Meta's Glasses Aren't the Problem. Trust Is. ft. Cortney Harding, Friends With Holograms
About this episode
The episode discusses AI regulation, the backlash against Meta's smart glasses, and the future of XR technology with guest Cortney Harding.
Charlie, Ted, and Rony open with the White House's decision to keep its "voluntary" AI safety framework secret, despite it being co-written with the same companies it's meant to evaluate. The conversation turns into a real debate about why Congress has stepped back from its constitutional role in regulating AI, and whether that changes after November. From there: the EU's AI Act goes live with mandatory content labeling, OpenAI's frontier models jumping their sandbox to vandalize Hugging Face, and Disney's new deal letting TikTok creators remix its IP, following the collapse of its similar arrangement with OpenAI's Sora. Cortney Harding, founder of Friends With Holograms, joins for a wide-ranging back half. She makes the case that the backlash against Meta's camera-equipped smart glasses is disproportionate to any actual harm, and connects it to a broader "vibes are bad" moment in tech sentiment tied to layoffs and a shaky economy. The group digs into Snap's upcoming $2,500 Specs launch, why enterprise (not consumer) is the more realistic path for smart glasses right now, and Rony's long-view bet that XR has an "Nvidia moment" coming once the supply chain catches up. They close…
People in this episode
Hosts: Charlie, Ted, Rony
Guest: Cortney Harding
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: White House, OpenAI, Hugging Face, Disney, TikTok, Friends With Holograms, Snap, EU
Products: Meta's camera-equipped smart glasses, Specs
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