AI, DEI, and…GLPs? Here’s what the tech elite were buzzing about at South by Southwest

Last year, the vibe surrounding SXSW was notably subdued for both founders and venture capitalists in the wake of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. It didn’t necessarily stop the partying, but people weren’t too eager about the future.

Fast forward to this year, just a few hours after I landed, I found myself attending a dinner at a sprawling mansion nestled in the hills of Austin, filled with an eclectic mix of executives, technologists, and investors. Once we sat for dinner, a game started at our table: Say something you despise, cherish, and find just okay (the real name of the game is less decorous) concerning the future of technology.

Naturally, my contributions veered towards an adoration for journalism—an indispensable facet of our future—mixed feelings towards social media, and an aversion towards the latest hardware trends. The latest gadgets like Vision Pros, Rabbit R1s, and Humane AI pins seem too ahead of their times, if anything, primarily for the tech elite and likely destined to collect dust in a forgotten drawer.

Amidst the other opinions circulating, some advocated for a digital detox, saying they’d toss away their smartphones and social media accounts. Conversely, others professed admiration for cutting-edge hardware like the Oura ring, Eight Sleep, Apple Watch, lauding their capacity to monitor health metrics with precision.

Another person joined our table and started a rapid-fire question game, after each question we’d go around the table and deliver a one-word answer. Do we think there will be a TikTok ban? Mostly everyone, including me, said no. My favorite question was, which will have a greater impact on the U.S. economy in the coming years, AI or GLPs (weight loss medications such as Wegovy and Ozempic)? Almost everyone, except for me, said GLPs. The idea is that our economy relies so heavily on overconsumption, what happens when that stops?

Throughout the week, I often shared my latest scoop: Elon Musk’s X, in a strategic maneuver to rival YouTube, is unveiling a television application for Amazon and Samsung smart TVs, which will practically be a clone of YouTube’s existing TV app. The popular belief is that Musk wouldn’t actually succeed in rivaling YouTube or Twitch, and I was often asked if it’ll all come crashing down soon (no, I don’t think it will, at least not soon, and it’ll be a very slow process). I chatted with people about power users on X and Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI—everyone knew Musk had attended the Prime Video activation at the festival, and one person heard he had gone to a rave nearby.

This year was also my first time on a SXSW stage. I moderated a panel with Matthew Prince (CEO & cofounder of Cloudflare) and David Heinemeier Hansson (Creator of Ruby on Rails & co-owner of 37signals) about David’s startup leaving the cloud. Basically, just buy some servers and run your business that way, was the argument. The concept seems radical to many people, given how widely accepted cloud computing is these days, so it was a fun conversation to have throughout the conference.

Another prevalent theme that surfaced in discussions was the discourse surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). This discourse has been propelled into the mainstream by prominent figures such as Bill Ackman, Elon Musk, and Mark Cuban, whose exchanges on X often veer into terse debates on the topic. Several tech execs that I spoke with aligned themselves with the viewpoints espoused by Musk and Ackman, contending that the current emphasis on diversity has swung too far. However, such opinions were only expressed in hushed tones, with none willing to formally attribute them on the record.

Of course, the omnipresent topic of artificial intelligence dominated many conversations. Will AI destroy us or save us? And, more candidly, how much money will be made by the chosen few working on AI? 

The magical advances of text-to-video AI tech, like OpenAI’s recently previewed Sora, was another frequent conversation topic. And, in a different vein, a video was widely shared on X that showed a film screening in which a pre-rolled trailer for SXSW AI panels drew jeers and boos from the audience—a telling example of the divide between the high-and-mighty AI executives and regular attendees.

What struck me as notably absent this year were discussions surrounding “e/acc” (acceleration) versus “decel” (deceleration)—essentially, the divide between those advocating for the rapid advancement of AI and those urging caution and restraint. When I brought it up to one public company executive, he rolled his eyes. Even though a few e/acc parties sold out well in advance, it seemed the arguments that once gripped Silicon Valley (and some speculated were connected to the ouster of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman) have now returned to their cliquish bubbles.

Overall, SXSW was bustling this year. The merchandise booth featured everything from DARE-style iron-on patches to hipster hats with cords. The most popular were pricey, holographic unicorn t-shirts, demand was so high that airport employees selling them after the festival struggled to keep them in stock (I almost bought one, but they ran out of my size).

Kylie Robison

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The rest of today’s Data Sheet was written by David Meyer.

NEWSWORTHY

Apple settles China sales suit. Apple will pay $490 million to settle a shareholder class-action lawsuit that alleged CEO Tim Cook concealed falling Chinese iPhone sales, thus defrauding investors. Reuters reports the settlement was reached this morning, and still requires judicial approval

African internet outages. Swathes of west and central Africa have been hit by internet outages due to multiple subsea cable failures, the Guardian reports, while TechCentral also reports that the outages have spread as far as South Africa. Microsoft, whose cloud services have been impacted, says four cables were hit, and a source told TechCentral that the unexplained breaks occurred next to Ivory Coast. The timing is particularly bad due to the recent Seacom cable break in the Red Sea, which has also degraded internet links from Europe along Africa’s east coast.

Pornhub pulls out of Texas. Pornhub and other sites owned by Aylo (formerly MindGeek) have started denying access to people in Texas, in protest of an age-verification law that has gone into effect there. As TechCrunch reports, Aylo argues that the law creates a risk of data breaches because it requires users to hand over “extremely sensitive information” to gain access. “Whether or not your intentions are good, governments have historically struggled to secure this data,” reads the post that prospective Pornhub visitors are shown. CNN reports that searches for VPNs, which can bypass geographical blocks, spiked in Texas after the move.

U.S. infiltration of Chinese social media. Five years ago, then-President Donald Trump authorized a CIA operation that involved the creation of fake identities on Chinese social media, which were used to “spread negative narratives about Xi Jinping’s government while leaking disparaging intelligence to overseas news outlets,” Reuters reports. Quite ironic, given U.S. outrage over the potential for Chinese influence-mongering on TikTok…

ON OUR FEED

"When someone sees a good thing another person has and tries to take it for themselves, this is entirely the logic of a bandit."

—Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin decries the U.S. House vote in favor of forcing China’s ByteDance to divest TikTok or see it banned in the U.S.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Exclusive: The Founder Mental Health Pledge is looking to create a turning point in startup culture, by Allie Garfinkle

TikTok’s CEO urges users to ‘protect your constitutional rights’ after House ban vote, by Chris Morris

The EU AI Act passed. Now the real work begins, by Sage Lazzaro

OpenAI should be copying journalists’ principles, not just their content, by Jennie Baird (Commentary)

Elon Musk loses a SpaceX mega rocket descending to Earth after hourlong test flight, by the Associated Press

BEFORE YOU GO

Right-to-repair support. The Copyright Office is considering whether to allow more kinds of third-party device repair by introducing new exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s Section 1201. According to The Verge, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice have suggested adding exemptions for “commercial and industrial equipment,” which would specifically extend the right-to-repair to enterprise IT, proprietary diagnostic kits, programmable logic controllers, and…er…commercial soft-serve machines.