Speaker 1: You're listenings camp I AM six forty the Bill Handles
Speaker 1: show on demand on the iHeartRadio APPMI AM six forty Chaco, Tuesday,
Speaker 1: February twenty five, As we continue on with our show,
Speaker 1: Mike Dubuski, ABC News Technology reporter with us this morning.
Speaker 1: It is a Tech Tuesday. Good morning, Mike.
Speaker 2: Good morning, Happy tex Tuesday.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm always a pleasure. Okay. A story about Apple
Speaker 1: and when Apple invests, it's generally not forty six dollars,
Speaker 1: it's some big dollars. And in this case, five billion dollars.
Speaker 1: What's that about?
Speaker 2: Yeah, half a trillion dollars. You're absolutely right that Apple
Speaker 2: is not making investments to the tune of like scratch
Speaker 2: off cards there anything like that. These are high dollar investments,
Speaker 2: specifically in American tech infrastructure, and what that essentially means
Speaker 2: is that they are in part building actual infrastructure. They
Speaker 2: are building a factory in Texas that is designed to
Speaker 2: make AI servers, they say, But they're also going to
Speaker 2: go on a hiring spree. They plan to hire about
Speaker 2: twenty thousand new employees over the course of the next
Speaker 2: four years. Those employees are going to be focused on
Speaker 2: research and development, silicon investing, and of course artificial intelligence,
Speaker 2: which is exactly what this is all about. This is
Speaker 2: a major bet on the future of AI. Apple has
Speaker 2: their own branding for their generative artificial intelligence tools called
Speaker 2: Apple Intelligence. This seems to be the technology, the sort
Speaker 2: of back end stuff that's going to underpin the future
Speaker 2: of Apple Intelligence.
Speaker 1: Now, when you talk about servers and building servers and
Speaker 1: these huge warehouses, I mean we're talking hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars, one hundred thousands of square feet jammed full
Speaker 1: of computer gear and takes enormous amount of energy and
Speaker 1: incredible air conditioning systems. Are they building those at a
Speaker 1: rapid rate? Because what the Internet is growing, or it
Speaker 1: was growing astronomically, has that slowed down? And is that
Speaker 1: building still going up? That kind of building?
Speaker 2: Yeah, what you're talking about. There are data centers which
Speaker 2: are increasingly becoming these really central pieces of the tech
Speaker 2: puzzle in the United States. And what the data center
Speaker 2: is is essentially, like you said, a big building full
Speaker 2: of computer servers, just a big sort of warehouse style thing.
Speaker 2: Not many people in a security guard, a couple of
Speaker 2: technical officials. But companies can to those buildings and say, hey,
Speaker 2: I want a row of computers, or I want this
Speaker 2: little neighborhood of computer servers, I'm going to rent that out.
Speaker 2: And these data center companies basically act as landlords and
Speaker 2: they say, yeah, you can have this for this price,
Speaker 2: and then you get all this computing power. The reason
Speaker 2: for that is because when you open an app on
Speaker 2: your phone or you try to run a program on
Speaker 2: your computer, oftentimes it's not your computer or your phone
Speaker 2: that's actually running that technology. They're offloading some of that
Speaker 2: work to these data centers, in part because the programs
Speaker 2: that we rely on every day are just so computer intensive,
Speaker 2: just so energy intensive. So that's why these data centers
Speaker 2: are important. And arctual intelligence generative AI is very computer
Speaker 2: intensive to a degree that we really have before with
Speaker 2: other existing technologies. So these data centers are becoming really important.
Speaker 2: And with Apple's five hundred billion dollar investment, part of
Speaker 2: that money is going to this factory to build these
Speaker 2: AI servers in partnership with this Taiwanese firm called fox Con.
Speaker 2: These are the servers that are going to go into
Speaker 2: data centers that are springing up across the country. So
Speaker 2: that's kind of the idea here. Some of these data
Speaker 2: centers are owned and operated by companies whole cloths, Apple, Microsoft,
Speaker 2: Google all have their own, but there's also like third
Speaker 2: party data centers that are kind of like the landlords. Right.
Speaker 2: They offer the energy, they offer the air conditioning, and
Speaker 2: then you, as the tech company, go in and place
Speaker 2: your own computers kind of where you want them. So
Speaker 2: it's a really interesting piece of the sort of back
Speaker 2: end of the American tech infrastructure, and one that clearly
Speaker 2: is coming into clear focus with Apple's half a trillion
Speaker 2: dollar investment and also similar investments from companies like open Ai.
Speaker 1: All right, so Apple, Well, I'll talk about Amazon in
Speaker 1: a minute, because that's our next segment. But when you
Speaker 1: tech about these data centers, is it like a clearing
Speaker 1: house of information, much like you have a clearing house
Speaker 1: of banking. The Swift system where everybody comes together and
Speaker 1: then the money flows out under Swift is the same
Speaker 1: thing happening here.
Speaker 2: So it depends, right, It depends on what the data
Speaker 2: center is used for. As we said, some companies own
Speaker 2: their own use them for the purposes. For example, some
Speaker 2: data centers might be just used for cloud computing at Google, right,
Speaker 2: they might be used to underpin Google drive. Similarly, Apple
Speaker 2: might use the data center to underpin iCloud or Apple
Speaker 2: Intelligence or some combination of the technologies that need all
Speaker 2: this energy really pass How.
Speaker 1: Big of how big a system is this, because we
Speaker 1: don't hear much about this. Is this one of those
Speaker 1: zillion dollar industries?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's huge and it's growing. And in fact, I
Speaker 2: visited a data center that was springing up in Orangeburg,
Speaker 2: New York, which is about a half an hour north
Speaker 2: of New York City, in the fall, and it was,
Speaker 2: you know, under construction at the time. They were investing
Speaker 2: you know, several hundred million dollars in this facility as
Speaker 2: a company called Data Bank that was spinning this up
Speaker 2: and it was set to open in about two months.
Speaker 2: And I got to say, when I was walking around,
Speaker 2: you believed that, you know, it's like these things are
Speaker 2: getting a lot of attention, a lot of construction power
Speaker 2: is going into these sort of facilities. As I said,
Speaker 2: they're just basically big warehouses that you know, you put
Speaker 2: computers in, not a ton of people. You need the
Speaker 2: staff to run them. But there's another concern that comes
Speaker 2: along with all this technology, which is energy consumption. Right,
Speaker 2: because one, you need energy, need electricity to pull from
Speaker 2: the grid to run the computers in your service, but
Speaker 2: you also need to run air conditioning and cooling units
Speaker 2: to keep those computers cool and to keep them functioning.
Speaker 2: So they are big draws on the energy grid, and
Speaker 2: that is something that we haven't really reckoned with yet.
Speaker 2: We haven't really figured out a solution to making these
Speaker 2: things climate friendly and environmentally friendly. You can imagine as
Speaker 2: AI spins up and becomes more prominent, that is going
Speaker 2: to become an increasing concern.
Speaker 1: All right, I want to go back for a moment
Speaker 1: to Amazon, the Amazon story where you reported that Amazon
Speaker 1: is going to hire twenty thousand new employees regarding that
Speaker 1: huge AI tech investment. Now, Amazon had a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of layoffs, and I don't know how many are those
Speaker 1: people going to go back to work, and how does
Speaker 1: that connect with twenty thousand new employees.
Speaker 2: That's a very good question. I'm not sure, but they
Speaker 2: certainly are spinning up a new slate of technologies, and
Speaker 2: that is kind of what you know they are touting.
Speaker 2: This week. There's this big event in New York City
Speaker 2: scheduled for tomorrow. It's expected to be an event all
Speaker 2: about Alexa, which is, of course, Amazon's very popular voice assistant.
Speaker 2: Back in twenty twenty three, Amazon said that they were
Speaker 2: going to make this big revamp of Alexa to kind
Speaker 2: of fallen behind some competitors like Google Assistant that are
Speaker 2: out there just in terms of functionality and ease of
Speaker 2: use in what have you. And Amazon says that by
Speaker 2: adding generative artificial intelligence to this technology, it's going to
Speaker 2: get a lot easier to use. And you can imagine
Speaker 2: that is going to have a lot of people on
Speaker 2: the back end working to make sure that this technology
Speaker 2: doesn't go awry as we've seen it in the past.
Speaker 2: You know, these generative artificial intelligence models often make things up,
Speaker 2: they hallucinate, they get things wrong, and that requires sort
Speaker 2: of moderation teams and engineering teams to be on call
Speaker 2: in order to figure that out. We're going to get
Speaker 2: a better look at it tomorrow to see if that
Speaker 2: actually plays in the real world world the way that
Speaker 2: Amazon wants it to. I think there's a lot of
Speaker 2: risk here, especially when you consider the sort of unreliability
Speaker 2: of some of these AI systems, but that is what
Speaker 2: they say is going to make this voice a system
Speaker 2: a lot more competitive going forward.
Speaker 1: All right, And what I normally do whenever we talk
Speaker 1: about Alexa, is I refer to those of you that
Speaker 1: are listening who have an Alexa in your house and
Speaker 1: you have kids asleep Alexa louder louder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. You got to give the disclaimer every
Speaker 2: time you do a voice assistant segment. You know, I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: We've we've lit up all the Alexa devices around southern
Speaker 2: California this morning.
Speaker 1: Yeah's lovely, I love it. I love it.
Speaker 2: Hey.
Speaker 1: In terms of the new technology, it's I have friends,
Speaker 1: my daughter as a matter of fact, and my daughter's
Speaker 1: roommate who had a great job at Amazon. She lost
Speaker 1: her job. Not my daughter, but the roommate lost your
Speaker 1: job and is a very skilled computer person. That goes
Speaker 1: right into if you somehow are moving into the computer
Speaker 1: engineering in the world of AI. How hot a market
Speaker 1: is that? Is that the way you remember it used
Speaker 1: to be, where if you had any kind of computer skills,
Speaker 1: you could walk across the street for a ton more
Speaker 1: money and then walk back for even more money. Is
Speaker 1: that what we're seeing in the AI world?
Speaker 2: Certainly what you were seeing for a few months right,
Speaker 2: Like the tech world has gone through several hype cycles. Lately,
Speaker 2: they've been trying to figure out what the next big
Speaker 2: thing is going to be. Of course, if you remember
Speaker 2: a few years ago, everybody was talking about the metaverse,
Speaker 2: this sort of virtual world that we would all exist in,
Speaker 2: something that Facebook and Instagram really put a lot of
Speaker 2: effort into, and the sort of long tail of that
Speaker 2: didn't really go anywhere. Crypto was sort of the next
Speaker 2: big hype cycle that people got excited about, and obviously
Speaker 2: that market crashed as well. Well, now everybody's talking about
Speaker 2: artificial intelligence, so it's not enough to just be a
Speaker 2: computer engineer. You kind of got to specialize in one thing,
Speaker 2: and you've got to make a bet that your specific
Speaker 2: specialization is going to be the thing that hits. Certainly,
Speaker 2: with these investments that we've been talking about from Apple
Speaker 2: and from open ai and from others, it certainly seems
Speaker 2: like a lot of the tech industry is sort of
Speaker 2: centering itself around this artificial intelligence revolution. But we've also
Speaker 2: seen some reasons to be skeptical about the long you know,
Speaker 2: the sort of ongoing success of this particular industry. The
Speaker 2: emergence of deep Seek, the Chinese artificial intelligence company that
Speaker 2: was able to develop this very competitive model for a
Speaker 2: fraction of the cost of what American models were able
Speaker 2: to offer. Really did kind of raise some eyebrows in
Speaker 2: the investing class. I think a big indicator bill is
Speaker 2: going to be tomorrow when Nvidia reports its earnings. They
Speaker 2: are the chip manufacturer that makes the technology that underpins
Speaker 2: a lot of these models used by open Ai and
Speaker 2: Google and others.
Speaker 1: Now, my daughter showed me by my tech daughter showed
Speaker 1: me a picture of the first quantum chip that came out,
Speaker 1: and I didn't really understand that, And I want to
Speaker 1: know how how much can this pop be cost? Do
Speaker 1: you have any information on that?
Speaker 2: Well, quantum computing has been around for a little while
Speaker 2: as this sort of idea that the you know, that
Speaker 2: our computers will somehow change and work differently on the
Speaker 2: back end. This is mostly an internal you know question, right,
Speaker 2: we're talking about chips and we're talking about processors. From
Speaker 2: a user perspective, you know, it's sort of questionable exactly
Speaker 2: what the change will be. But you're right to say that. Recently,
Speaker 2: Microsoft did show off what they call the first quantum
Speaker 2: computing chip. In terms of cost, I'm not sure off
Speaker 2: the top of my head, but you can imagine it's
Speaker 2: going to be quite pricey, given that this is just
Speaker 2: a prototype, sort of experimental technology at this point. But yeah,
Speaker 2: that's something to keep an eye on in the background.
Speaker 2: This is something that we've been talking about for several
Speaker 2: years now. Not everyone has been able to get it
Speaker 2: to work just right, these sort of hyper efficient computers,
Speaker 2: but it is certainly something that Microsoft thinks that it's
Speaker 2: gotten a little bit closer to. I think what's going
Speaker 2: to be really interesting to watch is whether that actually
Speaker 2: shows up in the real world, how they implement this
Speaker 2: in a technology that you or I could use.
Speaker 1: Thank you, and I want to end with Alexa. What
Speaker 1: does the fire engine sound like?
Speaker 2: And good morning to everyone in the immediate Los Angeles area?
Speaker 1: Thanks Mike, always appreciated. Okay, who is Danbongino. Well, he
Speaker 1: has just been tapped by Cash Patel, the director of
Speaker 1: the FBI, to be second in command at the FBI.
Speaker 1: Does not need second does not need Senate confirmation. Now,
Speaker 1: him being in this slot is a radical departure from
Speaker 1: what used to be that role. The deputy director traditionally
Speaker 1: an active agent significant operational experience and expertise. And by
Speaker 1: the way, Patel said that is who he is going
Speaker 1: to name as second in command that kind of person
Speaker 1: before his confirmation. Oops, maybe not. And as a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, what he did is he selected Bongino fifty
Speaker 1: years old former Secret Service agent turned conservative media commentator,
Speaker 1: known primarily for his outspoken support for Trump and frequent
Speaker 1: spreading of misinformation, including the FBI about the FBI, basically
Speaker 1: conspiracy theorists. He started his career as a cop with
Speaker 1: the New York City Police Department. He joined the Secret
Speaker 1: Service in nineteen ninety nine as a special agent. He
Speaker 1: left in two thousand and two to become an instructor
Speaker 1: at the Secret Service Training Academy. Pretty impressive. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and six he joined the Presidential Protective Division, serving
Speaker 1: both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. And then he
Speaker 1: went into politics. First, he published a bunch of books,
Speaker 1: pretty successful ones, and in twenty twelve he ran for
Speaker 1: the US Senate Maryland. Won the Republican primary, lost by
Speaker 1: a landslide to the Democratic incumbent. So two years later
Speaker 1: he runs against a Democratic incumbent to represent Maryland's sixth
Speaker 1: congressional district. He narrowly lost that one, and then he
Speaker 1: decided he is going to go into a new career
Speaker 1: in media. Boy did he succeed. He started a podcast
Speaker 1: in his basement audience reaching millions of people, and his
Speaker 1: popularity and his very brash style earned him a contract
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen with an online video channel you have
Speaker 1: never heard of. It was the National Rifle Association's online
Speaker 1: video channel. The NRATV lasted about twelve and a half seconds. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the things about Bongino is over the years,
Speaker 1: Trump actually took notice frequently posting on social media. Trump
Speaker 1: did about Bongino's comments. Did you see what Bongono Bongino said?
Speaker 1: He is so right. He's just so right about it
Speaker 1: at all. You have to see it. In twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: as a result of all this success, he became a
Speaker 1: radio and podcast the host in on Cumulus to take
Speaker 1: over Rush Limbaugh slot, and then he started hosting Fox
Speaker 1: News weekend program. And I guess in order to be
Speaker 1: a Trump appointee, it's good to be a Fox commentator
Speaker 1: or host. Read Pete hegseith. He's a critic of vax
Speaker 1: and mandates mandates. He's a critic of masking, which he
Speaker 1: called useless during the pandemic. He was permanently banned from YouTube,
Speaker 1: violating his policies against pandemic related misinformation. Google pulled its
Speaker 1: ad service from his website, and in the weeks after
Speaker 1: Biden's victory, he started going nuts that the election had
Speaker 1: been stolen. Now he has condemned the violence of January sixth,
Speaker 1: but called on and defended Trump's pardon of everybody involved
Speaker 1: in the January sixth insurrection. He has suggested, this is
Speaker 1: the fun part. The FBI played and covered up a
Speaker 1: role in the pipe bombs that were placed outside the
Speaker 1: DNC and RNC headquarters in twenty twenty one. The FBI
Speaker 1: did it. He questioned the integrity of the agency's investigations
Speaker 1: into the assassination attempts on Trump in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: The FBI is not investigating this. He has repeated, it's
Speaker 1: time to clean house at the FBI. Here's a quote
Speaker 1: that is attributed to him. My entire life right now
Speaker 1: is about owning the Libs. It's a new world. Just
Speaker 1: get prepared. James Carvel wrote a really interesting piece in
Speaker 1: the New York Times that are read this morning, and
Speaker 1: he said the best thing the Democrats can do right
Speaker 1: now is just leave everything alone, just walk away that
Speaker 1: it just don't show up and watch the Republicans self emulate,
Speaker 1: just go up in flames, which seems to be happening
Speaker 1: because what did Trump went on inflation hasn't done a
Speaker 1: damn thing about inflation except that it's increasing, and he
Speaker 1: said it's gonna hurt, after promising it's not gonna hurt.
Speaker 1: He spent a lot of time dealing with DEI and
Speaker 1: the border. But you know, people care about economics. They
Speaker 1: want jobs, and the terrorists are not going to help
Speaker 1: now long long term they're going to and I think
Speaker 1: that's going to happen, but way beyond what the next
Speaker 1: election is going to be about. And if I had
Speaker 1: to guess, it's going to be another Saturday night massacre
Speaker 1: in the midterms. All Right, We finish the show with
Speaker 1: a fun topic, a success from No Scratching, and this
Speaker 1: is a company called Dude Wipes, and the idea for
Speaker 1: dude wipes actually toilet wipes for men. It came from
Speaker 1: a bunch of buddies simply sitting down in an apartment
Speaker 1: together and they're drinking beer, and up came this idea.
Speaker 1: And if you look at the company on their website,
Speaker 1: it's the posts are laced with poop emojis. If you
Speaker 1: go to their headquarters in Chicago, at one end of
Speaker 1: the conference table, there is a toilet bowl and Sean Riley,
Speaker 1: who co founded the company, said, we were thinking about
Speaker 1: this while drinking beers and we wanted to make people
Speaker 1: laugh and be authentic because what they did is they
Speaker 1: are marketing people. I mean, the idea wipes have been
Speaker 1: around for a while, so a new company about wipes.
Speaker 1: Boy did they hit it. They've sold millions of wipes
Speaker 1: by convincing men to add wet tissues to their bathroom regimen.
Speaker 1: And this is a small irreverent was a small irreverent
Speaker 1: outlandis approach to marketing, I mean, still is the marketing part.
Speaker 1: They first gained prominence as a quote ass sponsor for
Speaker 1: UFC fighter Tyrone Woodley, who reached out to the company
Speaker 1: because he advertises he sells space on his ass during
Speaker 1: fights on his shorts, and the sponsor that was buying
Speaker 1: it dropped out, So he goes to Dude Wipes and
Speaker 1: they immediately go for it. They scraped together ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: That was in twenty fourteen, and sales just spiked after
Speaker 1: the fight, and so they discovered this was all about marketing.
Speaker 1: So what they do well, For example, they pay the
Speaker 1: fine for an athlete who wiped this bottom with a football.
Speaker 1: I don't even know how you do that. They talk
Speaker 1: a lot about bodily functions, lots of poop emojis. Eighty
Speaker 1: percent of toilet papers bought by women by women, dude
Speaker 1: wipes seventy percent by men. If you look at the
Speaker 1: wipes marketing that's done by Kimberly, Clark, Procter and Gamble,
Speaker 1: it's you know, there's rubber ducks on it. There's the
Speaker 1: Sharman bear. It's kind of cutesy. Not with them. Ridley says,
Speaker 1: people don't want to be coddled. We know that it
Speaker 1: is a sticky new habit, sticky being. People continue to
Speaker 1: use it because it's cleaner, it's a better alternative. Retailer said, no,
Speaker 1: not a chance. So they go on Shark Tank, Mark
Speaker 1: Cuban invests. Dude Wipe makes its first million selling on Amazon.
Speaker 1: Sales go to forty million during the toilet paper shortage
Speaker 1: of the pandemic. Analyst said it was just a fad.
Speaker 1: Sales are now two hundred million. Dollars, Walmart, target Kroger.
Speaker 1: The best selling products extra large wipes, because it's for dudes.
Speaker 1: See how that work. Now, they've tried a couple of
Speaker 1: other things that didn't work. Dude products launch. The line
Speaker 1: of deodorants and other personal care products during the pandemic flopped.
Speaker 1: Why well, because if you look at the personal care
Speaker 1: products like old spice and as it's already targeted towards men,
Speaker 1: wipes are targeted towards women. They figured out we're going
Speaker 1: to go for the guys. And by the way, they're
Speaker 1: trying to get into Costco and I'll bet you they
Speaker 1: they make it. And there is another product launching soon,
Speaker 1: dude wipes. Double deucee. That's what they're calling. What means
Speaker 1: two wipes that come in a single package. That idea
Speaker 1: came from the singer John Mayer, who went in and
Speaker 1: contacted them and said, we live in a two wipe world,
Speaker 1: we should have some double deuce Well, they came up
Speaker 1: with the name wipes. Wow, have you ever tried them?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: I haven't. I don't use the wipe I you know,
Speaker 1: I use regular wipes. Man.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not saying the cottonells great as well, I'm
Speaker 2: just keep them in the car.
Speaker 1: Why keep him in the car when you got you know,
Speaker 1: deuce in the car. Is that what you do? But
Speaker 1: they're good for wipes, they're good for hand wipes. They're
Speaker 1: good for cleaning messes up too. But they're there, durable there,
Speaker 1: they are durable wipes, the double deuce. Okay, we're done, guys,
Speaker 1: Fresh fresh, I know coming up Harry and Chen and
Speaker 1: ten o'clock they're going to talk about the fires that
Speaker 1: are affecting preparations for the twenty twenty eight Olympics, and
Speaker 1: we start all over again tomorrow morning. Amy wake up
Speaker 1: call and Neil and I come aboard at six, six
Speaker 1: to nine, right now till right now, and of course
Speaker 1: Ann and Kono here to make the show run. This
Speaker 1: is KFI AM six point forty. You've been listening to
Speaker 1: the Bill Handle Show. Catch my show Monday through Friday
Speaker 1: six am to nine am, and anytime on demand on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app.