This week has been a long year. Remember when Jensen Huang was still the CEO of Nvidia? Remember when the reports said it was just one woman? And that woman was a suspected Chinese spy? Memories.
Naturally, that’s the Thing of the Week. My take? Put the robots in charge. Then, why Reddit Reviews might actually be a great way to find out what people think about a product. And an Old Thing that takes me back to my first job, when a Nokia device was the closest thing I had to a modern-day smartphone.
Credit: 1X
For years, I’ve proudly extolled the benefits of humanity as we embrace technology. I even wrote a book called I Am Not a Robot. I’ve reported on the extraordinary capabilities of artificial intelligence, while also warning of the dangers of letting machines do all the thinking, reasoning and decision-making for us.
But after Jensen Huang’s stunning ouster from Nvidia this week, I’ve decided…to hell with it, let’s all be robots. Let the great AI takeover begin.
Let us consider the advantages of being a robot this week:
Robots don’t have genitals.
Robots don’t get romantically involved with suspected Chinese spies.
Robots don’t get romantically involved with their subordinates.
Robots don’t bring down multitrillion-dollar companies.
And seriously, no genitals. This solves a lot.
Well, sign us all up for the full-body robotic upgrade. Embed an Nvidia Jetson chip in our skulls. Replace our spines with titanium. We are all robots now.
In fact, Huang has been predicting this future all along. “Everything that moves will be robotic someday, and it will be soon,” he told Cleo Abram in January 2025.
It’s a quote I included in my book, and one that has stuck with me. I’ve followed Nvidia’s robotics advancements closely, including its chips designed to power humanoid robots and self-driving cars. In fact, when I visited 1X, maker of the Neo humanoid, last year, there was even a giant image in the lobby of the robot handing Huang one of his signature leather jackets. In retrospect, maybe Huang was just preparing his replacement.
I’m kidding. Mostly.
But there’s something striking about the man who had such a massive role in ushering in the AI era being brought down by such fundamental human behavior. The people building this technology—their egos, emotions, ambitions, desires and impulses—make for one of the most interesting stories of the AI boom. My friend Kevin Roose’s book, The AGI Chronicles, is a must-read if you want to get inside the minds of the men leading the frontier AI labs—and yes, they are mostly men.
The great irony of this moment is that Silicon Valley is spending billions of dollars to build machines that can think and reason like us, yet the people leading that revolution keep reminding us that intelligence and good judgment are two very different things.
Which brings us to the next big leader of Nvidia.
For now, Nvidia’s longtime CFO, Colette Kress, has been named interim CEO. But speculation about a permanent successor is already swirling. President Trump shared on Truth Social that he thinks former Apple CEO Tim Cook is the man for the job. (I personally don’t see that happening. See my tweet for just how confident I am.)
On paper, though, Cook makes sense. He already succeeded one iconic tech founder, Steve Jobs, and steered Apple through 15 years of extraordinary growth without scandal. Other names being floated include AMD CEO Lisa Su, Arm CEO Rene Haas and Nvidia’s own Ian Buck.
I’m still voting for the robot in the leather jacket, but no matter who is selected, let’s remember our biggest learning of the week: The hardest thing to control in the age of artificial intelligence might not be the machines. It might be the humans.
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Reddit is famously a place for people to discuss and debate everything from how big a pancake should be to what makes a movie “good.”
Earlier this week, the company announced Reddit Reviews, a new feature that aggregates conversations about products into crowdsourced, AI-generated review summaries. Think Wirecutter or Consumer Reports, but co-written by adoring fans, angry detractors and AI.
For now, this feature is being tested only with a limited set of products and categories. Tech seems to be one of them. I found reviews for the iPhone Duo (reviews are mixed), Samsung Frame TV Pro (mixed) and Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer smart glasses (also mixed). Here’s how to try searching for these:
Search for a product or category in the search bar.
Look through results for the product in a box, offset with gray background.
The review page for that product will open with a “What people are saying” summary, followed by bullet points on different product features. For instance, on the Duo page: “Touch ID is a downgrade from Face ID” and “Feels manageable in hand, but heavy for some.”
Name: Matt Fusfield
What’s your old thing? Nokia N800
What year is your old thing from? 2007
Why do you love your old thing? The Nokia N800 was my first “mini” tablet. It had a little pull-out stylus for a resistive touchscreen, a stand that flipped out and a pop-out camera. It had Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and supported Macromedia Flash so you could watch YouTube. I think I also used it for Skype calls from time to time.
I didn’t use it for long, but it was pretty great for surfing the web vs. the alternative from my Palm Treo at the time. It’s hard to believe smartphones didn’t have Wi-Fi in general back then! If I recall correctly, I was also able to remote in to some servers I was managing at the time, which was nice in a pinch instead of carrying around a laptop. I think this thing was announced a week or two before the iPhone, so I’m pretty sure it’s been lost to history.* But that’s what the Old Things section is for!
* Joanna note: Yes! Both were announced during the same week in January 2007. The Nokia at CES and the iPhone at MacWorld.
Fun fact: Just after Amazon launched in 1995 as an online bookstore, the site implemented product reviews for readers to share what they thought about the books. Customer reviews had not been popularized, so Amazon literally had to issue a press release explaining what they were.
This newsletter was written and curated by Joanna Stern and Adele Lowitz.
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