<p>Happy New Year! NVIDIA just spent $20 billion to hollow out an AI company for its brains, while Meta and Google scramble to scoop up fresh talent before AI gets "too weird to manage." Who's winning, who's left behind, and what do these backroom deals mean for the future of artificial intelligence?</p><ul> <li>Andrej Karpathy admits programmers cannot keep pace with AI advances</li> <li>Economic uncertainty in AI despite massive stock market influence</li> <li>Google, Anthropic, and Microsoft drive AI productization for business and consumers</li> <li>OpenAI, Claude, and Gemini battle for consumer AI dominance</li> <li>Journalism struggles to keep up with AI realities and misinformation tools</li> <li>Concerns mount over AI energy, water, and environmental impact narratives</li> <li>Meta buys Manus, expands AI agent ambitions with Llama model</li> <li>OpenAI posts high-stress "Head of Preparedness" job worth $555K+</li> <li>Training breakthroughs: DeepSeek's mHC and comparisons to Action Park</li> <li>U.S. lawmakers push broad, controversial internet censorship bills</li> <li>Age verification and bans spark state laws, VPN workaround explosion</li> <li>U.S. drone ban labeled protectionist as industry faces tech shortages</li> <li>FCC security initiatives falter; Cyber Trust Mark program scrapped</li> <li>Waymo robotaxis stall in blackouts, raising AV urban planning issues</li> <li>School cellphone bans expose kids' struggle with analog clocks</li> <li>MetroCard era ends in NYC as tap-to-pay takes over subway access</li> <li>RAM, VRAM, and GPU prices soar as AI and gaming squeeze supply</li> <li>CES preview: Samsung QD-OLED TV, Sony AFEELA car, gadget show hype</li> <li>Remembering Stewart Cheifet and <em>Computer Chronicles</em>' legacy </li></ul> <p><strong>Host:</strong> <a href="https://twit.tv/people/leo-laporte">Leo Laporte</a></p> <p><strong>Guests:</strong> <a href="https://www.danpatterson.com/" target="_blank">Dan Patterson</a> and <a href="https://www.globalnerdy.com/" target="_blank">Joey de Villa</a></p> <p>Download or subscribe to <em>This Week in Tech</em> at <a href="https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech">https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech</a></p> <p><strong>Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts!</strong><br /> Support what you love and get ad-free audio <em>and</em> video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: <a href="https://twit.tv/clubtwit" rel="payment">https://twit.tv/clubtwit</a></p> <p><strong>Sponsors:</strong><ul> <li><a href="http://zscaler.com/security" target="_blank" rel="sponsored">zscaler.com/security</a></li> <li><a href="http://canary.tools/twit" target="_blank" rel="sponsored">canary.tools/twit - use code: TWIT</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.monarch.com" target="_blank" rel="sponsored">monarch.com with code TWIT</a></li> <li><a href="http://Melissa.com/twit" target="_blank" rel="sponsored">Melissa.com/twit</a></li> <li><a href="http://redis.io" target="_blank" rel="sponsored">redis.io</a></li> </ul></p>
Source: https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/1065
Published: 2026-01-04 17:38:48