Big Technology Podcast
00:39:17 · Ranjan Roy, Alex Kantrowitz
[00:39:17] S1: tough. Wait, did you hear there's a... I think it was in France somewhere, like a beautiful data center that they tried building and like tried to like, and there's still a lot of community backlash on it. [00:39:31] S0: You know, it's happened in different places. I think... Okay. You know, speaking of manifesting, I think the AI industry should follow this hot take that I've had for a while. Go. And it doesn't seem to be picking up any steam. No pun intended because what I'm about to say involves that. I think that the AI industry should turn the data center... The middle of these data centers into spots and have all the heat that the chips generate used to power hot tubs, steam rooms, saunas, and maybe they could put a cold plunge in there. And I think given the trends that we're seeing right now, the wellness trends that we're seeing, if if I'm open AI, and I say, listen up, Ohio, I'm bringing a data center to your community, it's gonna be somewhat ugly, but I'm giving anybody within a 25 mile radius, access to chat GP spa. That doesn't work. The the GPT spa, then then I think that will improve the popularity.
00:40:40 · Ranjan Roy, Alex Kantrowitz
[00:40:40] S1: Alright. So one thing I will note, this French data center, I just looked it up. It was TBPN had shared it, but it was a prank and not real. So we'll already retract that one about anything in France and beautiful data centers. But But in terms of Alex's beautiful data centers spa combination, it is interesting. Like, you know, don't go to Iceland. Go next door and get into... Maybe they carve out and build these kind of lagoons that are getting heated. But also, as we're saying it, being that close to that mass generator of power and saying that that'll heat up the water that you're gonna put your body in feels a little off to the point that even your amazingly named GPT spa, which obviously would draw in consumers from every walk of life. I think I'm starting to feel a little more ick around this. [00:41:42] S0: I get it, but listen, it's not nuclear. Okay? It's not like you have this radioactive waste. It's just heat coming in because these chips run hot. So I don't think that this is like you're gonna be in the byproduct of some industrial process. There's natural heat. There's gotta be a way to Harness that heat. To funnel it into to... I promise you, if they put a data center spa down the block for me, I'd be there all the time, especially if it was free. And you know what? There's a cut... There's there's something that's severely lacking in society today, which is common places for people to get together and bond socially. [00:42:19] S1: Loneliness epidemic. This [00:42:20] S0: could solve loneliness, and we need to be more well. And this could solve
00:42:20 · Alex Kantrowitz, Ranjan Roy
[00:42:20] S0: could solve loneliness, and we need to be more well. And this could solve [00:42:25] S1: all those solved the data center problem, the loneliness epidemic, wellness and longevity in health. [00:42:34] S0: All I'm saying is try it once you listen, try once if your community still votes to put a moratorium on your data center, then I'll apologize. [00:42:42] S1: I'm in. You're right. I'm in. I'm sold. I like it.
00:42:42 · Ranjan Roy, Alex Kantrowitz
[00:42:42] S1: I'm in. You're right. I'm in. I'm sold. I like it. [00:42:45] S0: Listen, let's take a break. Because, even if there might be some financial up and down to the technological process, progress continues unabated for now. We'll talk about that. And then we'll also discuss the role of prediction markets in this election. We'll be back right after this. And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast Friday edition with Ranjan Roy of Margins. Alright, Ranjan. I don't know how deep we can get into this, but it's very interesting. METR, right, which is the the organization that monitors autonomous AI did an analysis on Anthropic r and d. Let me read it, to you, so you can react here. This is from the information Anthropic r and d speed may have doubled due to AI researchers find AI use within Anthropic may have doubled the company's pace of AI development. A new report from AI research nonprofit meter says the rate that Anthropic's models are improving as of this October is roughly twice twice the rate at which they improve between March 2024 and October 2025. METR estimated around 80% of the acceleration in Anthropic research pace is due to internal use of AI within Anthropic. This is, of course, after Anthropic has given METR employee like access, though Anthropic did restrict a lot of what meter could publish because of what it called proprietary information and meter complained about that. Are we not fully taking seriously how fast this technology is getting better? This is a little bit crazy.
00:44:12 · Ranjan Roy
[00:44:12] S1: I don't know. I'm sorry. Like, I know I've gotten... It's just every action taken in every one of these cycles just makes me more skeptical and cynical even though I know this technology is incredibly powerful, and I'm sure the unreleased models are... Can be dangerous. Even in this example, again, so much information was redacted, and there was a backlash against... From what... One of Anthropic's cofounders who was trying to kind of, like, laud their work that was being done and how they're getting ahead of it. And again, as he said, Sam McCandlish, he was like, we've redacted a lot and I accept this makes it harder for others to check meters work, but we determined that sharing exactly what is driving the speed up isn't the right thing to do. So they go out saying there is this significant acceleration that they're... We're entering scary uncharted territory once again, coincidentally right as they're trying to IPO into a very dangerous market. But then we will not tell you exactly what any of this is or how it works or what it means because... And again, using security as the blanket to actually try to like cover this, it's still, I don't know. I just just have an honest open conversation if this is truly terrifying. And I just want to note, and I loved when Alex Stamos was on a couple of weeks ago. Well, I didn't love the fact that I left that conversation more terrified than I've ever been, but the dangers and the risks are bad actors using AI not agents going rogue. And I still... All these meter reports, all these Anthropic security kind of, like, reporting, it's always around agents going rogue and painting this picture of that rather than, like, how does North Korea not get access to these things?
00:46:08 · Alex Kantrowitz
[00:46:08] S0: Alright. I'll just have one thing to say here, which is if I were to push back on you, so I'll just give it a shot. I would say that these companies have been saying that the releases are going to accelerate. Year after year, I remember being at the Anthropic Dev Day, quote, quote with Claude last year, which is crazy. That was just last year. And they said the releases are going to start to come faster, and the technology is going to get better, faster. They kept their word, the releases are come faster, and technology has gotten better, much more quickly. And so, meet are going in there and saying that they've almost doubled the rate of progress, to me is not a stretch. And, you know, as they've been able to make these leaps, we've seen, like, new products become, available or possible because of it. Like, I'm thinking about dots or muse, right, which was not possible last year. So I am curious, what we'll see after this batch of improvement shows up. And I I lean towards believing