Vergecast: Dish’s 5G network, Apple’s Major League Soccer deal, and Google’s AI debate

Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel, editor-at-large David Pierce, and managing editor Alex Cranz discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories.

Right before the final deadline from the US government, Dish Network says they have finally launched their 5G service in America. The Vergecast dedicates some time on the show this week to analyze Dish’s press release and talk about the obstacles The Verge must go through to test out this service.

Later in the show, the topic shifts to Google’s LaMDA model that was accused of being sentient by a Google engineer. The crew pushes back on the idea of a chatbot being sentient and discusses the way people humanize these models.

The last third of the show starts with news of Apple’s partnership with Major League Soccer to stream every match from early 2023 through 2032 in the Apple TV app, which David calls “the most thorough complete sports streaming spot that we’ve ever had in the US.”

There are a whole lot more stories in between all of that, so listen here or in your preferred podcast player for the full discussion.

Stories mentioned on this show: