Azeem Azhar's Exponential View
The problem with Altman’s “gentle singularity,” Apple’s AI missteps, and Google’s fading ad model | Live with Azeem Azhar
18 Jun 2025
Broadcasting live from Paris, I tackle three massive technology stories that are reshaping our digital future. From Apple's stunning interface redesign to the collapse of traditional search advertising, and Sam Altman's vision of an AI singularity that's already begun - this episode captures the tectonic shifts happening in tech right now.I cover:(1:32) WWDC 2025: Apple’s AI challenges and new UI(6:06) The decline of Google’s ad model(10:08) Sam Altman’s Gentle Singularity essay(19:37) Live audience Q&A(19:45) Is the singularity really about Altman?(22:13) Is France carrying Europe’s AI dreams?(24:58) Are you seeing promising AI hardware?(27:42) How will AI change software pricing?Our new showThis was originally recorded for “Friday with Azeem Azhar”, a new show that takes place every Friday at 9am PT and 12pm ET. You can tune in through my Substack linked below.The format is experimental and we’d love your feedback, so feel free to comment or email your thoughts to our team at [email protected]’s links:Substack: https://www.exponentialview.co/Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azhar?originalSubdomain=ukTwitter/X: https://x.com/azeemProduction by supermix.io and EPIIPLUS1 Ltd. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Full Episode
So the three things I wanted to talk about today, number one, how do we make sense of Apple's announcements to the Worldwide Developer Conference earlier this week? The second, how should we make sense of increasing data that is showing that Google is referring less traffic? traffic to websites, that there's a different consumer behavior emerging as people use, in particular, chat GPT.
And the third thing is to reflect on Sam Altman's essay, The Gentle Singularity. Now, I just want to give you a sense of how seismic and titanic each of those issues are. Apple is the biggest consumer hardware company in the world. It's incredibly profitable. It is renowned for stunning products. And people are really confused with what happened at Worldwide Developer Conference.
Google, Google's ad model has funded the web for 20 years. And there are questions about what happens next. And finally, Sam Altman, who is the CEO of the most consequential company of the moment, OpenAI, has gently said, hey, we're heading towards a singularity of self-replicating machines. And I use the word gently deliberately. He calls it the gentle singularity.
So three massive things, each one of them. would be a huge topic. We're going to do them in about four minutes each. Please be ready for questions. So let's talk about Apple and the Worldwide Developer Conference. So we know what's happened here. Apple doesn't seem to have anything going for it in terms of AI capabilities. I have been an Apple customer since 1982.
We are looking at a long period of time. You know, when I first got an Apple, Ronald Reagan was in the White House and the Soviet Union was the Soviet Union. And I pretty much owned computers from that company for four decades. And it was incredibly underwhelming. to see what came out of Worldwide Developer Conference.
It was underwhelming to see that Apple is really struggling with making sense of AI. And many people quite understandably looked at the recent Apple paper on intelligence and reasoning models, where Apple's researchers essentially said, hey, these AI models can't really reason without the PS. By the way, Apple has completely flubbed its efforts in AI. I'm sure at some point they'll get it right.
And what came out of the Apple Developer Conference was this new interface called the Liquid Interface, which looks quite odd. Looks quite odd because it looks very un-Steve Jobs, and I encourage you to do some Googling, if you still do that, and say, what does the Apple Liquid Interface look like?
I was thinking about this and, you know, in a sense, I think what Apple has done is try to think about what's coming next. Of course, they have these deep, deep issues with being wildly behind in AI. You know, the big AI companies say they're months away from artificial general intelligence. And Apple's AI amounts to being able to merge a sloth emoji with a light bulb emoji.
But what Apple showed in the Liquid interface was a vision for what interfaces might look like. in a post-iPhone world, in a world where we might have more ambient computing, we might be looking at the world through something mediated by an AI system or a software system. And that recognition of ambient computing starting to become the modality of use is a really, really important recognition.
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