This week on Uncanny Valley, hosts Brian Barrett and Zoë Schiffer discuss the highlights from Nvidia’s annual developer conference, and why Tesla recently got in trouble with some of its most loyal fans online. Plus, Meta’s initial decision to shut down Horizon Worlds VR on the Quest headset signals the end of the metaverse dream. (Meta has since stepped that back, saying it will keep the platform on limited support for the “foreseeable future.”)
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You can follow Brian Barrett on Bluesky at @brbarrett and Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer. Write to us at [email protected].
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Transcript
Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.
Zoë Schiffer: Brian, hello. Very exciting to have another way to talk to you when I’m not pinging you on Slack every five seconds.
Brian Barrett: It’s great, because Slack doesn’t have the voice part.
Zoë Schiffer: It doesn’t.
Brian Barrett: I will say: very sad that Leah won’t be a part of that journey today.
Zoë Schiffer: I know. It is really sad, but when the Leah’s away, the mice will play, and we will be talking about topics that Leah hates, so just wait.
Brian Barrett: And to be clear, she’ll be back next week. She’s just sick.
Zoë Schiffer: Yeah.
Brian Barrett: It’s allergy season.
Zoë Schiffer: Welcome to WIRED’s Uncanny Valley. I’m Zoë Schiffer, WIRED’s director of business and industry.
Brian Barrett: I’m Brian Barrett, executive editor.
Zoë Schiffer: This week on the show, we’re diving into Nvidia’s annual developer conference, why some Tesla influencers are fleeing the brand, and why Meta has finally shut down Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest. So to start us off, this week, Nvidia had its annual developer conference in San Jose. This is the big event in the AI industry. Some people even call it the Super Bowl of AI. Developers go, CEOs, researchers, WIRED reporters—and we’re all waiting to hear what CEO Jensen Huang is going to tell us about the future of the company.
Brian Barrett: One thing that’s interesting about the Nvidia conference too, is I feel like so much of it is business-facing. It’s not a lot of stuff that you, as an AI consumer or someone who plays around with Claude, would necessarily connect with. One thing, with a grain of salt, because this is someone who stands to make this money, but Jensen did say the revenue opportunity for artificial intelligence chips just at Nvidia might reach at least a trillion dollars through 2027.
Zoë Schiffer: Pocket change.
Brian Barrett: Pocket change, I mean, really, for Nvidia at this point. One thing that was really interesting: He introduced a new product. I always like when there’s an actual product tied to this rather than the promise of a product. A while ago, Nvidia struck a licensing deal with a company called Groq, not to be confused with the occasionally—