Manus: Revenue, Origin, and Controversy

This episode is sponsored by Your360 AI. Get 10% off through January 2026 at Your360.ai with code: INSIDE.

Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis unpack AI consolidation as Nvidia licenses Groq's fast inference chips and Meta buys Manus for $2 billion. Growing anti-AI sentiment over jobs, mental health, and politics emerges alongside OpenAI's high-stakes preparedness role. Finally, Jason and Jeff reflect on 2025's jagged progress and 2026's agent and surveillance shifts.

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CHAPTERS:

• 0:00 - Start
• 3:27 - Nvidia, joining Big Tech deal spree, to license Groq technology, hire executives
• 4:50 - Explaining the Groq deal
• 15:11 - Meta just bought Manus, an AI startup everyone has been talking about
• 16:50 - 3 reasons buying Manus could give Meta a much-needed AI boost
• 27:41 - An Anti-A.I. Movement Is Coming. Which Party Will Lead It?
• Americans Hate AI. Which Party Will Benefit?
• 29:46 - Bernie Sanders criticizes AI as ‘the most consequential technology in humanity’
• 45:11 - ‘This will be a stressful job’: Sam Altman offers $555k salary to fill most daunting role in AI
• 47:15 - * Sell It Before You Make It: Revolutionizing E-Commerce with Personalized AI-Generated Items
• 51:27 - * What Human-Horse Interactions may Teach us About Effective HumanAI Interactions
• 52:27 - * FakeParts: a New Family of AI-Generated DeepFakes
• 55:45 - Karpathy's year in review
• 58:37 - https://hbr.org/2025/12/the-hbr-charts-that-help-explain-2025
• 1:04:29 - Jason:
  1. Love/Hate and Confusion (people don't know how they really feel about AI)
  2. General agents show potential but need a LOT of work
  3. AI for companionship
• 1:05:39 - Jason:
  1. How productive ARE we really?
  2. AI Shopping moves beyond the demo
  3. A budding surveillance problem

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