The Era of Experience

AI Inside for Wednesday, April 23, 2025

Lot's of interesting stuff this week, including Google’s antitrust trial and the wild idea of OpenAI owning Chrome, Perplexity’s big moves with Motorola and Samsung, and the Academy finally weighing in on AI and the Oscars.

But first... a big shout out to our Patron of the Week, Dan Merchant! If you want to support the show, head to patreon.com/aiinsideshow.

Check out this week’s episode: https://aiinside.show/episode/the-era-of-experience

Google’s Antitrust Trial: Chrome on the Chopping Block?

Google’s antitrust trial is now in the punishments phase after being found guilty of unlawful practices in online search and advertising in the US. The DOJ is pushing for Google to sell off its Chrome browser—and you better believe there are companies that would love to own it. OpenAI’s head of product Nick Turley even testified that they’d be interested. OpenAI also tried to partner with Google for ChatGPT’s search tech, but Google declined. Pretty easy to imagine why OpenAI would want Chrome: embedding their own AI into such a dominant browser would be a huge win, especially with their agentic AI ambitions.

Perplexity’s Big Device Deals

Perplexity is working on some big deals with Motorola and Samsung. Motorola could announce a partnership as soon as tomorrow, with Perplexity preloaded on Moto devices (though Gemini will likely still be present). This would bring the option of others. Samsung is also in early talks with Perplexity for possible integration into their OneUI Android OS—options range from default assistant, preloaded app, or a featured choice in the Galaxy Store. Interesting timing, considering the US v Google case revealed Google’s two-year contract with Samsung for “enormous sums” to preinstall Gemini.

Demis Hassabis Predicts AI Curing All Disease

Did you catch Demis Hassabis on 60 Minutes? There were a lot of familiar refrains from our recent interview with Yann LeCun, especially about AGI being at least ten years away. Hassabis predicted AI could potentially cure all diseases within the next decade. They talked about DeepMind’s AlphaFold, which mapped over 200 million protein structures in a year—equivalent to a billion years of traditional research. Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas agrees, calling Hassabis a genius and saying he should get all the resources needed to make this happen.

Trump Administration Eyes AI in K-12 Education

The Trump administration is considering a draft executive order to integrate AI into K-12 education across the US. In its early form, it would bring AI into teaching and admin tasks, and create programs using AI through partnerships with private companies and nonprofits. The aim: promote foundational AI literacy. This feels like an effort to keep up with countries like China, who are pushing AI in education. I’m conflicted—on one hand, it’s an important inflection point; on the other, it feels so sudden and drastic to go this deep so quickly.

Google Researchers Propose the “Era of Experience” in AI

Let’s talk AI generations—or maybe it’s less confusing to say AI eras. First, there was the “Simulation era” (think AlphaGo and reinforcement learning). Then came the “Human Data Era,” dominated by internet-scale data and transformers—where we are today. Now, Google researchers David Silver and Richard Sutton are proposing the “Era of Experience.” Their new paper says the current era has hit its limits due to data scarcity. In the new era, agents generate their own data by interacting with and learning from the real world, developing capabilities beyond current boundaries. And yes, this could lead to AGI. Is this a Google diss of OpenAI, as BI’s Alistair Barr suggests?

Cluely: The AI Tool for Cheating on Everything

A 21-year-old former Columbia University student has raised $5.3 million in seed funding for his startup Cluely, an AI tool designed to help users secretly “cheat on everything”—from exams to interviews to sales calls (and even first dates, as shown in a pretty creepy promo video). The founders originally built Interview Coder at Columbia to cheat during technical interviews, got suspended, and dropped out. They defend Cluely as being like calculators or spellcheck, but the app’s premise is raising a lot of eyebrows.

Oscars Officially Allow Generative AI

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has officially updated its rules to allow films using generative AI to compete for Oscars. They say AI or other digital tools “neither help nor harm” a film’s nomination chances, but emphasize that human creativity and involvement will be more heavily considered. Filmmakers won’t have to disclose AI use, though that had been considered. This acknowledges AI’s growing influence in creative work, but also underscores the importance of human involvement and artistic merit.

Please, Thank You, and OpenAI’s Energy Bill

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared that users saying “please” and “thank you” to ChatGPT results in tens of millions of dollars in operational costs. Every word typed into the chatbot adds to energy costs. Of course, he couldn’t resist joking that it’s still a good idea to be nice—just in case the robot has mercy on your soul someday. This got a lot of attention, but really, is this a big joke? Are short niceties really the problem, or is it the massive data dumps people feed into LLMs?

Thank you for watching and reading!

HUGE thank you to Executive Producers on the Patreon: DrDew, Jeffrey Marraccini, WPVM 103.7 in Asheville NC, Dante St James, Bono De Rick, Jason Neiffer, and Jason Brady!!

Jeff’s Plug: jeffjarvis.com

Jason’s Plug: linktr.ee/JasonHowell

Everything you need to know about this show can be found at our site: aiinside.show

If you love this show, PLEASE leave a review in Apple Podcasts or give it a rating wherever you get your podcasts.