame you, washingtonpostcom. Caroline, I want to thank you so much again for being here and hopefully we'll see you again soon.

1:00:15 - Caroline O'Donovan
Thank you, and thank you for your patience with me.

1:00:18 - Mikah Sargent
All righty folks Up. Next we've got one more story of the week, but first I want to take a quick break to tell you about Club Twit at twit.tv/clubtwit. If you head to twit.tv/clubtwit $7 a month is what you pay to gain access to some pretty awesome club twit benefits. First and foremost, you gain access to the to ad-free versions of all of our shows. Ooh. You also gain access to the twit plus bonus feed that has extra stuff you won't find anywhere else behind the show, behind the scenes, behind the behind the scenes before the show. After the show, special Club Twit events get published there, as well as access to the Discord server, a fun place to go to chat with your fellow Club Twit members and those of us here at Twit. We'd love to see you in the Club Discord. And you can also get the video versions of our Club Twitch shows. So my shows Hands on Mac and iOS Today are there. The Untitled Linux show. If you want to see the video, then you should join the club. All of that plus so much more. ttwit.tv/clubtwit, just seven bucks a month, and we appreciate you for joining.

All right, the last story of the week that I have for you is about an upcoming change, or a potential change, in California, as the California State Assembly has passed SB 1047. This is the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act. This act is all about regulations for artificial intelligence in the US and, as the Verge points out the Verge's Wes Davis points out this is one of the first significant regulations of artificial intelligence in the US. It tends to be that when California passes legislation that is big legislation, the rest of the country takes note and, in some cases, the federal government will follow suit, because, given California's size and its population, it's almost akin to watching a small country make a change to legislation and seeing how it plays out in that place. One of the biggest bummers that I have found for leaving the state of California is losing the protection of California's Consumer Privacy Protection Act. It is a great bit of legislation that provides you more privacy and security for your online activity than you would find in other places, including the do not sell my information portion, which is just a thing that says, hey, you can't take what I have given you and sell it to other companies, just so they can contact me as well. Being in the state of California. You have that right Now.

That aside, what this bill does is, it basically makes it so that companies that, of course, are working in California, which many of the artificial intelligence companies are, have to put in place a number of precautions. Okay, so it's not the sense that you know. It's making huge changes to the way that AI is working. It's kind of a future-looking bit of legislation in many ways, and it's all about putting protections in place that have to do with the creation of these more sophisticated models. So, for example, needing to include what amounts to a kill switch in the models an artificial general intelligence were to run rampant. It's kind of wild hearing about this, because it takes you into sci-fi territory that lawmakers are genuinely concerned about this.

If an AI were to run rampant or, more importantly, I think, if a quote-unquote bad actor were to gain access to the AI and use it in nefarious means, having a kill switch built in is very important Making sure that it is protected so that it can't be trained in a very unsafe way afterward. So, basically, right now we talk about jailbreaking artificial intelligence models and you go to Chat. You go to chat GPT and you try to get it to do things that exist outside of its programming and its guardrails. This is making sure that these models have protections in place that don't let particularly unsafe jailbreaking occur, and then also making sure that there are procedures in place to evaluate quote whether a model is at risk of causing or enabling a critical harm. This is really again about kind of catastrophic AI risks, as opposed to, you know, little subtle changes to little subtle changes in guardrails. For this, the state attorney general would have the power to sue if developers are not compliant, and so if, for example, an AI system was used to take over the power grid, then the state attorney general would be able to sue developers who did not install things like the kill switch or other means to protect the AI from being used in nefarious means. Third-party auditors are required to be hired by those developers to actually check the safety practices and also make sure that whistleblowers are protected as part of the bill. So, again, this is not a piecemeal sort of you know. You can't make your AI do this, and your AI needs to have these little dials in place that make it so that it can't talk about politics. It's not that kind of stuff that AI right now the AI industry right now is dealing with on its own. This is specifically again about these kind of big risks.

The concern that some companies are having is that they say the bill is a little bit too vague, a little bit too ambiguous, and so there's potential that then those dials and switches could be added on later, that there'd be that ability to clamp down on things later, even if that's not part of it now, and so that is something that you know has an impact, so to speak, of who is for the bill, who is against the bill, whether that's going to be kind of what happens next, because this has only gone through the Assembly. It still needs to pass and then go to the governor to be signed by September I think it's September 30th then these measures would be put into place. But given where things stand right now in terms of most of the kind of legislative side being on board with it but unfortunately most of the AI companies not being on board with it and potentially talking about, you know, if this goes through, it could mean that we leave California. I don't know where this bill is going to go from here, but we will keep our eye, as we always do on the state of things and whether or not this bill passes in California. Again, on my initial kind of reading and understanding of SB 1047, it doesn't seem like it's all that, and so this could mean that they use it to impose more restrictions on us later, and that's always a fair concern, folks. That is going to bring us to the end of this episode of Tech News Weekly.

I want to thank you all for tuning in this week and joining me for the show. If you would like to subscribe to the show, you can do that by going to twit.tv/tnw. That's where you go to get the show in audio and video formats. If you want all of our shows ad-free, remember Club Twit twit.tv/clubtwit just seven bucks a month. We'd love to have you join us there.

If you'd like to follow me online, I'm at Micah Sargent on many social media network where you can add to chihuahua.coffee. That's C-H-I-H-U-A-H-U-A.coffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. I would love it if you checked out Hands on Mac and iOS today later today as part of the club, and, of course, you can catch Hands on Tech, the show that I do on Sundays where I am answering questions and also doing product reviews. I've had a lot of fun thus far. We'll keep going and keep making that show awesome. So thank you to those of you who have subscribed or who have continued to remain subscribed, and everything in between. You are appreciated Until next time. I have been, and will continue to be, Mikah Sargent. Thank you for tuning in. Bye-bye.