Joshua Topolsky and Rani Molla are back to discuss what’s happening right now — and next — in the world of technology, culture, business, and the internet. This week:
We talk about the best tech of 2024...
...but spend a lot more time talking about the worst,
and Josh makes a toll-free call to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The first big release from Meta’s Superintelligence Labs is here — a new multimodal reasoning model called Muse Spark. Shares of Meta spiked on the news, extending gains it had made earlier in the day on optimism over the ceasefire with Iran. The stock was recently up about 9%.
Meta has been playing catch-up in the generative-AI race, watching startups OpenAI and Anthropic leap ahead with ever more capable models, after the bungled rollout of its Llama 4 models.
After Meta went on an expensive hiring spree assembling an all-star team of AI researchers, investors have been eager to see the fruits of this team, and to see if the accompanying billions of capex dedicated to power it — $115 billion to $135 billion this year alone — were worth it.
Meta says the release is the first in a Muse family of models, which it says it will scale up over time. The benchmark scores released by Meta show Spark to be capable, with solid scores among popular benchmarks, but not any huge leaps over leading models from Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, and Google.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on Threads:
“Looking ahead, we plan to release increasingly advanced models that push the frontier of intelligence and capabilities, including new open source models. We are building products that don’t just answer your questions but act as agents that do things for you. I am optimistic that this will support a wave of creativity, entrepreneurship, growth, and health. I’m looking forward to sharing more soon.”
After Meta went on an expensive hiring spree assembling an all-star team of AI researchers, investors have been eager to see the fruits of this team, and to see if the accompanying billions of capex dedicated to power it — $115 billion to $135 billion this year alone — were worth it.
Meta says the release is the first in a Muse family of models, which it says it will scale up over time. The benchmark scores released by Meta show Spark to be capable, with solid scores among popular benchmarks, but not any huge leaps over leading models from Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, and Google.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on Threads:
“Looking ahead, we plan to release increasingly advanced models that push the frontier of intelligence and capabilities, including new open source models. We are building products that don’t just answer your questions but act as agents that do things for you. I am optimistic that this will support a wave of creativity, entrepreneurship, growth, and health. I’m looking forward to sharing more soon.”
Alibaba announced a new data center in southern China, in a partnership with China Telecom powered by its own Zhenwu chips. The new data center will contain 10,000 of the homegrown chips, and may scale up to 100,000 over time. The data center will be used for both inference and training.
China is racing to build out its own sovereign AI capabilities, and is making significant progress.
While Chinese companies and labs have released many competitive AI models, such as Alibaba’s Qwen, Z.ai’s new GLM-5.1, and the disruptive DeepSeek R1, China is still behind the US when it comes to AI chips, and it has struggled to get hold of the latest Nvidia GPUs due to US export controls.
China is racing to build out its own sovereign AI capabilities, and is making significant progress.
While Chinese companies and labs have released many competitive AI models, such as Alibaba’s Qwen, Z.ai’s new GLM-5.1, and the disruptive DeepSeek R1, China is still behind the US when it comes to AI chips, and it has struggled to get hold of the latest Nvidia GPUs due to US export controls.
The unusual announcement of the model highlights its alarming new cybersecurity capabilities.
Scratch that... Actually, Apple’s foldable iPhone may be on track to debut later this year after all.
Hours after a report from Nikkei Asia said Apple was encountering engineering problems with the novel design that could lead to a delayed launch, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that sources within Apple say the premium foldable iPhone is still on track to launch in September, alongside the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Max.
Shares of Apple had plunged more than 5% on word of a possible delay, but pared losses on Gurman’s story.
According to the report, the foldable iPhone will cost more than $2,000 and will be a key part of the company’s plan to revamp the iPhone lineup.
Shares of Apple had plunged more than 5% on word of a possible delay, but pared losses on Gurman’s story.
According to the report, the foldable iPhone will cost more than $2,000 and will be a key part of the company’s plan to revamp the iPhone lineup.
