AI, AVs, and Ozone

It was a big week in AI, with OpenAI and Google duking it out over product announcements. We use the word “announcement” deliberately—the products that customers can use today were few and far between. Dan and I are in Seattle the coming week for a Microsoft AI event, where hopefully we’ll hear about products that 1) work and 2) are available. (Stay tuned for our coverage.)

Now, on to everything we published this week, along with some Anthropic backchannel and our take on the latest tech and business news.—Kate Lee

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Our stories

🔏 "GPT-4o and OpenAI's Race to Win Consumers" by Dan Shipper and Evan Armstrong/Chain of Thought: OpenAI's latest release may not knock your socks off, but it's a strategic powerhouse. GPT-4o processes video, audio, and text in one model, making it the most user-friendly AI yet—and it's available to everyone for free. Read this to understand how OpenAI is using the classic Silicon Valley playbook to maintain its dominance in the AI race, and what it means for the future. 

🔏 "Google Goes All In on AI" by Evan Armstrong/Napkin Math: Google soft-launched 23 AI products at its developer conference, but is the tech giant truly equipped to dominate the AI landscape? Evan dives deep into the three announcements that matter most: agentic search, Android integration, and Gemini 1.5 everywhere. Read this to understand whether Google's breadth and distribution can outpace the focused execution of startups. 

“The Hole in the Sky That We Actually Fixed” by Jamie Wong: Government intervention, properly applied, is how frontier technologies get used. That’s why this brilliant piece by a former Figma engineer explores how we fixed the ozone layer, not with privately built technology alone, but with global partnerships devoted to helping the planet. While we may all enjoy the riches that come from the success of big tech companies, the whole point of this industry is to make people’s lives better. This piece (which is part one of a two-part article) is a reminder about how frontier tech can do that.

"Where Are All the Autonomous Vehicles?" by Dimi Kellari: We were promised fleets of autonomous vehicles by now, whisking us around while we relax in the backseat. What happened? Kellari, who has worked at Alphabet's moonshot factory and in transportation tech, reveals three key obstacles: 1) The bar for safety is higher than expected, 2) scaling is incredibly complex, and 3) the unit economics remain shaky. Read this for an insightful bear case check on the AV revolution and a nuanced take on what's needed to (eventually) get self-driving cars on the road.