It was a big week in the tech world, as U.S. House lawmakers passed a bill that would ban TikTok from the country.

Meanwhile, a big subject of conversation on theCUBE involved unraveling the complexities of artificial intelligence innovation as a part of the Supercloud 6 conference. Given those subjects and others, there was plenty for theCUBE Research industry analysts John Furrier (pictured, left) and Dave Vellante (right) to analyze on the latest episode of theCUBE Pod.

There were some great startups on Supercloud 6, including Kyle Weller from Onehouse and Venkat Venkataramani from Rockset. There were also some interesting points of conversation from companies such as Walmart Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc., according to Vellante.

“I thought [they] were really practical uses of AI. What came out of that is, this is going to be the year where experimentation gets into reality,” Vellante said. “On the one hand, Uber and Walmart are actually applying AI in a big way, but most customers are still in the experimentation phase.”

AI continues to be a big subject of discussion in the technology world, and this week The Wall Street Journal interviewed OpenAI CTO Mira Murati about its new Sora AI video tool. It showed how good it is getting but also its flaws, according to Furrier.

“Diffusion models are getting better,” he said. “Of course, they pivot to the elections, you know, what’s real, what’s fake. And you’ve got to watch out these days. My son, Tyler was saying on our family texts, when you answer the phone from your bank, don’t use your original voice. Because when you answer the phone, they might be capturing your voice to do voice activation.”

Mixed reactions to TikTok ban legislation

U.S. House lawmakers seeking to ban TikTok isn’t a sure thing, and it faces a difficult path in the Senate. Vellante posted a poll on X asking users how they would vote if they were in the Senate.

“Most people are saying ban the platform, which is astounding to me. I mean, essentially force divestiture and ban the platform are the same,” Vellante said. “It’s [about] two-thirds of the audience said that’s what they want to see.”

The Chinese government is not going to let former treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin put together an investor group to buy TikTok, according to Vellante. It’s why Vellante has always been consistent on a certain point: “We should insist on reciprocity. If our social media platforms can’t operate in China unless they’re divested, then we should say the same thing here,” he said.

As a father who wants people to be more enriched in their minds and have more conversations, Furrier’s view is to kill the app. However, he said he knows the younger generation feels differently.

“They love it. So the question is, is it harmful?” he asked. “If you look at it from the perspective of, yeah, they’re couch potatoes. But you can say that about TV when we were growing up.”

The question about TikTok, of course, has to do with Chinese surveillance. That is something to look into, according to Furrier.

“This would be more of an off-book, Black Ops operation for the government. Get in the weeds and unpack the app and just quarantine it so it’s not a national security problem,” he said. “You can’t take the app away; people like it. But you can manage that.”

Still, the government may be too late to solve this problem, according to Vellante. The younger audience that has grown to love the app may not stand for big changes.

“Nor will some of the big investors. What if you were an early investor in ByteDance?” he said. “This also underscores the perils of investing in Chinese companies.”

Bitcoin booms over $73,000

Bitcoin hit a new record this week, soaring above $73,000. But the bitcoin momentum has nothing to do with developer action on cryptocurrency, according to Furrier.

“That’s an indicator that bitcoin as a viable currency is legit. I think you’re going to see more and more impact from the bitcoin market,” Furrier said. “Because, let’s face it, at $73,000, whatever it is today, there’s people [who have] made a lot of money on bitcoin, who have bitcoin, and they need to put it to use.”

The bitcoin billionaires may become a very important part of the ecosystem, according to Furrier. They may come in and disrupt key markets around what developers do in terms of investments, he noted.

“I think you’re going to see the new entrants come in, not just classic VCs, but you’re going to start to see a global landscape of new players from crypto, Ethereum, and mostly bitcoin, who have made billions,” Furrier said.

Watch the full podcast below to find out why these industry pros were mentioned:

Steven Mnuchin, former United States Secretary of the Treasury
Kyle Weller, head of product at Onehouse
Doug Merritt, chairman, CEO and president of Aviatrix Systems
Savannah Peterson, founder and chief unicorn at Savvy Millennial and host of theCUBE
John Chambers, CEO of JC2 Ventures
Shawn Bice, CVP for cloud ecosystem security at Microsoft
Charlie Bell, EVP of security at Microsoft
Frank Shaw, CCO of Microsoft
Larry Ellison, chairman of the board and CTO of Oracle
Rob Strechay, managing director and principal analyst at theCUBE Research
Vikram Joshi, founder and CTO of Compute.AI
Charlie Kawwas, president at Broadcom
Jason Bloomberg, managing director at Intellyx
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla
Chris Miller, author of Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology
Anthony Di Iorio, CEO and founder of Decentral
Michael Saylor, former CEO of MicroStrategy
Gary Gensler, chairperson of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Jensen Huang, founder and CEO at Nvidia

Don’t miss out on the latest episodes of “theCUBE Pod.” Join us by subscribing to our RSS feed. You can also listen to us on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify. And for those who prefer to watch, check out our YouTube playlist. Tune in now, and be part of the ongoing conversation.

Photo: SiliconANGLE