The Big Tech Show

This week, Adrian sits down for an exclusive chat with Ryan Smith, the charismatic Utah founder of the €2bn software firm Qualtrics.As well as being one of the fastest growing tech companies in the world, Smith is on a mission to battle cancer. He started his company when he quit college to look after his father, who was diagnosed with cancer. While his dad survived, Qualtrics’ Irish boss Dermot Costello passed away earlier this year from cancer. (Costello, a huge presence in the Irish tech industry, spoke about this at length in a written interview with Adrian in January when he new he had only days to live. You can read it in full here: https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/news/tech-boss-choosing-to-define-his-life-by-optimism-not-illness-36456505.html)Smith talks about Costello’s importance to him personally and to Qualtrics and explains why the company has named its new Dublin headquarters after Costello.He also talks about his zeal for ‘5 For The Fight’, the $50m campaign he set up to battle cancer via research and how the Irish chapter has already raised close to €200,000 in less than a year.Smith also talks about the “underbelly” of the tech boom, which comes as in the form of soaring rents and property prices.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Adrian and the panel discuss the thorny question of whether social media services should be allowed — or obliged — to kick people off for airing views and opinions that are considered extreme or dangerous.It’s an issue that Twitter is currently hamfistedly trying to deal with in the case of Alex Jones, the American conspiracy theorist whose InfoWars channel has been accused of stirring up violent sentiment through its broadcasts and editorials. (Jones has argued that the September 11th terrorist attacks in the US were “an inside job” and that the Sandy Hook massacre, which killed innocent children, never happened.)Facebook and YouTube have kicked Jones and Infowars off. Are they right?Is this a question of freedom of speech or sensible policing by the social networks?Joining Adrian to debate the issue are Constantin Gurdiev, a professor of finance and a former editor of Business & Finance, and Jason O’Mahony, a political pundit and regular columnist with the Times Ireland Edition and Sunday Times.Gurdiev argues that it’s an overstep on the part of the social networks to ban voices, even ones as repugnant as Jones, as social networks are public spaces now.O’Mahony says that it’s proportionate to ban characters like Jones.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

They came to Dublin to seek success and fortune.This week, Adrian Weckler sits down with two ambitious, successful young entrepreneurs who have one thing in common: they came to Dublin for the promise of its tech industry.What did they find? Is Dublin the real tech capital they had heard about? Can you make it big here? What about those who say that Dublin is just a glorified big outsourcing centre for multinationals?American Austin Spivey (head of operations for Wia Technologies) and Sergei Lyubka (co-founder and CTO Of Cesanta) give a frank assessment of what’s good and bad about Dublin.Unsurprisingly, accommodation comes across as a nightmare.“I’ve found it harder to get an apartment here than in San Francisco,” says Spivey. “I would say that it’s really tough.”On the other hand, the quality of the people in Dublin and the number of other companies performing at a high level is a big draw, say Spivey and Lyubka.“Dublin is a proper tech capital,” says Lyubka. “Most of our market is the US so we could locate anywhere but Dublin is where we want to be.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week Adrian Weckler looks at the list of sins Facebook is again having to answer for. Joined by political correspondent Laura Larkin and business editor Donal O’Donovan, the panel assesses Facebook’s excuses to an Irish government committee and looks at what might happen in the short term. Will there be a Digital Safety Commissioner? Will any political regulation actually materialise? And do people really care about all the hoopla around Facebook in the first place?The matter of a fresh tech bubble is also explored, partially triggered by Facebook’s huge fall in valuation after its earnings report last week. But are today’s tech companies really overvalued or is this just more doom-mongering by commentators hoping to be correct at some point? The panel looks at the companies involved and the basic factors that could prove or disprove the existence of bloated valuations.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There is a downside to tech cities. On the US west coast, where the biggest tech companies have their headquarters, there is also terrible homelessness.In this podcast episode, Adrian goes to Seattle, arguably America’s fastest-growing tech metropolis.He poses the question; why is homelessness is so bad in a city that’s booming so much?While Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing and other huge firms soar, so does the number of people in tent cities alongside roads in the city.It’s a dystopian scenario. Adrian asks the leaders of local homelessness organisations why it’s happening and talks to one local politician about the connections between big tech companies and the poverty problem.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Having tested dozens of handsets this year, Adrian Weckler gives his verdict on what the best cameraphone on the market is at present.It comes down to a battle between three models: Huawei’s P20 Pro, Apple’s iPhone X and Samsung’s Galaxy S9 Plus. Adrian picks the winner, the runner up and the also-ran, as well as a budget alternative.Adrian also looks at some of the best summer technology gadgets on the market right now, including the best new drone, portable power bank and travel camera.Adrian also asks an awkward question: should the biggest tech companies be doing more to get involved with local communities in Ireland?He looks at the cases of Google, Facebook and Apple and compares them to a time 100 years ago when giant companies like Guinness felt a deeper responsibility to helping out in the communities they operated in.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Adrian gets a behind-the-scenes tour of Microsoft’s campus headquarters in Redmond, Seattle.This includes a preview of the latest in he company’s ‘mixed reality’ headset, Hololens. It also includes a discussion on the ethics and future of artificial intelligence, which Microsoft is laying great emphasis on.The company also lays out some futuristic plans, including a data centre under the sea.And it gives a complete rundown of what the office of the future might look like, including giant collaborative touchscreens and meetings controlled by voice assistants.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Adrian Weckler talks to two women directing crucial operations in two of the world’s biggest tech companies.The Big Tech Show travelled to Seattle to meet Emma Williams, the Dubliner who’s now Microsoft’s corporate vice president for Office Products Group.As she tells Adrian, it was originally the study of Old Norse and Anglo Saxon English in Trinity College that gave Williams a propensity to learn open source code.20 years on, Williams is directing some of Microsoft’s most important products, having left her mark on Bing, artificial intelligence and one of its newest initiatives, Microsoft Teams.Adrian then met Emily Vacher, Facebook’s director of trust and safety.A former FBI agent, Emily recounts why she joined America’s famed law enforcement agency and how that led to a career in Facebook. She also talks about the tech giant’s latest initiative in Ireland, where Facebook has teamed up with An Garda Siochana to distribute alerts whenever there is a credible threat of a child being abducted.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How has it come to a situation where a big tech company announcing 1,000 new jobs is freaking people out?This week’s Amazon jobs announcement has led to a backlash from people who feel it will put extra pressure on rents and infrastructure in the capital.“Where will they live?”“Oh great, even higher rents...”“Why are these jobs all in Dublin?”“How many will come from abroad?”20, 10 or even five years ago, big job announcements were seen as a huge boost to the country.Today, they’re seen as a threat.Adrian Weckler and Irish Independent environment editor Paul Melia discuss the origins of the problem and potential solutions.The resentment appears to come from those trying to buy a home or rent an apartment. The already sparse stock of available accommodation gets thinner and thinner. A two-bedroom terraced ex-council home that sold for €280,000 three years ago now costs €400,000. A 450 square foot one-bed apartment that cost €900 now costs €1,200.Engineers can afford to pay this. Retail or service industry workers can’t.At the heart of the problem is the feeling that we haven’t gotten our act together on housing and infrastructure.So more and more of us are being squeezed out of parts of the city where rents and house prices are rocketing.But instead of blaming ourselves (planners, politicians, councillors, lawyers and countless Nimby-addled community associations) for the Wild West property market, we’re turning on companies offering new jobs.If only multinational firms would stop coming in with these jobs, things might be easier for ‘ordinary people’.Get lost, Google. Feck off, Facebook. Adios, Amazon.But are we that bad at steering our own country?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“Are robots actually becoming intelligent?”“Is my job under threat from intelligent machines?”“How close are Google, Amazon and Apple to giving me a real assistant?”“Is Elon Musk right that machines are going to wake up and start killing us?”These are the practical questions that dominate today’s discussions around artificial intelligence.Adrian Weckler sits down with AI expert and founder of SoapBox Labs, Patricia Scanlon, to go through dozens of ordinary questions about what will now happen in normal life with AI on the rise.The two also discuss the latest developments in voice recognition technology, including the question over whether we should have a right to know when we’re talking to a chatbot.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.