Slate Money Money Talks: Battle of the AI Bots
36 snips
Sep 16, 2025 
Join Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Rivlin as he unpacks the thrilling competition among tech giants like Microsoft and Google in the AI sector. Rivlin discusses the emotional connections users form with AI, spotlighting the highs of GPT-4 and the letdowns of GPT-5. He navigates the contrasting views of techno-optimism and skepticism regarding AI's future, emphasizing the ethical dilemmas and job market impacts. With insights drawn from decades of tech coverage, he offers a nuanced outlook on the evolving landscape of artificial intelligence.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
AI Is A Trillion-Dollar Arms Race
- AI development is now a multi-trillion-dollar arms race dominated by big players who can fund huge compute and talent costs.
- Startups struggle to compete because training models requires massive data, compute, and cash that incumbents already control.
Hoffman's Inflection AI And The Pi Chatbot
- Reid Hoffman emailed announcing he was co-founding a new AI startup focused on emotional intelligence called Inflection AI.
- Gary Rivlin spent time with the team and describes their chatbot Pi as overly friendly but intentionally personality-driven.
Personality Is A Competitive Edge
- Bot personality and emotional intelligence are becoming key differentiators in the chatbot wars.
- Teams tune tone carefully to avoid being overly saccharine or emotionally flat while keeping users engaged.
