Meta's Glasses Aren't the Problem. Trust Is. ft. Cortney Harding, Friends With Holograms

About this episode

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 on AI's effect on jobs, UBI, and whether the social contract between tech companies and workers is already broken.

Key Moments:

[01:35] AI regulation news and the fight over Congress's role

[09:35] EU AI Act goes live, plus AI models breaching their own sandboxes

[13:35] Disney's TikTok deal and the fan-content strategy behind it

[17:35] Cortney Harding joins and doesn't miss a beat

[24:35] UBI, the broken social contract, and AI's effect on jobs

[41:35] Snap's $2,500 Specs and the case for enterprise over consumer

[52:35] Rony's prediction: XR's coming "Nvidia moment"

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