Bruin AI Current Events
Quarterly Earnings from Tech Giants | Saying ‘Thank You’
Good morning!
In this week’s edition, we discuss how Microsoft, Meta, and Apple are taking different approaches to AI amid economic and regulatory pressures.
Plus, we explore why saying “please” to your chatbot might be less about the machine and more about maintaining our civility.
Thanks for joining us!
📣 Announcements
💸 Economy
🧭 Ethics
- Karen
Quarterly Earnings from Tech Giants
This week’s round of quarterly earnings from the major tech firms demonstrated a multiplicity of attitudes about the future direction of AI. Firms such as Microsoft, Apple, and Meta all beat Wall Street expectations, but their future paths are diverging as each one navigates a mix of regulatory, economic, and infrastructural pressures.
Microsoft continues its growth as a central force behind the AI infrastructure boom. With its cloud platform Azure growing 33%, nearly half of that growth being a result of AI-related demand, Microsoft is reaping some of the benefits from its early and aggressive investments in generative AI. Nevertheless, Microsoft is easing off the gas this quarter and trimming capital expenditures by over $1 billion from the previous quarter. Still, Microsoft forecasts nearly $85 billion in capital expenditures this fiscal year as it remains a heavy spender even whilst coming to terms with the costly reality of increasing capital expenditures nearly every quarter. However, AI-powered growth is not safe yet. Analysts at Raymond James warn that the companies that currently buy cloud services from Microsoft could be moved to “reduce spending on growth initiatives, shifting their focus to ‘keeping the lights on’” in the face of economic headwinds brought on by trade war fears.
In contrast to Microsoft’s strategy, Meta is doubling down. CEO Mark Zuckerberg made it clear this past week that AI remains central to Meta’s strategy. The company raised its capital expenditures forecast sharply, expecting up to $72 billion in 2025. This optimism has been driven by a 16% jump in Meta’s quarterly revenue as well as profits surging 35%. However, volatility remains an ever more likely obstacle in the coming years as Chinese advertisers such as Shein and Temu are caught in the crossfire of tariffs. Were these advertisers to reduce their spending on ads from Meta, it could significantly damage the firm as they make up nearly 11% of its total ad revenue and account for “nearly 25% of its growth over the past two years.”
Apple has benefited less from AI, but it has demonstrated adaptability to political and economic disruptions. Despite struggling with internal AI efforts, as many planned AI-centric products have been delayed and facing regulatory pushback in both the US and Europe, Apple posted a 4.8% rise in profits up to $24.78 billion. In anticipation of possible detrimental effects of tariffs, Apple is shifting iPhone assembly to India and rerouting other products to Vietnam. With AI scuffles and a current focus on adjusting Apple’s operational logistics, Apple’s path to AI dominance seems even more uncertain than it has in the past.
While tech firms have had a positive quarter, this quarter has also demonstrated the gradual collision of big tech spending with real-world limits from tariffs, regulatory scrutiny, and economic headwinds. For the foreseeable future, the future growth of AI may largely depend on how the rest of the economy performs.
-Tobin
Saying ‘Thank You’
Many people consistently ask their AI chatbots questions with a ‘please,’ and they always follow it up with a ‘thank you.’ You have probably done it at some point, too. And while it might feel somewhat silly, politeness towards machines is nothing new. As machines become more conversational and more capable, people have consistently moved towards treating them like social partners rather than just tools.
This type of behavior predates chatbots like ChatGPT. With smart home assistants such as Siri or Alexa, nearly half of users reported saying ‘please’ when requesting a service. These devices were not designed to require politeness, but it seems that when machines are given the ability to converse with humans, people instinctively respond with the social norms that have been developed for other humans.
In many ways, it really does not make logical sense to engage in these behaviors. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has reported that people saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ have already cost “tens of millions of dollars” because of the additional resources required for chatbots to process these simple responses.
Nevertheless, people still grant chatbots these norms of politeness. For some, the reason is philosophical. If AI can hold a conversation, act with what we perceive as empathy, and remember user preferences, does it not deserve courtesy? Some researchers, such as those at Anthropic, are investigating whether or not AI systems warrant moral considerations. If AI were to become something that we considered sentient, treating it with respect would be the bare minimum.
But these more speculative arguments are difficult to either prove or disprove. Ethicists are likely to continue debating the moral worth of advanced systems and their possible consciousness for years. Nevertheless, there may be more grounded and measurable reasons to be polite towards machines.
Researchers have found that people’s behavioral patterns with their devices are not isolated; how someone treats a chatbot may reflect how they treat other humans. It can engrain norms into a person. As a result, becoming habitually aggressive with AI could easily lower someone’s threshold for doing the same thing with humans. Given the fact that these chatbots are alive enough to trigger people’s social instincts, it may make sense to treat them as companions at risk of acting with similar disrespect towards our human companions..
While saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to your AI assistant may be inefficient and expensive, in a world where civility seems to be getting replaced by polarization and hostility, it just might be worth it.
-Tobin
Feel free to elaborate on any of your thoughts through this Anonymous Feedback Form.
All the best,
Tobin Wilson, Editorial Intern
Karen Harrison, Newsletter Manager
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"Be the change you wish to see in the world." — Mahatma Gandhi