This week The Valley of the Uncannyhosts Brian Barrett and Zoë Schiffer discuss highlights from Nvidia’s annual developer conference, and why Tesla recently ran into trouble with some of its loyal fans online. Additionally, Meta’s initial decision to disable Horizon Worlds virtual reality on the Quest headset marks the end of that dream. (Meta has since changed course, saying it would place the platform on a small support for “the foreseeable future.”)
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You can follow Brian Barrett on Bluesky @brbarrett and Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer. Write to us at (email protected).
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Zoë Schiffer: Brian, hello. It’s so exciting to have another way to talk to you when I’m not Slacking you every five seconds.
Brian Barrett: It’s great, because Slack doesn’t have a voice section.
Zoë Schiffer: It doesn’t do that.
Brian Barrett: I will say it: it is very sad that Leah will not be a part of the trip today.
Zoë Schiffer: I know. It’s really sad, but when Leah leaves, the mice will play, and we’ll be talking about topics that Leah hates, so just hang in there.
Brian Barrett: And to be clear, he will be back next week. He is just sick.
Zoë Schiffer: Yes.
Brian Barrett: It’s allergy season.
Zoë Schiffer: Welcome to WIRED’s The Valley of the Uncanny. I’m Zoë Schiffer, WIRED’s business and industry director.
Brian Barrett: I’m Brian Barrett, editor-in-chief.
Zoë Schiffer: This week on the show, we go inside of Nvidia annual developer conference, why others Tesla influencers are fleeing the brandand why Meta has finally close Horizon World on Meta Quest. So to get us started, this week, Nvidia had its annual developer conference in San Jose. This is the biggest event in the AI industry. Some people even call it the Super Bowl of AI. Developers go, CEOs, researchers, WIRED reporters—and we’re all waiting to hear what CEO Jensen Huang has to say about the company’s future.
Brian Barrett: One thing that’s interesting about Nvidia’s conference as well, is I feel like a lot of it is business oriented. There aren’t many things that you, as the AI user or the person playing next to Claude, won’t connect with. One thing, with a grain of salt, because this is someone who stands to get this money, but Jensen said the income opportunity for artificial intelligence chips in Nvidia can reach at least a trillion dollars until 2027.
Zoë Schiffer: Pocket change.
Brian Barrett: Pocket change, I mean, really, for Nvidia at this point. One thing that was very interesting: He introduced a new product. I always like it when there is an actual product associated with this instead of a product promise. Not long ago, Nvidia started a licensing deal with a company called Groknot to be confused with frequent—
