Hello! This is The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of The Verge... and your life. Every Friday, Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn make sense of the week's tech news with help from our wide-ranging staff. Join us every week for a fun, deeply nerdy, often off-the-rails conversation about what's happening now (and next) in technology and gadgets.
AGI is whatever you want it to be
OpenAI announced its next big model, GPT-6 Astra, and also, by the way, that AGI is here now.
Today on The Vergecast, we've got an all-star panel to break down the news of the week.
First, senior AI reporter Hayden Field joins us to talk about our supposed AGI era and Nvidia's acquisition of Hugging Face. Then, our friend Joanna Stern pops in to talk about new Apple CEO John Ternus, old Apple CEO Tim Cook, and to, most importantly, speculate on the format of next week's Apple keynote.
We wrap things up with a super-special lightning round from the IFA electronics show in Berlin. Senior reviewer Jennifer Pattison Tuohy and editor Dominic Preston each pick out the five most interesting gadgets they saw at the show.
And two more things: Vergecast producer Travis Larchuk pops in to tell his tale of identity theft woe and warn you that he isn't the one DMing you on Twitter to ask you to be on The Vergecast. Plus, Brendan Carr is a dummy.
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0:00 Welcome
00:46 Fake Travis warning
03:01 OpenAI's Astra model
05:45 Safeguards and delays
08:55 Opaque recurrence fears
13:08 What Astra does well
18:08 Access tiers and rollout
19:53 Nvidia buys Hugging Face
23:04 Is this really AGI
26:28 AGI vibes and Microsoft clause
32:17 Apple event preview
33:41 Ternus keynote politics
39:43 Keynote Vibes Shift
40:23 Tim Cook Era Review
44:56 Services And Fees Machine
47:15 Phil Schiller Steps Back
49:52 Event Predictions Fold And AI
55:43 Siri AI Real Use Cases
58:32 Smart Home Display Rumors
59:47 Bets And Keynote Structure
01:05:19 Brendan Carr Is A Dummy
01:09:23 IFA Lightning Round
01:10:49 Philips Hue Smart Lighting
01:11:03 Hue Rope Light Rave
01:11:44 Sticker Shock Pricing
01:13:03 Xiaomi Wide Foldable
01:15:43 Dyson Camera Toothbrush
01:20:31 Tecno Bezelless Concept
01:22:42 Local AI Smart Home Hub
01:27:09 MacBook Neo Clones
01:29:35 Homey Dial Controller
01:33:39 Acer DualPlay Handheld
01:36:19 Dreame Humanoid Robot
01:39:44 Packard Bell Revival
01:42:17 Wrap Up And Credits
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