Tech News Weekly 437 Transcript

Please be advised that this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word-for-word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-free version of the show.

Mikah Sargent [00:00:00]:
Coming up on Tech News Weekly, Jake Ward is here. We talk about the ongoing Altman vs Musk case. Jason Howell stops by to give us the lowdown on what Google has already announced and will announce at Google I/O before I round things out, talking about Canvas being hacked and what to expect after the company paid the ransom. All of that coming up on Tech News Weekly.

Mikah Sargent [00:00:38]:
This is Tech News Weekly. Episode 437 with Jake Ward and me, Mikah Sargent. Recorded Thursday, May 14, 2026. What to expect at Google I/O. Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where every week we talk to and about the people making and breaking that tech news. I am your host, Mikah, and this week I am joined by someone who's making and breaking tech news. It's Jake Ward. Hello, Jake.

Jacob Ward [00:01:07]:
Hello. What's up, Mikah? I hope I'm not making it, but I like, I do try to break it. If I make news, you should have me on right away. I'll call you immediately.

Mikah Sargent [00:01:15]:
Yeah, please. Okay. Something's happened and you gotta know about it.

Jacob Ward [00:01:18]:
Oh, my God. He got in a fight with Elon Musk. That's crazy, yes.

Mikah Sargent [00:01:23]:
So that's actually a great segue into the first half of the show for people who are tuning in for the first time. We like to kick off the show with our stories of the week. These are the stories that we think are interesting and want to share with all of you. And Jake, you have been covering and attending the ongoing court case. I was hoping you could start. If people didn't get a chance to check out our last episode together and if they haven't been up on the news, what's going on in your neck of the woods?

Jacob Ward [00:01:54]:
Yeah, they might as well. Just a little funny local matter. So Elon Musk is suing Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, the president of OpenAI and OpenAI itself, and kind of by extension Microsoft, I guess, for converting from a nonprofit to a for profit. Although it's a B corp, so kind of whatever you want to call that, a hippie, hippie profit. And the question is, essentially, did, sorry, did Altman and Brockman trick Musk into donating a bunch of money to get OpenAI off the ground and then pull a bait and switch on him, kick him out, and make it into a for profit company that's now poised to eat the world? And what Altman's side is arguing is Musk is a, you know, a megalomaniacal control freak who wanted total control over OpenAI when he and Altman began it together in 2015. And when he was not given that amount of control, he walked away. He took his football and went home. And now that he has seen OpenAI succeed, where Xai Musk's AI company has fallen so far behind, he's now suing to try and slow them down.

Jacob Ward [00:03:25]:
So that's the. Those are the two signs of it. And the implications of this are right. The stakes here is that what he's asking for is the money back that he put in, which doesn't really matter because money comes up out of the ground for these guys. But he's also asking for Brockman and Altman to be deposed, to be taken off of, you know, kicked out of the company, and that it be converted from a for profit back to a nonprofit. And that would be complicated for many, many reasons. But one thing that it would really complicate is the IPO that OpenAI is planning, according to many, many, many reports later this year, which would probably be the largest public offering in like, the history of capitalism or something. So, you know, if you switch back to a nonprofit, you can't do that.

Jacob Ward [00:04:14]:
In order for them to keep going, they need to raise incredible amounts of money. So that would be a real problem if they lost. So the stakes are pretty high. But of course, I don't care about any of that. I only care about going and sitting alongside the richest and most powerful people in the world and seeing what they're like in court, right. And listen to them talk about themselves, talk about each other. Like, it is such a fabulous ringside seat at the billionaire circus. You know, that's really what this experience of going to court has been like for me.

Jacob Ward [00:04:47]:
And so that's what, that's what draws me there.

Mikah Sargent [00:04:49]:
Morning after morning, Mr. Ward goes to Oakland. Yeah, I. Before we, we get into that even more, I, I know neither of us, as far as I know, are lawyers, but let me know if that's changed. No, no, but you can sue to have someone removed from, like, can. Could I sue to have the head of Pepsi? I, I don't know why I thought of Pepsi, but removed as the CEO. How did, how can you do that?

Jacob Ward [00:05:20]:
Right? So in this case, right, it's a, it's a civil action. And so you can sue and, and demand all kinds of weird things. You know, demand that he has to wear his underwear on the outside for a week or, you know, you can make you. The remedy that you ask for. Can. Can on paper be you know, almost anything you want there. You know, some remedies are more likely than others. And in this case, these remedies, Musk's side can argue, are not just like, invented.

Jacob Ward [00:05:50]:
They are a reasonable economy, you know, reasonable with air quotes around it, accommodation for, you know, for Musk's situation and his history with the company and the rest of it. So, yeah, like, that. That is the kind of thing. But an important thing to consider here is that, like, first of all, like, it's a jury trial, which is very cool, but it is also that the jury's verdict is only advisory. It's the judge that makes the final determination. And she's the who can say now you got to wear your underwear on the outside or whatever, you know, whatever it is. She's the one who will ultimately decide whether there should be punishment of what the punishment should be. So.

Jacob Ward [00:06:30]:
So all of it is kind of up to her in the end, no matter what crazy stuff Musk asks for.

Mikah Sargent [00:06:35]:
Now, one of the things that I've seen recently, since the last time we spoke, is a lot of conversation about characterizations of these. These individuals. Obviously, in building a case and in trying to get the jury on one side or the other, it does involve sort of understanding who these people are. And when it comes to. Well, I think when it comes to anyone, right. You. You have only the data that you have to go on. And we as humans have to often make split decisions about.

Mikah Sargent [00:07:15]:
About people that are around us and people who aren't around us. We also make split decisions about and sort of categorize them in one place or the other. And I'm curious, as you have have watched these. The case play out, first and foremost, has anything. Have any of the behaviors stood out to you as different from what you expected? And then also there's this ongoing conversation about lies, lies, lies. You're a liar. You're a liar. Can you talk about that as well?

Jacob Ward [00:07:51]:
Sure. Yeah. So it's been a really interesting parade of characters, and as a result, it's been a really amazing tour of the sort of social realm that these people occupy. The weird sort of background assumptions, like, the sort of underlying assumptions of their lives that we can get into. And one of those is that they should just have, like, unimaginable amounts of money and yet somehow be above money is a weird thing that keeps coming up. And then, as you say, the accusation levied against Altman by many of the witnesses, including people that he founded the company with, including people he has worked with for years, board members, all of them saying this guy's a liar. He's. He lies and lies and lies.

Jacob Ward [00:08:45]:
And so, so I'll just give you sort of a rundown of a couple of the sort of most interesting character stuff that has sort of jumped out at me. So one really core person that I think was really the sort of heart and soul of this is Ilya Sutskever. So Ilya Sutskever is one of the co founders of the company. He, at the age of 24 back in 2012, wrote a paper when he was at the University of Toronto about an image recognition software system that he'd created with Geoffrey Hinton. And this other guy, I can't remember the third guy's name, his name was Alex something. Anyway, it was called Alexnet and it was like that paper is to AI people what the discovery of the electron is to physicists. It's this just totally mind blowing change to how they understood how AI should go forward. And sutzkever became the hottest thing ever.

Jacob Ward [00:09:34]:
He got hired at Google and then he walked away from Google because he was hired away by OpenAI at a time when OpenAI was like nothing. Like there was like a nothing nonprofit. And Altman, what's so interesting is that every single person in that trial loves Ilya Sutskever. You just hear it over and over again from everybody who's ever worked with him. I mean, Geoffrey Hinton, who he co wrote that paper in 2012 with him, described it later as Ilya saw it. Alex made it happen and I won the Nobel Prize. Right. Like he, the people just are, are so into this guy's ability to see the future.

Jacob Ward [00:10:14]:
He's such a brilliant thinker about what should come next. And so he became the Chief Scientist of OpenAI and essentially became the guy who turned all these transformer model breakthroughs in 2017, 2018 into ChatGPT. So he's like the brains. And if. And these guys, you can just sense in both Altman and in Musk that they. The intimation that they are somehow not technical people and are only sort of administrators or money guys makes them crazy. Like they hate to hear that because they clearly hold the technical people in such high regard and they want to be thought of as technical people. So Sutskever is the ultimate technical guy.

Jacob Ward [00:10:55]:
And in his testimony he revealed that he. Well, so one thing he said pretty recently is that he doesn't think any of this LLM stuff is going to lead us to AGI.

Mikah Sargent [00:11:14]:
Okay.

Jacob Ward [00:11:14]:
And that we're on the wrong track, that somehow Just scaling up what we're currently doing is not going to get us there. Which is a big deal for the smartest guy in this industry to be saying, yeah, and it's something. And it's. And it's something echoed by other people. Yann Lecun at Meta, who left Meta, a lot of other people are starting to say that stuff. So. So the whole raison d' etre of OpenAI, he's basically saying is. And that's really.

Jacob Ward [00:11:43]:
That's really amazing and interesting. But he took the stand specifically to be asked about mus. I mean, about Altman, about various things, but about Altman, he revealed that he was sort of one of the guys who, who he. He put together a dossier on Altman over the course of a year in which he documented what he called, quote, a consistent pattern of lying. That Altman is just a guy that's sneaky as hell. He'll just say one thing to one person, another thing to another person. He just says whatever you want to hear. Basically in that room to get his way is basically what he sort of accused him of.

Jacob Ward [00:12:15]:
And so that just. I can just imagine that for Altman sitting at the defendant's table, that must have just been a heartbreaker to have your, like, hero be like, yeah, he's

Mikah Sargent [00:12:25]:
a liar, you know, and you think he expected it.

Jacob Ward [00:12:29]:
I mean, he must have on some level, because he knew about. I mean, he, you know, it's why he got fired for that five day period in 2023 is because he put this together. Right. And that came up a lot in the trial was, why did he get fired? How did that work out? You know, like all that stuff you had. Mira Moradi, who was the CTO of OpenAI, she testified about needing him, needing to be fired and how he just was like, again, untrustworthy. You two different board members, Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner, they both testified that he was untrustworthy and about the firing. So a lot of stuff sort of coming up about that. But Sutskever is this guy who's just beyond reproach.

Jacob Ward [00:13:04]:
You cannot even. Musk was like, this guy's Gene, a brilliant person, and at one point said in a tweet, like, even as he was suing OpenAI, Musk said in a tweet, Ilya is something. I'm paraphrasing here, but something like Ilya is a extremely moral and brilliant thinker. Something like that. Like, you never hear Musk say anything positive about anybody.

Mikah Sargent [00:13:27]:
Yeah, exactly.

Jacob Ward [00:13:27]:
Not even his own kids. You Know, and, and, and he loves Sutskever. And so to have Sutskever in there was as close to the sort of word of God as you could get in this trial. And that was interesting. So then another thing and that I, another sort of person in the parade that I loved was Satya Nadella, right, CEO of Microsoft, testifies. It's just great to watch these people have to come into this squalid little courthouse and raise it right?

Mikah Sargent [00:13:52]:
Realize Satya was there.

Jacob Ward [00:13:54]:
Dude, he was there. He like walked in. You know, it's crazy. It's so many of these brilliant people. You know, I don't know about brilliant, but really, really accomplished people. So Nadella's there. Nadella, right. So Microsoft had formed this $10 billion arrangement with OpenAI that basically made it so that OpenAI no longer, longer needed Musk.

Jacob Ward [00:14:11]:
And that's part of what Musk is angry about. And he's, you know, suing in part, sort of Microsoft by extension. So anyway, he, he, Nadella's there and he's like a guy who knows everybody in the bar fight but has no interest in being part of the fight, is trying so hard to be like, I know these guys, but I'm not swinging. I don't know anything, but you know these guys. I didn't come with these guys. I got, I got my own ride home, you know, like. And so he just kept saying, like, oh, I don't know about that. Like, oh, I don't know.

Jacob Ward [00:14:40]:
You know, he just like would many sides, really, which was so funny. And while all the other guys are trying, are falling all over themselves to say that they were not about money and they're all about saving the world and improving the world. And this is a non profit in spirit, if not in letter, blah, blah, blah, blah. Nadella doesn't care about any of that. He's like, he's like, we're serving customers, we're making money, we have a strategic investment. You know, he, at one point he said this phrase that really stuck with me. He was like, we had to decide what, where to put Microsoft's quote, scarce resources.

Mikah Sargent [00:15:13]:
Scarce.

Jacob Ward [00:15:14]:
Yeah, he used that phrase a lot. Where to put the scarce resources of Microsoft. And it, and what it makes you realize is how a guy like that perceives the world, which is you. And I would think that you have this endless amount of money to play with. The company has a $3 trillion market cap, right? But the reason you become CEO is because you think of that stuff as limited. You think of yourself as on a very tight Budget and that you cannot mess up with that money. And I was. And I.

Jacob Ward [00:15:43]:
For me, it was really good and illustrative to be like, right. That's why these guys stay up all night and take beta blockers and do the thing. You know, do all this crazy stuff. Yeah. Microdose. And do all this stuff. To stay on top of the game is because they consider themselves to be right at the edge of death all the time.

Mikah Sargent [00:16:01]:
That can't be healthy.

Jacob Ward [00:16:04]:
No, dude, I don't think I want this job. This is another thing I learned being in the courtroom.

Mikah Sargent [00:16:08]:
But.

Jacob Ward [00:16:08]:
But it was. But it's interesting that he was interesting just both in that he doesn't have any of this philosophical hand wringing about whether or not we're making something good for the. For the world. While the other guys are talking about literally the fate of the world. He's like, we're talking about customers. We're talking about products. Okay, I gotta go. You know, and he was out.

Jacob Ward [00:16:27]:
So.

Mikah Sargent [00:16:27]:
Yeah, I gotta get back to. Yeah, I gotta get back about everything.

Jacob Ward [00:16:29]:
Yeah, I got back to. Back to the money making.

Mikah Sargent [00:16:32]:
You know, I want to. I want to keep going, but we need to take a quick little break, and then we'll come back because there's a lot here to talk about.

Mikah Sargent [00:16:40]:
All Right, we are back from the break and joined this week by Jake Ward, who has been, as I said before in the room where it's happening, covering the Musk Altman trial. And we're in the midst of. Of kind of looking at the alleged humans with this case. I think, honestly, for me, that's another aspect of it. When you're watching the conversations take place, something that fascinates me is seeing someone's thinking on their face, watching their behavior, and kind of learning a little bit about them and perhaps sort of the way that they go about responding. But something that you touched on is how often it seems to be sort of triggering for these folks who are at the height of something. I don't know if it's the. You know, it's certainly the height of money to hear that perhaps people don't regard them as the most capable individuals or that they can.

Mikah Sargent [00:17:55]:
You talk about sort of. Was there ever a time maybe where you heard a question being asked and you go, oh, I. I can't wait to see how this person responds. And, like, is there shouting that takes place at any time?

Jacob Ward [00:18:09]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:18:09]:
Is there a lawyer whispering in someone's ear?

Jacob Ward [00:18:11]:
No. No shouting. Right. And you're not allowed to talk to counsel when you're testifying. So you're. Especially under cross examination, you have to just like, wing it. So you're just on stage. And so there's, there's.

Jacob Ward [00:18:23]:
But. But they, you know, it absolutely was a fairly, a fairly hostile conversation between a couple of these folks. I mean, like, so Musk certainly had been very irritated by William Savage, who's, Who's Sam Altman's lawyer, who basically just kept trying to say to him, like, you didn't really contribute all that much to OpenAI, right? And. And must be like, well, I gave them a lot of money and my word and my, you know, a single tweet from me is worth a lot and blah, blah, blah. You know, he's like, yeah, but you don't, but you don't contribute any real, like, anything technical, which he just knew would trigger him, and it absolutely did. You could just see Musk just be like, are you kidding me? You know, and the same thing was. Went for Stephen Molo, Musk's attorney in talking to. To Altman is.

Jacob Ward [00:19:08]:
Is saying, you know, but you're not really a. You know, you're not really a. You're not making technical contributions here. And it's the same thing. You know, what would you say you do here? Like that line for office space. It was that question for both of them, like, what do you think you do here? And. And you could just see them both be like, oh, my God, what is my value in the world? You know, And. And so Altman's saying, you know, well, I, I raise money and I introduce people to each other and I arrange for the compute and blah, blah, you know, but desperately trying to, like, list off why he's a valuable person, which is, which is really funny, you know.

Jacob Ward [00:19:42]:
But then, I mean, ultimately the biggest, the big thing was Altman getting shaken around by Stephen Molo, Musk's attorney, about being a dishonest person and having a huge amount of reputation for being dishonest. So I'll read you a little bit of one of the exchanges. He. He says, he basically. So Molo gets up. This dude is not subtle. He gets right up to, you know, it always starts with, Good morning, Mr. Altman.

Jacob Ward [00:20:10]:
And then, you know, good morning, we met out in the hallway. You. You'll remember. Yes, I remember you. You know, it weird. Like, I'm. I'm. Look at how friendly I am.

Jacob Ward [00:20:19]:
Kind of demonstrations, very strange. And then, and then he says, Mr. Altman, are you completely trustworthy? It's like his first question. Yes, here it is. This is You've got it. I'm reading the same thing here. Are you completely trustworthy? I believe so. And, and, and if you've ever listened to Sam Altman, talk is a long.

Jacob Ward [00:20:38]:
He likes to pause for a long time before he responds. He's.

Mikah Sargent [00:20:41]:
See, that's interesting. Interesting.

Jacob Ward [00:20:42]:
Yeah. His teleprompter's on a delay, and so he's his mental teleprompter. And so he's. He pauses a long time before each one of these. I believe so. Do you always tell the truth? Long pause. I believe I'm a truthful person. And then Molo says, it's just like, it's such classic writing.

Jacob Ward [00:20:56]:
That wasn't my question, sir. Do you always tell the truth? And then Altman has to say, because he's under oath, right? He can't say, no, I don't.

Mikah Sargent [00:21:04]:
Because everyone lies.

Jacob Ward [00:21:05]:
Everyone lies. And he's been shown in testimony after testimony up with that, that he does, that he has lied quite a bit. And so, you know, so he's saying, you know, he says, I'm sure there is some time in my life when I have not. The only time he ever came out with an actual denial was, do you tell lies to advance your business interests? No, no. But then he said, have you misled people with whom you do business? He says, I believe I am an honest and trustworthy business person. That wasn't my question about what you believe. Have you misled people with whom you do business? I do not think so. Would they think so? I can't answer that for other people.

Jacob Ward [00:21:39]:
It went on like that for like 25 minutes where he would walk through like, here's all the testimony of all these people who said that you lied to this person and this person and this time and this time and you know, and Altman's got to just kind of take it. And to his credit, he didn't get angry. He really was. He stayed very calm. Whatever beta blockers he's on there, he's doing a great, they're doing a great job. He's real icy and cool and calm. He's got a great wide eyed. I'm just a guy trying to get to the truth here.

Jacob Ward [00:22:07]:
Kind of act that he, that he does, which I. Multiple people I've spoken to who've spent time with him say he just. That that's an incredible gift he has, is always seeming like this kind of earnest young person when in fact he's telling you something that's untrue or, you know, or telling you exactly what you want to hear. And so that kind of. I don't know, it's just great. Like, he just. He got asked about all these people who said he was a liar. And he.

Jacob Ward [00:22:34]:
His answer each time was like, I have not heard that testimony. The only thing he. The only time he ever showed any kind of flash of irritation is he said. So at one point, he was. He was. Dario Amadai was. Was mentioned and how Dario Amadai has accused him of being dishonest about safety regulations and various things. And Altman said, dario accuses me of many things.

Mikah Sargent [00:22:57]:
Oh, wow.

Jacob Ward [00:22:58]:
Which is interesting. There's a. There's a picture, John. I don't know if it's easy to find, but there's a great picture of them on stage together at. I think it was in the European Union or something, where they refused to hold hands. Musk, sorry, Altman and Amadai. There's a picture of all these AI CEOs with their arms upraised as if they're all on the same soccer team. And Altman and Amadi, or not holding hands in this very obvious and weird way, because they hate those guys.

Jacob Ward [00:23:28]:
They hate each other. They're just, you know, they're so irritated by one another. And these are all people who used to work together closely. Amadi was like the third or fourth hire or something at OpenAI. So huge amounts of just like personal animosity that you could sort of sense out of these people. And then one really weird thing that I. So there are a couple other weird things that jumped out at me. One was there's just this incredibly casual, extremely high self regard that the characters in this have, right? The talking about how valuable your own tweets would be and that kind of thing from Musk you would sort of expect from Musk.

Jacob Ward [00:24:05]:
But at one point, Altman is asked about a memo that came to him from Greg Bottom Brockman and Ilia Sutskever, asking him why it mattered so much that he'd be CEO of OpenAI. And they asked him if it had to do with his, quote, political goals. And Molo, Musk's attorney, asked Altman if that meant that he had wanted to be President of the United states. He said, Mr. Altman, did you want to be President of the United States? And Altman says, I was thinking about running for governor at the time, which is, I believe what they meant there.

Mikah Sargent [00:24:36]:
As if to say, just like, you know, that, oh, yeah, that was that one thing I was doing.

Jacob Ward [00:24:40]:
And as if to say, not like. And as if to say, like, oh, no, no, not president. Just. Just president of the world's fourth largest economy here in California. You know, just this like very casual feeling of that, which was kind of hilarious. And then there was just great stuff about like, what it is to be with Musk and, and be around him and have to deal with him and so forth. So at one point, Altman describes his happiest memory, literally happiest memory he had of working with Elon Musk was some late night meeting in 2018. And, and they said it was that the, that the meeting had gone unusually well.

Jacob Ward [00:25:19]:
And the reason that he knew that is because at the end they spent a long time where Musk just sat there showing all the Altman memes on his phone.

Mikah Sargent [00:25:28]:
Oh, my Lord.

Jacob Ward [00:25:30]:
That, that's like the sign that you're getting along great with Musk is he wants to show you some memes on his phone, you know, and you're just like, oh, the worst. These guys are the. Just to hang out with. It's such a lame party. It's like a party you, you think you want to be invited to, but oh my God.

Mikah Sargent [00:25:45]:
Yeah, they say, what is that? The, the kids say it's the worst blunt rotation.

Jacob Ward [00:25:50]:
It's so funny. Somebody said that. Somebody gave me that comment on a tick tock I did about. They were like, oh, worst blunt rotation ever. It's totally true. That's exactly right. So, and then, sorry, all the other

Mikah Sargent [00:26:01]:
stuff they're on, I can't imagine that I want them also on weed.

Jacob Ward [00:26:04]:
No, I bet they're not. I bet they're not so good on, on weed, if I had to guess. Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, and then the last thing I'll throw at you is there was a lot of weird stuff about Siobhan Zillis. So Siobhan Zillis was on the OpenAI board. She's a mover and shaker in the world. And, and, but she was also working for Musk at the time. And she's like cc'd on most of the later correspondence between OpenAI and Musk.

Jacob Ward [00:26:30]:
And what's so weird is, so Siobhan Zelis was Musk's employee. She was Musk's sort of close advisor. She was, for this period of time, a member of the OpenAI board. And what Altman testified is that he learned in 2021 that, that Zillis had children. But it wasn't until 2022 and by this time there's. The divorce with Altman has really happened for the most part. It wasn't until 2022 that he figured out that Zillis had children with Musk. Zillis is the.

Jacob Ward [00:27:03]:
Is the mother of four of Musk's kids. And in other testimony, a video deposition that she did, she was asked about him as a. As a. Like, what their relationship is, what her relationship with Musk is. And she basically was like, I don't know if I would call it a relationship. Like, and certainly. And she said at one point, like, there were times you could consider romantic, but not many, or something like that. Like, just the weirdness of, like, this is somebody who's a.

Jacob Ward [00:27:32]:
Who's. Who's mothered these children with this guy, but. But doesn't consider them to really have much of a relationship. And yet she is also clearly like, Altman's pipeline into understanding how to deal with Musk's moods, and that's part of why she stayed on the board. So he. He was asked. Altman was asked whether learning that she had Musk's kids changed his view of whether she should be on the board at a time when Musk is, like, actively angry at them and maybe has even filed suit. And she.

Jacob Ward [00:28:06]:
He said, quote, it was a close call for me personally, because she sort of told us that Mr. Musk was playing a more involved role than originally intended and that they were spending more time together. But I think very highly of Ms. Zillis, and I valued her counsel. Also. Part of the reason we had her in this role was to keep things smoother with Elon, and she represented me at the time that they didn't have a personal relationship beyond this, and I trusted her on that. So, like, saying she represented to me at the time that they didn't have a personal relationship beyond the former four kids they have together.

Mikah Sargent [00:28:36]:
Wow.

Jacob Ward [00:28:37]:
You know what I mean? And so just like the. The. The transactional. Like, what is she. What use is she to the board and. And for Musk? Like, what use is she to him?

Jacob Ward [00:28:48]:
And what both of those things are for Zillis. Like. Like I say, like you said, weird blunt rotation. Not. Not a. Not a party I want to spend time in. It's easy.

Mikah Sargent [00:28:57]:
No, not people that I want to hang out with, because just the mind space is just. I can't imagine.

Jacob Ward [00:29:05]:
Yes, the mind space is the right phrase. That's exactly right. Yep. Yep.

Mikah Sargent [00:29:10]:
Jake, you are always a pleasure to get to chat with, and I love that you have been able to attend this in person and tell us about it. There's a lot that you've Been covering over on your site and in your newsletter. If people would like to keep up with your work and see your video and read more about this. Where are the places they go to do that?

Jacob Ward [00:29:34]:
The rivcurrent.com is your place for all things. I do literally everything. Paid subscribers go to everything I do there. I'm on YouTube, I'm on TikTok, I'm on substack for you know, free. Free readers get a little slice of that. But yeah, the rip current.com please come check it out. And Mikah, thank you so much. This is always such a pleasure to be here.

Mikah Sargent [00:29:51]:
Absolutely. Always a pleasure to have you. Thank you so much. All righty folks, we're going to take another quick break before we come back with a familiar face and you all know now by the time I say that, you know it's Jason Howell who will be joining us to give us the lowdown on Google I/O and everything that Google has announced thus far. All right, we are back from the break and as I promised, we are joined now by the wonderful Jason Howell.

Jason Howell [00:30:21]:
Hello. How's it going? Good to see you.

Mikah Sargent [00:30:25]:
It's good to see you. You too.

Jacob Ward [00:30:27]:
It's going well.

Mikah Sargent [00:30:27]:
How are you?

Jason Howell [00:30:29]:
You know, I can't complain. Got a busy week coming up. Next week gonna be going down to Mountain View and check out a little Google IO. And the way Google does things now, they don't just keep their big news on that week, they start a week before. And so it's been. Yeah, it's been kind of crazy.

Mikah Sargent [00:30:45]:
Yeah, I was gonna say I'm. There's a part because as on, on the Apple reporting side of things leading up to, to it there's sort of a dip in what's available and we have to wait for wwdc. And I always get really excited seeing some of the earlier announcements that come by way of Google ahead of IO and this year you have to explain this to me because has it always been called the Android show and like what, what that's because that's what sort of was the pre announcement of many things. So you could start there.

Jason Howell [00:31:26]:
I mean has it always. No, starting last year. Yes. Last year was the first time that they did this where a week ahead of Google I/O they created a prerecorded video full of announcements that are Android related called the Android Show. And I think the reason for this is because this moment in time, as you, you are very well aware, Mikah is you know, AI and everything, artificial intelligence is just sucking up all the oxygen. And so I think My understanding is that it, they wanted Android to have its own place, have its own celebration, its own kind of coming out party for, for the news that that was going to hit and they don't always, you know, they aren't always guaranteed to have that time on stage at Google I/O because of the just the depth of AI research and announcements and everything that they are certainly going to announce next week. So they're giving Android its own time in the spotlight a week before and yeah, this is the second year that they've done that.

Mikah Sargent [00:32:29]:
That makes sense, that makes sense. Now at this event what did we see as the pre announcements? If we just kind of want to go, go through what the company either previewed or revealed and then I'd love to hear kind of your initial reactions to things.

Jason Howell [00:32:48]:
Sure, sure. So I would probably split it into three groups and we'll start with the phone stuff because when we think about Android it's easy to just jump right into the smartphone even though Android is so many more things which we will talk about but on the phone. They made a number of announcements. Yes, most of them have something to do with AI. I mean, I mean it's a theme today in their news. Even though it's an Android news announcement, it still has everything to do with Gemini and all that kind of stuff. Multi step app automations. So basically bringing the ability for Gemini in some way, shape or form.

Jason Howell [00:33:23]:
Still not sure I entirely understand exactly how but being able to kind of bounce between apps that you have installed to carry out tasks for you. They were, you know, they definitely noted though it's not going to go the final step. So if it's a matter of like click here to purchase, it's not going to do that, it's not going to click here to tap. You're going to have to do that as a human. So it does many things for you but not everything for you. Rambler is another feature that they mentioned which is I don't know about you but I Talk to my LLMs a lot nowadays and I've gotten way more comfortable with it and I have often described myself as rambling to the LLM and just talking and not worried about like ums and us and oh, I changed my mind actually could we change that to blah blah blah just no editing, just say the thing however you get there and then in the app, in the keyboard app, the gboard, there will be a button that you press after you do that and it will clean up and just basically synthesize just the thing. That you wanted to say. So if you're texting someone and, you know you have this long sprawling thing, you could shorten it to just the nuggets and still keep it in your voice and that sort of stuff.

Jason Howell [00:34:38]:
Very, very curious to play around with that.

Mikah Sargent [00:34:40]:
I like that, I have to say, because there's. That's something that when I'm thinking about sending a longer message, for example, I have in the past just said, you know what? I'm just going to sit down and record a little audio and send that instead. But here's the thing about that. It's really convenient to do. It's not incredibly convenient to receive. And I used to get from my. One of my younger brothers voice memos all the time. And then I'd go, well, I don't have the time to look at that right now or hear that right now.

Mikah Sargent [00:35:16]:
And then it made me go, I got to quit doing that to people. And so the idea that, again, the reason why I would do it is mostly because I hadn't quite put together the thoughts and I felt like it would come out as I was speaking. And this idea of being able to just do that and then have the actual final message there is a pretty cool idea.

Jason Howell [00:35:36]:
Yeah, I like it. I think it remains to be seen how well it does it and keeps it dialed into the voice, because we've done a lot of, like, you write an email and then you do the little button, and it re kind of types your email to kind of polish it for you. And then often when it does that, it doesn't sound quite like you anymore. And so I'm curious to know how that works within Rambler whenever we get access to that. One of the things that they mentioned about the phone that is easy to write off or sign off because it's just widgets, but is create my widget, which sounds kind of ridiculous. Kind of like, okay, widgets. Yeah, whatever. Widgets are a bygone era.

Jason Howell [00:36:16]:
They're still here. But, like, I don't know, they're not cutting edge, let's just say. But what I think is interesting about this is it uses Gemini and, you know, the natural voice prompt to create a specific widget to what you want that you can put on your home screen. And why I feel like that's more important than just a cool widget feature is it will probably be for some amount of people the first time they experience what we call vibration coding, which is. Oh, you mean I can just like, have an idea for a thing and poof. I've got an app on my home screen that does it now. That's so cool. I think it's going to be an interesting kind of entry point for some people to finally get firsthand experience with that, you know.

Jason Howell [00:36:57]:
And mind you, these are probably people who are not developers at all and be like, oh, that's really powerful. What else could I do? You know? And then your imagination runs wild.

Mikah Sargent [00:37:07]:
Absolutely.

Jason Howell [00:37:08]:
Yeah. Chrome on Android also getting an AI browsing assistant. So Chrome on Android getting more built out with AI that's coming late June paid tiers only. So that's neat. And a few, few other things smarter autofill with Gemini which is okay, I guess Gemini is probably good at that. A toned down material, three expressive design. That's a few things for phones with,

Mikah Sargent [00:37:31]:
with the Chrome or Gemini in Chrome on Android. Something that's really been fascinating to me is I think it's clear to me that developers who work at these companies either do a lot of traveling themselves or the managers to whom they report seem to do a lot of traveling because it's like three things. It's planes, it's, it's ordering like cars. Yeah. And food and like restaurant reservations.

Jason Howell [00:38:10]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:38:10]:
It's always covering those, those same things over and over again and it, those rarely show up for me in my email. And so, you know, it's kind of hard to sort of visualize what that, what that actually looks like. But I wanted to ask you a lot of this stuff again, getting into the agentic space of taking action on your behalf, but the company has already in the last iteration introduced some of that, the taking action on your behalf. And I wanted to know how much of those kinds of features have you used or do you use regularly a feature that you know that, that, that books a reservation at a restaurant or orders pizza for you or any of the stuff where perhaps money is involved. Have you, do you, are you at a trusting place yet for that?

Jason Howell [00:39:13]:
I'm, I mean I'm, I'm convinced enough to play around with it, but I haven't, I haven't bought into it if that makes sense. Like, yeah, like I've tested it and I've played around with it and I'm not too concerned that it's going to make a purchase on my behalf because for the most part, barring any really weird whacked out scenario where the AI just completely goes off the rails, it's going to stop at that purchase point. And if it didn't, well, that would be a great story to cover, right? It probably makes sense, the news. So I feel confident enough that they're. Because they continue to kind of say this when they introduce these features, it will not take that final step. It will not click that button to purchase. So that gives me confidence to at least play around with it. And if it puts a bunch of stuff in my, my, my cart that I didn't care for, the worst thing in the world that I do probably is just remove them from the cart.

Jason Howell [00:40:09]:
Do I rely on them? Do I often order doordash, you know, autonomously? No, I don't. But I think as these features become seeded in ways to which people get curious and start to kind of test with them and their imaginations start to go a little bit more, then maybe that becomes something that people buy into more. You know, it's kind of like with agentic stuff, trust is really important.

Jacob Ward [00:40:37]:
Important.

Jason Howell [00:40:38]:
You as a user have to, A, trust that it's not going to do something wrong, but B, you know, trust that it's got your best interest in mind and there's a whole lot of trust that falls into that. And if it just messes up once and, you know, does that in a way that, that is notable to you, it could take years before you decide to try it again, you know. So I think Google has to get it right and I, I think slow exposure is probably the right way to go.

Mikah Sargent [00:41:04]:
That makes sense. All right, so that's, that's phones. What, what's after phones?

Jason Howell [00:41:11]:
Well, it would be the Google Book, of course, which was the thing that no one apparently saw coming. And I mean, if you really read the tea leaves, you, we would know that something was up because we've been hearing for years now about this aluminium OS which is essentially, you know, being, being created enough out in front of the public that people saw, oh, Google's working on a desktop interface for Android. What is this going to turn into? Is this a replacement of Chrome OS entirely? Which, by the way, it is not. Google went through great lengths. In our interview with Samir Samad, who's the Android president on Android faithful, he basically said, look, no, Chrome OS isn't going anywhere. They wouldn't want Chrome OS to go anywhere because, dang, they're making a lot of money with it. In the education space is one example that works for that. Google Book is a separate kind of step up.

Jason Howell [00:42:05]:
It's running on Android, a modified version of the Android operating system. So Android apps are native to it and it has some Gemini hooks embedded into the experience and in very interesting ways. I'm super compelled to try it out to kind of see like what is this? It's probably not as popular or as powerful as a MacBook Pro. Right. But it's certainly more powerful than Chrome OS and in fact it takes the browser based stuff from Chrome OS and just puts it into here. So it's basically Chrome OS plus, you know what I mean?

Mikah Sargent [00:42:41]:
Yeah, that makes sense. Some of the functionality that I saw with this device and I guess really the operating system was, was really clever. I think about, I think it's, I think it's a Jackie Chan meme and they're sort of like hands going like this and sort of a question of like what's going on and the cursor shake when you are over something and you shake your cursor to learn more about that thing. Yeah. So John just posted it into the discord. That's what it reminded me of and I really like that gestural idea that it's like what is this? And then yeah, you can see and learn more about it. There's some clever stuff that I think Google, I was just talking to Abrar Al Heati of CNET about some of the stuff that we've seen with Google using AI in, in convenient, truly convenient ways of making things a little bit simpler. And I do think that this is one of those situations where you know, it's just, it's very human and I appreciate that because for me being on the outside of Android, you know, especially, I think perhaps not as much now but it used to be really the Tinkerer platform and the sort of like nerdy make every single tiny adjustment platform and that to me gave it more of a, a robotic quality I guess a really sort of techy, not intuitive, maybe a little bit, I don't know, cold.

Mikah Sargent [00:44:33]:
But seeing these interactions and seeing the motion and the color and the joy, there's a joy to this UI that I really appreciate and a very again human aspect of yeah, shaking a cursor, it's just a clever way. So there's no question there. I just think it's cool.

Jason Howell [00:44:55]:
Well, I'm super curious to play around with that. Right. Messing with the pointer in the computer interface, it's a gutsy move because it's been part of the computer experience for. I don't even want to guess but 40ish years, very, very long time. You don't see many people playing around with the function of a pointer. How well does it do it? I mean this was developed with DeepMind so I'm sure that there's some really cool integrations. The idea being you shake it, it kind of turns the cursor into a Gemini mode. And then depending on where the cursor is pointing or what you do with it on the screen, it pulls in that as context or kind of, you know, juggles between these, you know, these two images for Gemini.

Jason Howell [00:45:44]:
I'm not even entirely certain what that's going to be like, but I'm super curious and I give them a lot of credit for deciding to take this thing we all take for granted and have used a very particular way for a very long time and bringing something into it. I just hope that it's good enough, what it gives you is good enough that it warrants it being there at all. And you know, because it could, it could ultimately end up being one of those things. It's like, well, that seemed good on paper and then you use it a handful of times. You're like, well, I could deactivate that if they even let you deactivate that. So I don't know. But I'm very, very curious about it and I think it's one of the key kind of differentiators of what Google Book brings with Gemini embedded into the OS like that.

Mikah Sargent [00:46:25]:
Absolutely. Anything else with Google Book or is it time for the next category?

Jason Howell [00:46:32]:
Yeah, I mean, I think that's about it. I mean create my widget, you know, quick access, immediate file sharing between your Android device and Google Book without, you know, everything's just a lot more seamless from what they're saying and a lot more intentionally connected and not like let's tackle this on after the fact. It's really truly meant to be a companion to your phone and your phone a companion to it. So I'm curious and high end materials based on the limited promo photos that they're showing. So it looks like a nice device too. So I'm very curious about it. The other category that I was going to mention is kind of just like a more category, right? Like you've got random stuff in there. Quick share, airdrop compatibility going into more devices which I'm really happy about and improved I owe to Android and Android to iOS transfer process that covers more ground, includes ESIM connectivity transfer.

Jason Howell [00:47:23]:
Android Auto gets some really cool updates, one of them being the ability to basically expand the interface onto any shape and size of screen. So if you've got like a trapezoidal screen in your car, the interface just fills it all seamlessly and it just looks really neat. I love to see that Gemini Intelligence embedding into there some immersive navigation, a new navigation kind of environment or look and feel, which I think remains to be seen, whether we like that or we just want our maps to be dumb. And some creator focused stuff like screen reactions, which is essentially recording your device while also recording your selfie in the same thing. This is, this is something that creators might have to throw onto a timeline in order to do. And now they can just pick up their phone with this update and boop boop. Record a reaction or whatever the case may be, some Instagram updates as well that improve the image quality, which has been a long standing complaint on Android. So yeah, other bits and pieces there.

Mikah Sargent [00:48:27]:
Nice. We are going to take a little break and then come back with kind of just any other expectations we have for Google I/O as it kicks off in the coming week. Now you, Jason, as you said, will be there in person for the event. Can you tell if someone's not familiar with Google I/O? You know, what are the typical expectations at a Google I/O event? Is there often hardware announced? Is it just a developer event? What's the expectation?

Jason Howell [00:49:02]:
Yeah, I mean that has really changed and transformed over the years. I mean a couple of years ago the expectation was this is an Android event with a little bit of search and a little bit of this, a little bit of that. And now that's just not the case. Now it's an AI event. Right. And also hardware. Right. There was a long time there where if you were going to Google I/O, you were almost assured that you were going to walk out with was some gifted piece of hardware, either the new smartphone that they were releasing or a tablet or a little streaming orb called the Nexus Q.

Jason Howell [00:49:34]:
That kind of stuff just doesn't happen anymore. Google really these days targets Google I/O to be, I would say a couple of things. A, it's a developer conference, right? At the end of the day this is a developer conference. Lots of events, lots of information and announcements, very relevant to developers. The majority of it is relevant in some way, shape or form to developers. And so there's a lot of talks and things like that that happen. But B, I think from a larger scale, I'd say outside of the event itself, it's really a PR arm. It is the keynote, the main keynote that happens next Tuesday.

Jason Howell [00:50:15]:
Everybody in tech press is paying attention to that. This is where Google has saved up an insane list of big announcements related to their biggest efforts that they show off on stage. And so you're guaranteed to get news item after news item that you've either heard about in rumors or in rumor land or hearing about for the first time. And my hunch is that if there is an announcement that has nothing to do with AI, it is a very, very, very small point portion of anything that you hear from the keynote.

Mikah Sargent [00:50:47]:
Absolutely. Now, when it comes to the sort of Google I/O separate from these initial previews, how much more is expected to be on stage versus what we've seen? Because as you mentioned, there's so much that needs to get out there that Google sort of precedes everything, or precedes some. Is it going to be a rehashing of what the Android IO show is, or are we expected to hear, you know, mostly stuff outside of what we've seen thus far?

Jason Howell [00:51:26]:
They might in passing mention a few things here and there dotted throughout as related to something else. For example, Google Book. Right. We know a little bit about the Android operating system basis of the Google Book, but Google really didn't go into much detail this week on what exactly that is, what it means, what it looks like. And like I said, we've been hearing about this Aluminium os. I even reached out to Google when Google Book was announced and I said, so is this aluminium os? And I got silence. That tells me something. So might we hear things that tangentially tie into some of the announcements that we've already gotten? You know, might we get a deeper look into what aluminium OS actually is, just as one example, possibly.

Jason Howell [00:52:12]:
So I don't think that they're going to extend anything. Like taking the Google Book, for example, we got very little in the way of hardware peaks this week. I don't think that next week at Google I/O they suddenly go, and here it is. We're going to have it on display and demo and everything. My hunch is that we heard what we're going to hear about Google, Google, Google Book for a little while. They're going to revisit that later and this event is going to be full of new news and some of it might tie into what we've already heard. But, you know, we're going to hear a ton about Gemini. We're going to hear a ton, you know, we're going to hear somewhat about their kind of environmental commitment because they always spend some time on that.

Jason Howell [00:52:52]:
You know, DeepMind announcements are going to be sprinkled throughout. There's probably going to be a whole section on DeepMind, to be honest. Their VO and their generative efforts, you know, all this stuff is going to share space and they're going to really flex and show like, hey, we are one of the premier frontier AI makers in. In, you know that exists. And here's everything that you should get excited about right now because you're hearing about it for the first time. So I expect a lot of big news.

Mikah Sargent [00:53:19]:
So, big news, then. What. What are you excited about? What are you. The folks that you talk to are really excited about here. And one of the things that I see Google. Do you get these Pixel drops, I think they're called, throughout the year, the company seems to really trickle out lots of new stuff, whereas we see from other tech companies, it's kind of like you get a keynote a few times a year and that's when the stuff, the big stuff happens. Do you feel like Google does a good job of balancing the excitement of new announcements versus this slow rollout? Or it's not even really a slow rollout, but it's a pace rollout. Right.

Mikah Sargent [00:54:12]:
And then after you answer that, then you can kind of tell us, yeah, what we. What we expect to see, what everyone's excited about.

Jason Howell [00:54:20]:
Sometimes they do a good job of it. Sometimes it feels like these, these random little updates that happen, like drops and everything. Like, there are certain drops that'll happen for Pixel, where I'm like, okay, that's legit. Like, that's a strong collection of new features. I'm happy about that. And then there are some that are just way more clearly, like, I guess we got to do a drop. What do you got in your team? Okay, yeah, sure, we'll just. Yeah, okay, put that on the pile.

Jason Howell [00:54:45]:
Yeah, we'll. Well, you know what I mean. And so sometimes it's more successful than others. The thing about it, though, is this moment in time. As anyone who watches or listens this show probably recognizes by now, the pace is. Is crazy. The pace in AI in particular is just madness right now. You can have a new thing.

Jason Howell [00:55:06]:
You can be Google and release Nano Banana Pro, and then a month later, it is completely outdated because the next thing came along and sucked out the oxygen from the room. And now you. And you've already been feeling the pressure for the last month to create the next thing because you've got to have it out in three months just because that's the pace they're all running at right now. So, yeah, I think it really just depends on what that's tied to, I suppose now as far as what we can expect at Google. I o. There are some kind of rumors happening. I mean, almost certainly you can go into it and Be like, well, we're probably going to hear something about whatever the next version of Gemini is, whatever that looks like. And certainly Alex Heath has published today on his site that there is a rumor of a new Gemini model.

Jason Howell [00:55:56]:
He's saying it's on par with something like a GPT 5.5. So nothing Earth shattering, nothing like anthropic mythos level, anything. But the next version, the next point version of Gemini probably going to release. I'm actually excited about the idea that if and when that happens, there has been a lot of rumors kind of pointing to Google working on its kind of it's always on agent solution and right now we're hearing it named Remy or Spark Beta. But it's essentially this idea that an AI agent can be working, say in the Gemini app or on a desktop or whatever, working 24 7, triaging your email, automating workflows, connecting to third party apps from inside the Gemini app, that sort of stuff. And that's really big right now, right? Openclaw was a huge kind of like eye opener for people. Claude Cowork is the, the everyday person's open claw, essentially. And that's opening a lot of people's eyes.

Jason Howell [00:57:01]:
I'm loving Cowork. I make no secret about that on AI Inside. I'm absolutely digging it. And so Google has to have that too. They all kind of have to have that because if they're not on that piece of the pie, then they're missing out because they all feel like they need to keep up with each other. So I think we're going to see something like that for sure.

Mikah Sargent [00:57:22]:
That's exciting. See, this is again where I applaud Google on creating stuff that I think it's very easy to see how people can make use of it. And there's just, it doesn't feel so pie in the sky floaty kind of, you know, we can't wait to see what you do with it. It's more. Hey, here are 15 examples of how you can make use of this and it's real life stuff. And I, I think that, you know, we saw, I think it was last. Was it last year's event where we had. Was it, was it Google I/O that there was a celebrity host?

Jason Howell [00:58:16]:
Oh yeah, it was, it was then had the Tonight Show.

Mikah Sargent [00:58:21]:
Is that Fallon? Kimmel.

Jason Howell [00:58:23]:
Fallon, yeah. Fallon, yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:58:25]:
And yes, that was.

Jason Howell [00:58:27]:
But that was, that that wasn't actually Google I/O now that I think about it, that was like the hardware event that they had.

Mikah Sargent [00:58:32]:
That's right.

Jason Howell [00:58:32]:
That's Right, Yeah. Which was a live event, but it was, it was Fallon. But yeah, they do, they do play around with those, those kind of ideas.

Mikah Sargent [00:58:40]:
Yeah. And I thought that they did a good evening. You know, there were complaints and whatnot and cringe and blah, blah, blah, blah. But what I did appreciate, again, I think you do need to demonstrate to people and show what some of the capabilities are and maybe make it not so much about like the code of it all. And I give Google credit for that. So yeah, that's exciting. Anything else that you, you want to touch on as stuff that we should be ready to look out for at this event?

Jason Howell [00:59:18]:
I'm pretty sure we're going to hear more about smart glasses and it's interesting how fast these things change. Now I'm kind of getting the sense that the general temperature in the room about smart glasses is moving back into glass hole territory and yet. But Google still has its project aura with its partnership with xreal that they showed off last year. I'm guessing we're probably going to see that in some sort of tangible form while we're there. This year, their partnerships with Gentle Monster, with Warby Parker, their upcoming glasses that they still haven't released the meta Ray Ban style glasses with or without display. Google has said that there will be some sort of showcase on smart glasses at Google I/O. So I'm guessing there's going to be some announcements there around either either availability for Aura or its regular glasses, something along those lines. We've also been hearing rumors of Samsung's glasses.

Jason Howell [01:00:19]:
Samsung might actually save that for its own event, but if there's some sort of showcase, maybe Samsung's a part of it. I'm guessing that that has the stage time a little bit to kind of show like hey, check out what else Google and DeepMind are doing with Gemini in the wearable form factor space. I'm very curious about that.

Mikah Sargent [01:00:37]:
Nice. Well, Jason, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us today to not only talk about what Google has already revealed, but also what's coming up. It's been wonderful getting to chat with you and if people would like to follow along with the work that you do, watch your videos, listen to your shows, all that jazz, where are the places they go to do that?

Jason Howell [01:01:04]:
Android Faithful is my Android podcast. AI Inside with Jeff Jarvis is my AI podcast and we actually just announced a daily version of AI it is for patrons only but it's for free right now. So if you go to patreon.com AI inside show join for free and follow. You can check out the show before it becomes a paid thing. I might actually end up opening up like one episode per week that is just for everyone. So follow it, see if you like it, and lots of things to keep me busy these days. That's all. That's where I'll cap it.

Mikah Sargent [01:01:37]:
Awesome. Thank you, Jason. We appreciate it.

Jason Howell [01:01:39]:
Great to see you. Thank you, everybody.

Mikah Sargent [01:01:40]:
You too. All righty, folks, let's take a quick break and we'll come back with a little story of the week. All right, we are back from the break and this is important. This week in what one digital librarian is already calling the biggest student data privacy disaster in history, the edtech platform, Canvas. I am certainly familiar with this tool used by roughly 9,000 schools across more than 100 countries, from kindergartens through major universities. That's right, used. It was hit by a ransomware attack that locked millions of students out during finals week and exposed an enormous trove of personal data. I learned about this on Instagram when a it flew by.

Mikah Sargent [01:02:28]:
On my algorithm, a post from a student showed some email exchanges with a professor. Who the professor was saying, it doesn't matter that you don't have access to Canvas and can't get the study guide. You are going to still have to take the final, you know, on X day. I am not. I can't help you. And that's pretty wild. The hacking group called Shiny Hunters claims it accessed information tied to more than 275 million students and faculty, including billions of private messages exchanged on the platform. Now, you know, I imagine most of those messages are probably just assignments from professors saying, read this piece and respond to it with your thoughts.

Mikah Sargent [01:03:13]:
Regardless, not great. Two pieces frame the story. Jason Kebler at 404 Media broke the scale and the stakes through a conversation with longtime EdTech critic Ian Linkletter and Stephanie Schapper at Cyber News had even more news that Instructure, which is Canvas's parent company, has now confirmed that it paid the hackers and is asking everyone to trust that the stolen data has been destroyed. Of course, there's a lot here. There's the breach itself, there's the ransom, what was actually taken, and of course, the much bigger question of what happens when one company sits on the academic lives of hundreds of millions of people. So let's talk about how that one person, that one individual, the digital librarian who's worked in ed tech for 20 years, says that this is the biggest student data privacy disaster in history. This. This Ian Linkletter, who is this digital librarian is actually known because Ian exposed privacy concerns in a software called Proctorio, which was a test proctoring software.

Mikah Sargent [01:04:21]:
That company sued him but then eventually dropped the case. He did support Blackboard, the tool that was once. Maybe that's what I used, maybe I didn't use Canvas. Now I'm thinking about it, I think it was Blackboard, but we may have changed from Blackboard to Canvas at this university. Regardless. Then Canvas came along in I think 2022 for linklettr and in doing so he says watch the whole industry shift from what he calls scrappy little self hosted learning management system app that ran on local services, local servers rather to this centralized US based cloud model. Now the point of that is that the hack wasn't just bad luck. It's what happens when every school's data is placed in one basket.

Mikah Sargent [01:05:12]:
Before, it wasn't like this. If you had these local servers and you had this local infrastructure and everybody was working with their own thing, then it was not as easy to have this huge target here. Having the centralization maybe made it easier and cost saving for universities and schools. But the problem is now there's one place to look. That said, let's talk about what was actually taken. So in structure the company, their public line is that the exposure is limited. Worry not. The exposure is limited because usernames, email addresses, course names, enrollment information, student ID numbers and private messages exchanged on the platform, that's all that was taken.

Mikah Sargent [01:05:57]:
The company has been explicit that passwords, Social Security numbers, financial information, grades, coursework submissions and student files were not exposed. And that seems good. But let's think about what's actually in a Canvas message thread because Linklettr talks about this in a chunk of the interview over at 404 Media, talking about the what students routinely tell instructors through the platform. They will talk about medical circumstances, they'll talk about accessibility accommodations, they'll talk about disputes, they'll talk about sexual assault allegations, they'll talk about all sorts of stuff using Canvas as the platform because that's where the professors are looking. Well, that's the data that got out. Mohammed Yahya Patel, who is a cybersecurity advisor, made another point to Cyber News, saying unlike a credit card that can be canceled, a child's identity and educational record follows them. And that said, it's still, you know, out there in the world. So what happened when the company was faced with the choice of continuing to not be able to access the data or regain access to the data? Well, on Monday, as we record this on Thursday, May 14, Instructure CEO, excuse me, Steve Daly confirmed in a blog post that the company paid.

Mikah Sargent [01:07:36]:
They don't say how much, but they do say that in return they got the stolen data. Plus digital confirmation of data destruction, plus assurances that no customer will be extorted publicly or individually. In fact, one Shiny Hunters representative told Reuters, quote, data is deleted, gone. The company and its customers will not further be targeted or contacted for payment by us. But we have to be mindful of the fact that this is the word of a ransomware gang. Cyber News quotes the standard expert caveat that payments to extortion groups don't guarantee that data is destroyed. And in fact, the FBI Cyber division put out its own PSA to victims saying if you are contacted directly by anyone claiming to have your data, we recommend you not send payment or respond to their demands. The FBI guidance and instructors payment obviously point in opposite directions.

Mikah Sargent [01:08:40]:
Now let's how, how did this happen? Where did this happen? What happened? Well, it seems to be that the technical entry point is I think kind of embarrassing because of the scale of the damage in structure. Went ahead and said what happened. It disclosed that the hackers got in by exploiting a vulnerability tied to Canvas's free for teacher accounts. This is a no cost tier that will let individual instructors spin up a Canvas environment without having to go through an institution. That feature is currently shut down. But the company says or and also the company says that it revoked privileged credentials and access tokens. It did a whole bunch of other stuff to try to mitigate this, but a free lightly gated on ramp which is supposed to get more teachers onto the platform was the way and the door into the systems holding data on hundreds of millions of people. So what do we do when we're balancing growth model and security model? It seems that in this case the balance was unbalanced.

Mikah Sargent [01:09:51]:
So now it comes down to what happens next. What will the group who stole this data and allegedly deleted this data do? We don't know yet. We have to wait and see. And students have to wait and see what information of theirs has been accessed and whether or not, you know, private and and important data as part of those messages is out there as well. Ultimately, the company needed to move quickly to get all of its customers back into the platform, but at the same time choosing to pay and running the risk of this being an ongoing issue if the Shiny Hunters group continues to to reach out and say, hey, we've got this data still, so pay us again. We don't know if that's going to happen. It is the era of ransomware. It is the era of AI phishing.

Mikah Sargent [01:11:02]:
And this I think is incredibly frightening. I'm glad that I no longer have a Canvas account, as far as I know where I have shared, you know, information that I'd rather not have out there. Students should of course wait for or look for communication from their own universities or education institutes and also be on the lookout for more communication from the company that is in that owns Canvas. I've already forgotten what it's called. Instructure. Look for more information from Instructure on next steps and kind of ongoing recommendations for how to protect that. Folks is going to bring us to the end of this episode of Tech News Weekly. I want to thank you all for being here with us today, for tuning in.

Mikah Sargent [01:12:01]:
It's always a pleasure to have you here. If you would like to if you're not subscribed to the show, you can subscribe to the show in audio and video formats at twit.tv/tnw. You can follow me online @mikahsargent on many social media networks or head to chihuahua.coffee. That's C H I H U A H U A.coffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. Thank you so much for being here. Catch you again next week for another episode of Tech News Weekly.