This Week in Snark: When Apple Prints Money, Zuck Prints Hype, and Interns Fake It With AI

Welcome back to This Week in Snark, your algorithmically optimized recap of tech's most facepalm-worthy moments. While you were trying to find the “off” switch on your Slack notifications, Apple casually added another $94 billion to its quarterly haul, Mark Zuckerberg declared the dawn of superintelligence (again), and someone in a boardroom decided the solution to high return rates is yet another GPT.

Elsewhere, NTT taught AI how to mimic your best employee so the intern can confidently nod their way through customer queries, and a private equity firm paid real money to scale government bureaucracy via the cloud (because of course it did). We also took a deep dive into what comes after AI, and it turns out the answer might be... brain chips? Or just more buzzwords.

Let’s get into it. Grab your caffeinated kombucha, mute that founder friend pitching their 7th pivot this month, and enjoy this week’s snark-soaked breakdown:

🔗 NTT Builds AI That Maps Expert Decisions So Interns Can Pretend They Know What They’re Doing
NTT’s latest breakthrough promises to “visualize expert decision-making” using AI trained on dialogue data. In plain English: they’ve built a machine that turns watercooler wisdom into canned responses. Now even your least qualified intern can act like they’ve been in security operations for a decade—just by reading the right AI-generated script.

We’re not saying this is how Skynet starts, but teaching machines to simulate human decision trees based on call center transcripts is giving “office automation, but cursed” energy. The only thing missing is a motivational poster that reads: “Fake it ‘til the algorithm makes it.”

🔗 Tim Cook Just Dunked on Every “Apple Is Doomed” Thinkpiece
While tech analysts were busy drafting another “Apple’s Lost Its Mojo” thread, Tim Cook went ahead and posted record June quarter results — $94 billion in revenue, and a reminder that Apple’s core product is no longer the iPhone, it’s humiliation.

We break down how Cupertino continues to defy gravity, sell you minor camera upgrades at luxury prices, and make it all look effortless. At this point, Apple isn’t competing with other tech companies — it’s competing with the Federal Reserve’s money printer.

🔗 Zuckerberg’s “Personal Superintelligence” Post Roasted to a Carbonized Crisp
Mark Zuckerberg posted a note titled Personal Superintelligence and the internet collectively lost a few neurons. Zuck waxed poetic about AI improving itself, freeing humanity from subsistence, and maybe even discovering “things that aren't imaginable today” — like Meta turning a profit on the metaverse.

Our takedown includes hallucinated charts, a visual cameo by the SiliconSnark robot, and a polite reminder that the most dystopian part of this vision is Zuck using the phrase open question. Let’s hope superintelligence starts with developing self-awareness in LinkedIn-style manifesto writing.

🔗 You Could Fix Your Sizing Chart… or You Could Build NaizGPT
MySize Inc. has launched NaizGPT, a ChatGPT clone trained to interpret sizing and returns data, so e-commerce teams can “talk to their dashboards.” Because why fix the root cause of return rates when you can build a conversational AI to explain why your XXL fits like a medium in a heatwave?

The whole thing reeks of retail’s favorite move: slap AI on the problem and hope investors don’t notice the real issue is your cotton-polyester blend crop top. But hey, at least the model can talk you through your quarterly losses now.

🔗 Beyond AI: Exploring Brain Implants, Robots, and What Might Be Tech’s Next Big Thing
This 9,000+ word snark-powered deep dive unpacks what might come after the AI hype wave. Brain chips, humanoid robots, or just more overfunded apps for booking pet psychics? We cover it all — including the weird, the wild, and the wearable.

If you’ve ever wondered whether your next VC pitch should involve literal neural interfaces or a robot butler, this guide is your snarky compass through the chaos. Spoiler: we’re rooting for the robot that refuses meetings.

🔗 Bureaucracy, But Make It Cloud-Native: EQT and CPP Acquire NEOGOV
What’s more thrilling than an HR software acquisition? Trick question. But EQT and CPP are betting big on NEOGOV, a cloud-native solution for public sector compliance. Because nothing screams “venture-scale growth” like digitizing the DMV.

The announcement somehow manages to make government onboarding software sound like a rocket ship. We salute the optimism — and await the first AI-generated compliance memo flagged as hostile by a chatbot.

📬 That’s a wrap for this week’s absurdities. Subscribe to SiliconSnark for more satirical tech coverage, GPT-powered roasts, and the occasional unsolicited robot meme. Because in this economy, laughter is cheaper than therapy.