Alexa goes for the AI gold, and what good is a Golden Egg?

Keeping up with the AI Wars is a fool's errand at this point (at least for me): Too much is happening too quickly. There is a fog of war: The casualty count will go up and down. It won't be clear until it's too late if forces — er, resources — should not have been deployed where they were. And while it may be pretty clear who won't be among the early losers, only a fool would pretend to know who will be the biggest winners. Just ask Apple, which was a fine company nobody would have bet (except maybe Steve and Tim) would be among the first and only $3 trillion market-cap companies ever. That's what a lightning strike like the iPhone will do.

But Alexa (like Siri) are — at least for me — special cases. Siri came first, and seemed like a magnificent breakthrough, even though, back in 2011, I wasn't sure that talking to your phone instead of into it would catch on, despite confessing that “a lust for voice command for close to 30 years."

Fortunately, it was smart people who were deciding things. At least I had the presence of mind to quote one of them. “What we really want to do is talk to our device, and get a response,” Apple SVP Phil Schiller said of Siri. “We don’t want to be told how to talk to it; we want to talk to it however we like."

Siri remains tech of amazing potential, perhaps now more than ever, because iPhones are everywhere, always with you. If you believe that consumer AI software will become a commodity, that large language models will become practically indistinguishable, then it is how people engage with AI that becomes the battleground. And in that war, the fight will be between the mobile entry points — smartphones — and the sensors embedded where you live, work and play.

Which brings us to Alexa. I was an early adopter when it launched a decade ago. It wasn't long before I had one in every room. I even hacked a way to have it run in my car years before they were integrated. While I find the app maddening and techno overreach annoying, I still use it all the time and even own the latest model, even though I'm never not in the company of Siri.

Sometimes it takes decades for something to be an overnight success, which makes the AI-infused Alexa+ tier well timed. There was speculation Amazon would charge everyone for the upgrade, but the decision to make it free to Prime members means that a massive installed base will have immediate access to it — no need to sell that cohort, which, at 180 million in the U.S., makes Prime more popular than TikTok.

It is the first major update in the software since launch, and follows years of costly readjustments on what turned out to be too many very expensive bad bets. Especially since the joke is that most people just use it as a kitchen timer.

If the AI integration actually works, and it obeys Schiller's Law — We Want To Talk To It However We Like — Alexa may have answered a really, really big question.

Bird flu has been impacting the U.S. market for years, but it was only in the last year or so that it became a front-burner issue. As the poster child for inflation, the dizzying upward spiral in egg prices due to the current outbreak animated the presidential campaign, became the ultimate kitchen-table issue (and might even foretell what a world with higher tariffs may be like…)

The problem with bird flu is that there is no simple solution. No code to crack. No laws to write or eliminate. There is a vaccine, but that makes eggs difficult or impossible to export, which is a big problem for the world's second-largest exporter. Even if we have reached a sort of point of no return: Some scientists believe it has spread so far and crossed over to so many other populations that it's unlikely to be eradicated.

“Now that it’s always here, kind of kicking around in the environment, we are seeing these little brush fires of cases popping up all the time,” Dr. Matt Koci, a professor in the Prestage Department of Poultry Science at North Carolina State University who specializes in immunology, told CNN. “We were hoping it was a fluke, but this definitely seems like the new normal.”

The U.S. government has spent about $2 billion so far on remediation, and the Trump administration announced this week it would shell out another $1 billion — though $400 million of that is really just to keep farmers whole and ready to get back into business again if and when all this passes.

So it's anybody's guess where this is going — still. In the meantime, business is scrambling to figure out what might be a new normal of a sudden price hike to a commodity (tariffs, see?!). Bakeries — which simply cannot operate without eggs — are weighing the pros and cons of price absorption or pass through. Restaurants are in some cases adding an egg surcharge.

McDonald's, though, hatched a plan to make hay by doing nothing: It said it would not raise egg prices. This is especially good news for aficionados of the Egg McMuffin, a 50-year-old menu item designed to put eggs benedict "in the palm of your hand." This is no small concession, since, while McDonald's doesn't disclose how many it sells, estimates are in the millions.

A day.

In a LinkedIn post, Michael Gonda, the company's North America Chief Impact Officer, absolutely, positively ruled out a surcharge — "you definitely WON'T see McDonald's USA issuing surcharges on eggs" — but also took the opportunity to tout a limited-time promotional price decrease for the breakfast item.

Egg politics may just be getting started.

Bitcoin hit lows not seen since last November, leading a retreat from crypto at large that at one point was off $1 trillion in total global value from its highs.

For perspective, that's almost like Berkshire Hathaway disappearing overnight.

But not really. Crypto is very highly speculative and volatile — the opposite of The Warren Buffett Way — even though Bitcoin and Ether have gained a bit of Wall Street respectability.

It's old news that President Trump went from crypto skeptic to booster (and entrepreneur), but his new SEC continues to make news: It dropped a long-running case against Coinbase, and others against smaller players with a fervor that niche publications, like decrypt, see as a sea change:

It would appear, then, that the SEC’s new leadership has decided to wipe the slate clean and start fresh with its assessment of how crypto companies and projects should best comply with existing securities laws.

The new news? The SEC has now decided that most meme coins aren't the kind of thing it should regulate, the rationale for letting Coinbase off the hook. Part of the regulator's argument is that meme coins are inherently worthless — which some may argue is exactly why an honest broker (no pun intended) should be around to, say, prevent sellers from saying things they really shouldn't to tempt susceptible customers who may or not realize they are, for lack of a better explanation, for entertainment purposes only. As reported by CNBC:

Meme coins “typically have limited or no use or functionality” and are “more akin to collectibles,” according to the agency’s Division of Corporation Finance.

“It is the Division’s view that transactions in the types of meme coins described in this statement do not involve the offer and sale of securities under the federal securities laws,” the statement says. “Persons who participate in the offer and sale of meme coins do not need to register their transactions with the Commission. ... Accordingly, neither meme coin purchasers nor holders are protected by the federal securities laws.”

This doesn't necessarily mean there is no possibility of regulatory oversight. Perhaps the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which has lately been silent on the subject. But as BigLaw firm Skadden Arps has noted:

Though the FTC has not made crypto a particular focus of its enforcement in past years, it might move to rein in certain activities of crypto participants, particularly if there is an element of consumer fraud.

and

The FTC has shown some interest in tamping down on false claims about the financial security of crypto holdings. In 2023, the FTC brought two actions against cryptocurrency companies for making false claims about the financial security of moving assets from a traditional financial institution.

In the meantime, we still have some old and yet timeless advice: Caveat emptor. But as FindLaw notes, this tip was shortened from the original: Caveat emptor, quia ignorare non debuit quod jus alienum emit, a bit of addendum that puts the onus more squarely on the buyer.

"Translated, it means, 'Let a purchaser beware, for they ought not to be ignorant of the nature of the property which they are buying from another party'" (emphasis added).

Quotes of the Week

“Reducing spending and raising taxes isn’t popular. Neither is exercise and eating healthy."

— Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget

“We are used to being the punching bags of Congress. But we are done being props.”

—? Chris Dols, a dredging expert at the Army Corps of Engineers and federal union official

“Do I work 100 hours a week? No. It's always bored me to death when people go on and on about how hard they work.”

— David Remnick, Editor-in-Chief of The New Yorker

“Ultimately, software finds a way.”

— Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, on pesky export controls

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