内容来源：https://www.wired.com/story/uncanny-valley-podcast-nvidia-gtc-tesla-disappointed-fans-meta-horizon-worlds/

内容总结：

在本周播客节目中，主持人回顾了科技领域三件值得关注的事件：英伟达在年度开发者大会上公布了多项AI芯片与平台新进展，彰显其巩固行业领导地位的野心；特斯拉则因调整“完全自动驾驶”权益条款引发部分忠实粉丝不满，反映出品牌与核心用户群体之间可能出现的裂痕；与此同时，Meta宣布将逐步关闭VR平台“地平线世界”在Quest头显上的服务，标志着其曾大力鼓吹的“元宇宙梦想”遭遇重大挫折。尽管AI与元宇宙都曾被视为未来技术浪潮，但两者的发展轨迹已呈现出明显差异——AI技术正逐步融入现有产品并解决实际问题，而元宇宙概念却因体验门槛高、缺乏真实需求而陷入困境。这些动态共同折射出当前科技行业在狂热投资与务实落地之间的反复博弈。

中文翻译：

本期《诡异谷》播客中，主持人布莱恩·巴雷特和佐伊·希弗将探讨英伟达年度开发者大会的亮点，解析特斯拉为何近期在线上遭遇忠实粉丝的质疑，并解读Meta最初决定关闭Quest头显中《地平线世界》VR平台如何标志着元宇宙梦想的终结（Meta随后调整决定，表示将在“可预见的未来”以有限支持维持该平台）。

本期提及文章：

• 《英伟达计划推出开源AI智能体平台》
• 《特斯拉网红博主正在脱离“狂热粉丝圈”》
• 《Meta将关闭Meta Quest平台的<地平线世界>》

您可以在Bluesky上关注布莱恩·巴雷特（@brbarrett）和佐伊·希弗（@zoeschiffer）。欢迎发送邮件至[email protected]与我们联系。

收听方式
您可通过本页音频播放器收听本期节目。若想免费订阅获取每期更新，请参考以下方式：
使用iPhone或iPad的用户可打开“播客”应用，或直接点击此链接。您也可下载Overcast、Pocket Casts等应用搜索“Uncanny Valley”。本节目亦在Spotify同步更新。

（以下为自动转录内容，可能存在误差）

佐伊·希弗：布莱恩你好。真高兴能有新方式和你交流，不用每隔五秒就在Slack上找你。

布莱恩·巴雷特：确实，毕竟Slack没有语音功能。

佐伊·希弗：确实没有。

布莱恩·巴雷特：不过得说句遗憾的：莉娅今天不能参与我们的旅程了。

佐伊·希弗：是啊。虽然遗憾，但俗话说“莉娅不在，小鬼当家”，我们今天正好可以聊些她讨厌的话题，敬请期待。

布莱恩·巴雷特：澄清一下，她下周就回来。只是身体不适。

佐伊·希弗：对。

布莱恩·巴雷特：毕竟过敏季到了。

佐伊·希弗：欢迎收听《连线》杂志的《诡异谷》播客。我是佐伊·希弗，《连线》商业与产业版总监。

布莱恩·巴雷特：我是执行主编布莱恩·巴雷特。

佐伊·希弗：本期节目我们将深入探讨：英伟达年度开发者大会的动向、部分特斯拉网红博主为何逃离该品牌，以及Meta为何最终关闭了Meta Quest平台的《地平线世界》。首先，英伟达本周在圣何塞举办了年度开发者大会——这是AI行业的盛会，甚至被称作“AI超级碗”。开发者、企业CEO、研究员和《连线》记者齐聚一堂，都期待听到CEO黄仁勋阐述公司未来规划。

布莱恩·巴雷特：英伟达大会还有个特点：内容大多面向企业端。普通AI用户或Claude体验者可能觉得这些内容与自身关联不大。需要提醒的是，黄仁勋作为利益相关方曾表示，到2027年仅英伟达的AI芯片营收机会就可能达到至少1万亿美元——这话得辩证看待。

佐伊·希弗：九牛一毛罢了。

布莱恩·巴雷特：对现在的英伟达来说确实不算什么。有意思的是他发布了一款新产品——我总喜欢看到实际产品而非空头承诺。此前英伟达与Groq公司（注意是带q的Groq，不是那个涉及非自愿脱衣问题的Grok）达成了授权协议。他们将把擅长AI处理的英伟达芯片与Groq的芯片结合，后者能优化英伟达芯片的运行效能。这笔200亿美元的授权协议正在结出果实：未来推理速度会更快、成本更低，为客户提升效率。

佐伊·希弗：没错。我这周和业内多位人士交流，他们指出一个对AI研究员显而易见、但我之前没意识到的事实：我们至今还没有专用的AI芯片，一直用的是英伟达的通用芯片进行训练和推理。今年才将首次出现专门的人工智能芯片。

布莱恩·巴雷特：说来有趣——虽然你们总调侃我年纪，但其实不算太久以前——英伟达是靠游戏电脑GPU起家的，而这些GPU恰好擅长AI所需运算。算是误打误撞闯进了这个领域。所以这确实是个重要时刻。不过佐伊，我们刚才多次提到“推理”，能否给听众解释一下这个概念？

佐伊·希弗：当然。AI研究员可能觉得这是老生常谈，但业外人士未必清楚。简单来说：预训练是让模型在互联网语料库中学习数据的过程；而当你向ChatGPT或Claude提问时，从发送问题到获得答案的过程就是推理。实际上，目前AI公司和大型科技公司的投资主要都集中在推理环节，而非预训练。

布莱恩·巴雷特：毕竟整个互联网都快被“吃光了”。

佐伊·希弗：推理确实非常昂贵。实时服务海量用户的成本极高。

布莱恩·巴雷特：黄仁勋在演讲结尾播放了一段略显诡异的AI动画音乐视频来诠释推理概念，我们来听听看。

（档案音频：曾几何时AI纪元/训练曾是范式核心/短对话模型当道/而今推理主宰世界/薇拉展现王者风范/成本骤降三十五倍/布莱克韦尔令令牌欢歌/英伟达加冕推理之王）

佐伊·希弗：我衷心希望这段视频是AI生成的，而不是花几百万美元请营销公司做的。

布莱恩·巴雷特：质量确实很“AI”。顺便说明，歌词里的“布莱克韦尔”和“薇拉”都是英伟达的产品代号。

佐伊·希弗：黄仁勋还发布了NemoClaw——这是面向企业的AI智能体平台，相当于企业级安全版的OpenClaw。

布莱恩·巴雷特：看各大公司争相布局很有意思。英伟达推出NemoClaw，OpenClaw的创始人后来……它现在叫什么来着？

佐伊·希弗：经历过Clawdbot、Moltbot、OpenClaw等名字。

布莱恩·巴雷特：总之他现在去了OpenAI，而Meta收购了Moltbook——那个AI智能体社交网络。大家都在争先恐后抢占赛道，但感觉更多是为了宣称自己“没有掉队”。

佐伊·希弗：我几乎能想象马克·扎克伯格在后台向投资者解释“我们其实领先行业”的场景：“等等，我们没被甩下！”一旦某个趋势或公司动作出现，所有人都会拼命跟风复制。

布莱恩·巴雷特：所以我正在研发自己的AI智能体社交网络，主打烹饪主题的小众平台……总之是个大计划。另外我有点着迷于人们对太空数据中心的狂热——就像刚才说的，企业必须向投资者证明自己的前瞻性。英伟达还发布了面向太空的Space-1薇拉·鲁宾GPU计算模块（虽然尚无具体时间表），但佐伊，他们可是派出了最强团队。

佐伊·希弗：太有意思了！这是我现在最喜欢和聪明研究员讨论的话题。懂物理的人一听就会冒汗骂街：“在太空怎么给数据中心散热？”他们对此非常恼火。实际上了解内情的人都觉得这遥不可及——我们在能源供给、散热和运营方面还差得太远。但这本质上是个营销策略，因为许多这类公司正谋求上市。除了英伟达，像OpenAI、SpaceX、未来可能还有Anthropic，都会在IPO前抛出这种天马行空的大新闻。

布莱恩·巴雷特：与此同时，现实世界的竞争正在发生。虽然很多关注未来布局，但英伟达芯片确实面临挑战：谷歌自研芯片，初创公司Cerebras专攻AI芯片，Meta也有自己的探索。

佐伊·希弗：像OpenAI和Meta等公司正与第三方合作设计定制芯片。英伟达必须捍卫其行业领导地位——这是它多年来未曾面对的挑战。黄仁勋显然意识到了这点并采取行动。不过短期内英伟达会大幅落后或面临危机吗？我认为不会。你觉得呢？

布莱恩·巴雷特：我也觉得不会。更多是思考我们该如何布局……

佐伊·希弗：如何将GPU集中配置在特定数据中心。

布莱恩·巴雷特：哇哦。

佐伊·希弗：我懂。

布莱恩·巴雷特：说到挫折，我们来看看特斯拉。声明一下——特斯拉粉丝别生气。

佐伊·希弗：哇。

布莱恩·巴雷特：特斯拉最近确实遇到了麻烦。他们曾限时提供“终身全自动驾驶服务随车转移”优惠（“全自动驾驶”这个说法本身就有争议）。用户原本很高兴能一次性付费永久使用这项昂贵服务，但特斯拉随后修改协议条款，要求新车必须在3月31日前交付才能转移服务——这对很多人来说太苛刻了。连那些“生死相随”的忠实粉丝也开始不满，虽然他们可能因我关联“特斯拉”和“失败”这两个词而攻击我。有趣的是，越来越多曾经的狂热粉丝和网红开始疏远这个品牌，这与特斯拉在欧洲、英国乃至美国因政治因素导致的消费者流失不同——这些人是埃隆·马斯克的粉丝，但现在觉得“受够了”。

佐伊·希弗：这现象很耐人寻味。我们都知道特斯拉股价常脱离基本面，部分原因正是马斯克培养了一批无论怎样都购买股票的狂热粉丝。它是Robinhood等平台上散户持有最广泛的股票之一。如果你是为马斯克买单，那么业务起伏或许不重要，但这种无条件支持赋予了他极大的个人权力。如果连部分知名支持者都开始动摇（虽然目前可能不普遍），对他而言确实是个大问题。

布莱恩·巴雷特：问题有多严重？我同意你的观点，但马斯克越来越强调“我们不是汽车公司，而是人形机器人公司”（抱歉我总忘记机器人出租车部分，虽然那更接近现实）。有没有可能这些都不重要？毕竟未来属于擎天柱机器人和自动驾驶车队，股价也是基于这个预期。

佐伊·希弗：或许吧。马斯克首先是卓越的营销者和故事讲述者。如果他现在的故事是“我们不是汽车公司而是机器人公司”，并且人们买账，那确实没问题。但关键在于：很多粉丝本质上是马斯克粉丝，只是恰好他造车而已。如果他在粉丝中人气下降，或做出疏远社群的行为，那才是问题。当他开始涉足政治时，一些人已经动摇。我去年写Cybertruck报道时采访过几位车主，他们说：“我爱这车，但开出门成为焦点很烦。我买车不是为了宣告支持特朗普政府，可他通过联系特朗普和炒作狗狗币让我们别无选择。现在开这车出门总会遭人吼叫，甚至被别车。”

布莱恩·巴雷特：强烈推荐大家阅读佐伊去年的Cybertruck摄影报道，她采访的车主言论非常精彩，有位男士的话已刻在我脑海里：“女人不喜欢这车。”

佐伊·希弗：“女人不喜欢这辆车。”

布莱恩·巴雷特：所以对于这些转变态度的特斯拉车主……佐伊我知道你有话要说。

佐伊·希弗：感谢你给我这个机会。我觉得这很尴尬——你有两个选择：要么坦然开特斯拉不贴任何标签，要么换其他电动车。特斯拉甚至不是市场上最好的车。这种 virtue signaling（我在湾区随处可见）真是令人困惑：这是最糟糕的中间路线，请选别的选项。

布莱恩·巴雷特：但选择其实更少了。本田取消了原计划在美推出的三款电动车型，许多美国制造商也在退缩。特斯拉反而越来越成为这个领域的坚守者。

这周Meta做了另一个决定：周二宣布从3月31日起《地平线世界》将下架Quest商店，6月15日彻底关闭。这是Meta的元宇宙核心产品，本应通过Meta Quest头显体验沉浸式元宇宙。手机端虽然能访问，但那算不上元宇宙，顶多是“元”。

佐伊·希弗：是啊。他们把公司改名押注这个产品，真是令人唏嘘。

布莱恩·巴雷特：难以置信。

佐伊·希弗：疯狂的选择。

布莱恩·巴雷特：不到五年前改的名——我查了下，才四年半。

佐伊·希弗：Meta投入了巨额资金。高管和忠实信徒会说：“我们只是太早了，未来仍可能实现《头号玩家》那样的愿景。”但现在他们发现AI才是真正席卷一切的浪潮，于是拼命追赶。我们还没看到他们投重金给Alex Wang运营的AI实验室能产出什么。

布莱恩·巴雷特：我想聊聊AI，但也继续说说元宇宙。你提到巨额投入——据报道现实实验室四年亏损770亿美元……

佐伊·希弗：太痛了。

布莱恩·巴雷特：这或许就是赌博：持续下注，总有些会失败。想听听我对消费科技的统一理论吗？

佐伊·希弗：非常想。

布莱恩·巴雷特：理论很简单：所有技术在被证明有价值前都是“3D电视”。

佐伊·希弗：请展开说说。

布莱恩·巴雷特：当年3D电视盛行时，所有电视厂商都说这是未来，高端电视都标配3D功能附送六副眼镜。我的理论基于两点：第一，公司会无视证据坚称某事物是未来，直到亏损数百亿才认输——所以别轻信企业的未来宣言；第二，人们不喜欢在脸上戴东西。不幸的是，元宇宙和《地平线世界》同时踩中这两点：它本质上缺乏趣味性，制造隔阂而非联结（而Facebook的初衷是拉近人与人距离）。

佐伊·希弗：它确实没做到这点。这种人人戴着头显与虚拟化身互动的未来图景——请原谅我的道德优越感——我认为是黯淡可悲的，显然也没引起大众共鸣。

布莱恩·巴雷特：回到AI话题：Meta等公司正对AI下更大赌注。这容易让人产生似曾相识感——他们都说这是未来，数据中心建设投入数千亿，远超现实实验室的亏损。但佐伊，AI与元宇宙或3D电视的根本区别是什么？

佐伊·希弗：我觉得这两项技术很难比较。AI更像能构建多种应用的创新范式，不局限于单一平台；而元宇宙虽然也能构建游戏体验，但本质是让用户进入Meta的封闭世界。使用AI无需认同某种世界观，它可以赋能B端产品、消费科技、沉浸体验甚至支付平台。这种广泛性使其更具生命力。

布莱恩·巴雷特：AI更像一种服务，关键是人已证明其用处。虽然价值几何、投资是否值得仍是问题，但它确实通过了“是否有人需要”的初试——很多人需要，而且通常不用在脸上戴东西。所以目前看来前景不错。至于投资回报和社会影响则是另一回事。

佐伊·希弗：对。核心在于：AI是否让现有事务变得更高效？就我个人而言，以前用谷歌搜索的内容现在常问ChatGPT。它不完美，需要核实，但作为搜索引擎体验更优（前提是了解其特性）。而Meta要求用户做全新且缺乏吸引力的事——没人会觉得“在家看小屏幕不过瘾，想要更沉浸的体验”。苹果也在头显上豪赌，同样未能成功。要改变计算范式，它必须比笔记本体验好得多，但事实并非如此。虽然看电影很清晰，但用笔记本和手机显然比挥手操作头显更便捷。

布莱恩·巴雷特：我喜欢我们用过去式讨论Vision Pro。

佐伊·希弗：确实。

布莱恩·巴雷特：虽然还能在苹果店体验，几个月前也有小更新……

佐伊·希弗：天啊。

布莱恩·巴雷特：它们还没消失。

佐伊·希弗：真神奇。

布莱恩·巴雷特：稍后我们将分享本周的“潮流/过气”清单，请持续收听。

佐伊·希弗：现在是“潮流/过气”环节。新鲜酷炫是“潮流”，陈旧过时是“过气”。布莱恩？

布莱恩·巴雷特：我选“过气”——信不信，又和脸上戴东西有关。周末我带家人参加了“大型游戏秀”活动，非常有趣：组队与其他团队玩真人主持的游戏。我的“潮流”推荐是这个活动，适合家庭参与。而“过气”的是：对手团队有位男士全程戴着Meta雷朋智能眼镜录像。他并无恶意，只是想记录欢乐时光，但让我带孩子的家人感到不适。当晚我问家人是否注意到被录像，他们浑然不觉——雷朋眼镜的指示灯太隐蔽了。所以“过气”的是：戴Meta雷朋眼镜却不注意拍摄场合与对象。虽然世上还有更糟案例，但请“戴镜三思”。

佐伊·希弗：我也不喜欢这样。朋友偷拍公交地铁上的路人发给我时，我总很反感——公共场合拍摄他人的门槛应该极高，否则就是侵犯他人生活。

布莱恩·巴雷特：完全同意。佐伊你的选择呢？

佐伊·希弗：我的“过气”选项很明显：说教式讲解。我受够了，感觉男性该教的都教完了。连我最爱的《All In》播客也让我有些疲惫。前几天居然有人向我讲解马斯克收购推特——这可是我最熟悉的领域！我完全不需要听这些。

布莱恩·巴雷特：佐伊可是写过马斯克收购推特专著的人。

佐伊·希弗：对方不知道，但我只想说“再见”。我的“潮流”是给丈夫科普他最爱的话题——早期拓荒史。他喜欢读美国历史，而我最近读劳伦·格罗夫的《广阔荒野》后震撼不已，她真是天才作家。

布莱恩·巴雷特：她确实厉害。

佐伊·希弗：作为没读过这段历史的人，我对丈夫说：“安德鲁·柯林斯，你知道早期殖民者多艰难吗？”他回答：“真不敢相信你在给我讲这个。”但我整整两天都忍不住谈论这本书，称之为“女性版《路》”——就像科马克·麦卡锡的《路》但适合女性读者。后劲太足了。

布莱恩·巴雷特：她还有本较新的短篇小说集值得一读。

佐伊·希弗：我不常读短篇，但既然喜欢她，或许可以尝试。本期节目到此结束。提及的文章链接详见播客备注。若您有任何意见，可前往wired.com查看节目文稿参与讨论。《诡异谷》由Kaleidoscope Content制作，本期节目由阿德里亚娜·塔皮亚制作，阿马尔·拉尔在Macro Sound完成混音，马克·莱达担任旧金山录音室工程师，金伯利·蔡担任数字制作高级经理，凯特·奥斯本任执行制片人，凯蒂·德拉蒙德为《连线》全球编辑总监。

英文来源：

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.”)
Articles mentioned in this episode:

• Nvidia Is Planning to Launch an Open-Source AI Agent Platform
• The Tesla Influencers Leaving the ‘Cult’
• Meta Is Shutting Down Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest
  You can follow Brian Barrett on Bluesky at @brbarrett and Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer. Write to us at [email protected].
  How to Listen
  You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how:
  If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts and search for “Uncanny Valley.” We’re on Spotify too.
  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—
  Zoë Schiffer: It's Groq with a “q.”
  Brian Barrett: … Groq with a “q,” not Grok with an unconsensual undressing problem. So they're going to pair Nvidia's chips, which are good at processing AI, with Groq's chips, which have components that can put a charge into how Nvidia's chips operate. So basically that $20 billion licensing agreement is bearing fruit. It's going to make inference quicker, less expensive. It's going to make things more efficient basically for Nvidia customers.
  Zoë Schiffer: Right. Yeah. I was talking to a bunch of people in the industry about this this week, and one thing they pointed out, which might be totally obvious to AI researchers, but was pretty not obvious to me, is that we actually haven't had specific chips for AI yet. They've been using general Nvidia chips for training and inference this entire time. And this is basically the first year where we are going to see specialized chips for artificial intelligence.
  Brian Barrett: Well, and I'm old enough to remember—I know we joke about my age, but it's not that long ago—Nvidia got to where it is because it made GPUs for gaming PCs. The GPUs happened to be good at the things AI needed. So they kind of backed into this. So yeah, it is a big moment. But Zoë, we've said inference a couple of times so far. Go ahead and define it for folks so that we know everyone's on the same page about what we are talking about.
  Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. OK. So if you're an AI researcher, you're like, yawn, this is boring. But it's not obvious to people outside the industry, so it's worth saying really clearly. There is the pre-training process where you let a model loose on the corpus of the internet, and it gobbles up all the data, and it learns from it. And then there's a process of you, as an AI consumer, asking a question to ChatGPT or Claude. The process of you pinging that question and getting an answer in return is what we think of when we talk about inference. And actually now, most of the investments that AI companies and big tech companies are making are being spent on inference, not pre-training.
  Brian Barrett: Because they've already eaten up the entire internet.
  Zoë Schiffer: And inference is just really expensive. Serving all of those customers in real time is a really expensive process.
  Brian Barrett: Just for an example of how Jensen Huang talked about inference, there was a slightly bizarre AI animated music video that was displayed at the end of his speech. Let's listen to that.
  Archival audio: Once upon an AI time / training was paradigm / short talking models how / but inference runs the whole world now / Vera showed us who's the boss / at 35 times less the cost / Blackwell makes the token sing / Nvidia, the inference king.
  Zoë Schiffer: I sincerely hope that they used AI to make that and did not pay a marketing firm many millions of dollars.
  Brian Barrett: Yeah. The quality is about what I would expect from AI. And just for folks, the references to Blackwell and Vera are references to various Nvidia products.
  Zoë Schiffer: We also should say that Jensen announced NemoClaw, which was this enterprise platform for AI agents, basically like a secure enterprise version of OpenClaw.
  Brian Barrett: It's fun to watch companies scramble. So you've got NemoClaw now from Nvidia. You've got the creator of OpenClaw, which then—what is the latest name for it?
  Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, because it was Clawdbot, Moltbot, OpenClaw.
  Brian Barrett: OpenClaw, great. So he's now working at OpenAI, and Meta has acquired Moltbook, right?
  Zoë Schiffer: Right.
  Brian Barrett: —the social network for AI agents. So everyone's scrambling to cover this and be on top of this, but it feels almost like, so that they can say that they are.
  Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. I was going to say, I feel like you can almost hear the backroom conversations that are happening where Mark Zuckerberg needs to explain to his investors why they're actually going to be ahead of the curve on this, and like, "Wait, wait, wait, no, we're not being left behind." Because as soon as you see a trend pop up or one company doing something, they all try and replicate it as quickly as possible.
  Brian Barrett: Yeah, which is why I'm working on my own AI agent social network. It's a small one. It's really centered on cooking. Anyway, it's a whole thing. It's going to be a whole thing. I also wanted to mention, I am a little bit obsessed with people's obsession with space-based data centers, and similar to what we're just saying about having to meet the moment and tell your investors where you're at. Nvidia also announced the Space-1 Vera Rubin Module to the GPU and computer that is built for space, or will be built for space because there's no actual timeline for development, but they've got their best people on it Zoë.
  Zoë Schiffer: I love this. This is one of my favorite conversations to have with really smart researchers right now because people who understand physics immediately start sweating and swearing and talking about how the fuck are you going to cool a data center in space? They just get so upset about it. And I think people who actually know about this thing, it's completely farfetched. We're just so far away from being able to figure out how you would power and cool and operate these things. But again, it's a marketing ploy. And why is it a marketing ploy? Because a bunch of these companies are trying to go public. So I think we're going to see a lot of these, not Nvidia, but we're talking OpenAI, we're talking—
  Brian Barrett: SpaceX.
  Zoë Schiffer: —SpaceX. We're talking Anthropic at some point. And so I think we're going to see a lot of these kind of farfetched, big announcements pre-IPO.
  Brian Barrett: And meantime, there is some actual real world happening right now competition going on. A lot of this is focused on future state stuff, but we do have—Nvidia chips are facing competition. Google making its own chips. Cerebras is a startup that is making chips that specialize in AI. We've seen Meta having its own adventures. Yeah.
  Zoë Schiffer: I was going to say, a bunch of these companies, like OpenAI and Meta, are actually working with third parties to design custom chips. So I think Nvidia is having to defend its place as the leader of this entire industry in a way it really hasn't had to for many, many months, if not years. Jensen Huang knows that and is making moves to, again, defend its position. Like do I see Nvidia falling way behind or having to really worry about its business in the near future? No, I do not. Do you think?
  Brian Barrett: No, I don't think so. I think it's more what shape we're in that we've got all of our chips in this particular—
  Zoë Schiffer: All of our GPUs in this particular data center.
  Brian Barrett: Yeah. Oh, wow.
  Zoë Schiffer: I know.
  Brian Barrett: OK. Speaking of failures, let's turn our attention to Tesla. And I say that—don't be mad, Tesla.
  Zoë Schiffer: Wow.
  Brian Barrett: No. OK. There are Tesla fans—
  Zoë Schiffer: Oh my gosh, in the pocket of BYD.
  Brian Barrett: I am big BYD over here. No, not Tesla generally, but Tesla did get in some trouble recently. I'm specifically talking about, they had offered a limited time deal to transfer its "lifetime full self-driving service to new vehicles." We'll just say it's not really full self-driving. That terminology is controversial in and of itself. People were excited about the fact that they could just pay once and have it forever because it is pretty expensive. But then Tesla rolled that back. They changed the language of the agreement, saying that you need to have their new vehicle delivered by March 31st in order to swap their full self-driving from their last vehicle to the next one. That's a tall order for people. So people have been upset. I think people who are traditionally Tesla ride-or-dies, and they have a very vocal community who will probably come at me for saying connecting Tesla with the word failure, but they're starting to turn on Tesla themselves. There's a growing community of former Tesla fanatics and influencers who have started distancing themselves from the brand, which I think is interesting. And it's distinct from the sort of broader consumer pullback from Tesla that we've seen in the UK and Europe in particular, but also in the US, people not fans of Elon Musk politics. These are Elon Musk fans who are saying, "We're kind of over this."
  Zoë Schiffer: I think this is fascinating because we all know that Tesla's stock price has often outpaced its business fundamentals. And part of the reason for that is that Elon Musk has specifically cultivated a rabid fan base that buy Tesla's stock kind of no matter what. It's one of the most widely held retail stocks on platforms like Robinhood. And so if you're in it for Elon Musk, maybe the business goes through its ups and downs, but you're going to stick with the company no matter what, which it gives him a lot of personal power. If we're seeing, again, and this might not be a widespread phenomena among the fan base right now, but even some big name people here and there who are really, really pro Tesla turn, I think that that's actually a really big problem for him.
  Brian Barrett: How big a problem is it, Zoë? Because I agree with your point, but increasingly, Elon Musk is saying, "We're not even really a car company anymore." We are a humanoid robot company and a robotaxi company. Sorry. I always forget the robotaxi part, even though that's the part that's actually the closer to being real. So is there a world in which none of this actually matters because you know what: We've got optimist robots, and we've got a fleet of self-driving Teslas and that's really what the future is? That's what the stock price is based on.
  Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, it might not. And again, I think Musk is first and foremost an excellent marketer and an excellent storyteller. And so if the story he's telling now is that we're not a car company, we're a robot company and people buy that, then sure. But I think the point that we're making is that a lot of these people aren't necessarily Tesla car fans in a vacuum. They're Elon Musk fans, and he happens to make this vehicle. And so then they choose the vehicle as the thing that they're going to be obsessed with and pump and talk about on X all the time. Maybe that transfers, but I think if his popularity among the fan base is waning, if he is doing things to kind of ostracize his own community, then I think that's an issue. And I think that this started to happen with some people when he started getting into politics. I talked to a couple of people for that Cybertruck story last year who said, "I love this car, but it's a bummer to go out in public and be a lightning rod. I didn't get it because I necessarily want to tell everyone I support the Trump administration. And he didn't really give us a choice because he started getting involved with Trump and DOGE. And all of a sudden when I drove this car around, people were yelling and screaming at me and kind of trying to drive me off the road."
  Brian Barrett: And if you haven't read Zoë's Cybertruck photo essay from last year, please do. She interviewed a bunch of Cybertruck owners who said some fascinating things, including one guy whose quote—I'm going to get it slightly wrong—but it is printed in my brain indelibly, "Women don't like the car."
  Zoë Schiffer: “Women don't like the vehicle.”
  Brian Barrett: Women don't like the vehicle. Women don't like the vehicle. So in terms of Tesla owners who are turning around, Zoë, there—I think you have feelings about this, or I know you do because you've expressed them before—but I'd like you to express them on the podcast. How do we feel about people who, they're driving a Tesla, they bought it before all this, they have a Tesla, and they have a bumper sticker on there now that says, "I bought this car before Elon went crazy or some such." How do we feel about these people, Zoë?
  Zoë Schiffer: I'm so glad you teed this up for me. I feel bad. I think this is embarrassing. I feel like you have two options. Either you drive your Tesla loud and proud, you don't put a damn sticker on it, or you sell your car, get a different electric vehicle. They're not even the nicest cars on the market. I am genuinely confused. But the virtue signaling—which, I live in the Bay Area, so I see these cars everywhere. I'm just like, "You guys, this is the middle road, and it is the worst one to take. Choose a different option."
  Brian Barrett: Fewer options than ever, though. Honda had three EV models planned for the US. They've canceled them. There are fewer options than ever. A lot of US manufacturers are backing away from it. So we are in sort of a weird place where Tesla is increasingly one of the diehards in this space.
  Here's a different choice that Meta made this week. Meta announced on Tuesday that starting March 31st, Horizon Worlds will no longer be available in the Quest store, and then it's going to be shut down entirely on June 15th. Horizon Worlds is Meta's metaverse play. It's this world that they created that's supposed to be the showcase for the metaverse. And the way to experience it, if you are really committed to VR, is going to be the Meta Quest headset. You'll still be able to access it on your phone, but that's not really a metaverse. That's just a verse, I think, at that point.
  Zoë Schiffer: Right. Yeah. Huge bummer that they changed the entire name of the company to be about this product.
  Brian Barrett: Incredible.
  Zoë Schiffer: Incredible choice.
  Brian Barrett: And I'd say less than five years ago. I looked that up when the news came. It's four and a half years ago.
  Zoë Schiffer: Look, Meta poured an absolute ton of money into this. And I think if you talk to executives and other true believers, they will say, "We were simply too early. This could still happen someday. That ready player world vision of the future could come to pass." But yeah, I think now they're seeing like, wow, the actual thing that came to pass is that AI ate everyone's lunch. And so they're trying to play catch up there. And we still have yet to see what's coming from all of the money that they've poured into their new AI labs that Alex Wang is running.
  Brian Barrett: I want to talk about AI, but I want to stick with metaverse a little bit too. You mentioned a ton of money. Reality labs reportedly lost $77 billion—
  Zoë Schiffer: So painful.
  Brian Barrett: —over four years or whatever. And I guess that's the idea. You just keep making bets and some of them will be bad. Do you want to hear my unifying theory about consumer technology?
  Zoë Schiffer: I absolutely do, yes.
  Brian Barrett: It's not very good, but it is everything is 3D TV until proven otherwise.
  Zoë Schiffer: OK. I'm going to need you to unpack that a little bit.
  Brian Barrett: So back when 3D TVs were a big thing, there was a period of like two years when every TV company was saying 3D TV is the next big thing. People love this. Everyone's going to want one. You could not buy a high-end TV that did not have 3D baked in. Every TV that was high end, it came with like six pairs of 3D glasses. So for two reasons, everything to me is 3D TV improvised. One, companies will insist that something is the future despite all available evidence until they lose $77 billion and have to sort of capitulate. So never believe what companies are saying in the future. And two, people don't like to wear things on their faces.
  Zoë Schiffer: Right.
  Brian Barrett: So the metaverse, unfortunately, and Horizon Worlds checked both of those boxes, it was a thing that on its face was not going to be fun and created more separation than unity, which is Facebook's whole thing. It's like bringing people close together. Well.
  Zoë Schiffer: I would say it has not done that either. But I just think that this vision of the future where everyone sits in their little individual houses with their headsets on interacting with virtual avatars of their friends and family or strangers or whoever is—I mean, I hate to get on a moral high ground, but I guess this is one that I actually feel strongly about; I think that is such a grim, tragic vision of the future. And it's one that clearly did not resonate widely with people.
  Brian Barrett: So back to the AI part, not to bounce around, but Meta and other companies are making an even bigger bet on AI. It is tempting to have a sort of déjà vu moment, where it's like they're all saying this is the future, hundreds of billion dollars data center buildouts, sort of dwarfing the amount that reality labs ended up losing. What's the difference here though, Zoë? Why is AI different from Horizon Worlds or the metaverse? Why is AI not 3D TV?
  Zoë Schiffer: I guess I find it a little difficult to compare those two technologies. I think AI is kind of like an innovation that you can build a lot of other things with. You're not necessarily locked into one platform. It's like a new paradigm in that way. Whereas, with the metaverse, sure, you could build games and other experiences within this universe, but ultimately you were buying into Meta's platform and this vision for the world. You don't need to necessarily buy into a new vision for the world to build with AI. You can build B2B products, you can build consumer tech products, you can build immersive world products, but you could also just build a new payments platform. I think there's a broadness that makes it more viable.
  Brian Barrett: It's almost more of a service. And I think even more importantly, it is something that people have proven to get use out of. There is already how much that use is worth and whether it's worth all this investment ultimately and all that. Those are still questions that have to be answered. But AI is good at a lot of stuff. It has sort of passed that first hurdle of, does anyone actually want this? Yeah, a lot of people actually want this, and it also doesn't make you wear anything on your face for the most part. So, so far, feeling pretty good. Again, whether it's worth all of the money that's going into it and all of the other societal effects and stuff is a separate question.
  Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. But I think just the simple question of, is it helping you do something you already do, but making that thing better and easier? Just for me personally, what I used to Google, I now often will ask ChatGPT. It's not perfect. You definitely still need to fact-check it. But in terms of a search engine, I think the experience is far superior as long as you know what you're dealing with. With Meta, there was no, "Oh, I'm looking at a tiny screen in my home and would like to look at a more immersive screen." It was asking you to do something entirely new and different. And that new and different thing did not appeal to me or apparently to many other people.
  Apple made a really big bet on headsets too, and that bet also felt like it really did not pay off. And I think that's another version where it's like, in order for that to work, in order to completely change the computing paradigm, it needed to do what you can do on a laptop so much better. And frankly, it just didn't. There were cool things, like watching a movie and it was very high definition or whatever, but it is just genuinely easier to use your laptop and phone than it was to use those headsets and kind of wave your hands around in the air like Apple wanted you to.
  Brian Barrett: I like that we, and I fully endorse this, talk about the Vision Pro in the past tense.
  Zoë Schiffer: I know.
  Brian Barrett: Even though—
  Zoë Schiffer: Wait, are they still shipping them out?
  Brian Barrett: —you can still try one. Yeah. They updated it a few months ago in a very small way.
  Zoë Schiffer: Oh, my God.
  Brian Barrett: You can still try one on at the Apple Store, I think. They're still out there.
  Zoë Schiffer: That's amazing.
  Brian Barrett: Coming up after the break, we're going to share our WIRED/TIRED picks for the week. Stay with us.
  Zoë Schiffer: It's time for our WIRED/TIRED segment. Whatever is new and cool is WIRED, whatever passé thing we're over is TIRED. Brian.
  Brian Barrett: So I have more of a TIRED, and it relates to wearing things on your face, believe it or not. Bear with me for one second. Over the weekend, I went with my family to something called The Great Big Game Show.
  Zoë Schiffer: Wow.
  Brian Barrett: It is really fun. You get a group of people together, and you go, and it's an experiential thing where you play a bunch of game show games against another group of people. There's a human host there running the games. It was a great time. So I guess my WIRED is Great Big Game Show.
  Zoë Schiffer: Wow. So wholesome fun.
  Brian Barrett: Go check it out if there's one near you. It was great. I went with my kids and my wife. And my TIRED is: I noticed at the start of the thing that the other group that we were competing against who were lovely people, really, really fun, glad we got them as a group, but a guy in the group was wearing his Meta Ray-Bans and was recording most of the thing.
  Zoë Schiffer: Wow.
  Brian Barrett: And he wasn't doing it maliciously. It was just like, "This is a fun thing. I'm going to capture some content for it. " But it really kind of, I think, especially because my kids were there, didn't love it and felt pretty uncomfortable and kind of took away from the whole experience. And I'll say too, later that night, I asked my family, I was like, "Hey, did anyone notice, by the way, that we were being recorded for big chunks of time during that thing?" None of them had any idea. They wouldn't even know how to know.
  Zoë Schiffer: No, ignorance is bliss.
  Brian Barrett: Yeah. And Meta Ray-Bans have this little indicator light, but it is very muted. You have to know to look for it. So this is a little bit of a cliche, but I will say, TIRED is being a Meta Ray-Ban owner and not being conscientious about who you're recording and in what context. I know there are several worst examples of this out there in the world, so not saying that—and it was ultimately fine. We had a great time. But just think before you Ray-Ban.
  Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. I don't like that. I actually have a pet peeve of when friends send you pictures of someone on the bus or subway or whatever doing something weird. I'm always like—
  Brian Barrett: Don't do that.
  Zoë Schiffer: —I don't love it. The bar for taking a picture of someone in public just living their life is so sky-high in my opinion. Otherwise, you're just being an asshole. Let people live.
  Brian Barrett: Yeah, 100 percent. Zoë, what about you?
  Zoë Schiffer: OK. My TIRED is obvious, and I think everyone agrees with me, it is mansplaining. I am over it. I feel like men have taught me all they have to teach me in this life. And even listening to my absolute favorite All In podcast, I've grown a little weary, I have to admit. I'm just like, it's a lot. I had someone explain Elon Musk's Twitter takeover the other day, and I was like, "If there's one topic I know a lot about, it is this. I don't need you to tell me actually anything."
  Brian Barrett: Zoë has literally written the book on Elon Musk's Twitter takeover.
  Zoë Schiffer: This person did not know that, but I was just like, "Goodbye." My WIRED is me explaining to my husband about his favorite topic, which is early frontier tales.
  Brian Barrett: Oh.
  Zoë Schiffer: He likes reading American history books. Yes. And I read Lauren Groff's The Vastar Wilds recently—literally blew my mind. I think she is such an absolute genius.
  Brian Barrett: Oh, she's amazing. She's terrific.
  Zoë Schiffer: As someone who has never read about this period of time, I was like, "Andrew Collins, have you heard how difficult it was to be an early settler in this country or before the country existed?" And he was like, "I cannot believe you're trying to tell me about this." But I couldn't shut up about it for two days. It stayed with me. I call it The Road for Women. I felt like it was like Cormac McCarthy's The Road, but for girls, maybe. Oh, my God. Pour my heart.
  Brian Barrett: She has a relatively new, I think, short story collection that you should also check out.
  Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, I know. I'm not a huge short story person, but I do feel like I love her, so maybe this will be my foray into it. That's our show for today. We'll link to all the stories we spoke about in the show notes. If you have any comments, you can find the episode transcripts at wired.com to discuss. Uncanny Valley is produced by Kaleidoscope Content. Adriana Tapia produced this episode. It was mixed by Amar Lal at Macro Sound. Mark Leyda is our San Francisco studio engineer. Kimberly Chua is our digital production senior manager. Kate Osborn is our executive producer, and Katie Drummond is WIRED's global editorial director.