AI Reshapes World as Tech Giants Innovate, Adapt, and Monetize
Kick back and unravel the latest in AI wonders, tech titans’ maneuvers, and a dash of weekend curiosity.
Dear Friend,
I am writing this from the road—I am currently on a road trip with my 80-year-old dad, who is visiting from Germany. We are in beautiful Ouray, CO. Ouray might be far removed from the crazy world of AI, and yet I overheard some young locals debating the merit of ChatGPT over beers last night. The AI hype surely shines bright...
This week’s episode of the Weekend Briefing is chock-full of news but light on images—a trade-off I had to make while traveling and putting this edition together while being “in the woods.”
Enjoy the read and have a fantastic weekend.
Pascal and the ‘be radical’-crew
From the Ministry of AI
Wolfram’s AI Insights: Stephen Wolfram, the genius behind Mathematica and WolframAlpha, shares his perspective on AI. As usual, his views are a refreshing mix of optimism and caution. Listen to his insights on AI’s potential to solve regulatory challenges and revolutionize scientific discovery while balancing innovation and control.
Adding Dimensions: Our world is three-dimensional, so why should cartoons be confined to only two dimensions? Toon3D takes a cartoon (hello, SpongeBob!) and transforms it into a 3D image using clever AI. Not into cartoons? Consider the implications for other 2D forms of media.
Magic Without the Math: Know a bit of Python? Here’s a great overview of how LLMs work—no complex math involved, just a dash of Python code.
Peering Into the Black Box: Anthropic, the makers of Claude AI, have released groundbreaking research shedding light on the pesky question of how LLMs actually work. Believe it or not, this is an actual question: LLMs are weird, alien black boxes.
Are You Thinking Yet: Can AI achieve consciousness? Maybe, but not quite like us. A recent research paper examines AI’s potential for consciousness by comparing it to the human brain’s complexity. While AI can’t replicate human consciousness yet, it might develop different forms of awareness. (Maybe the A in AI should stand for “alien” instead of “artificial.”)
Everybody Become a Prompt Engineer: Financial institution JPMorgan Chase & Co. is turning every single employee into an AI prompt engineer. In their own words: “We don’t have to debate the importance of it anymore; it is important.”
Slop Is Coming for Your Books: Last week, we introduced the term “slop” to describe the influx of AI-generated content, which is comparable to “spam” in the AI world. The AI tool Automateed can transform a single prompt into a complete ebook, making the process of becoming an author incredibly easy—and utterly meaningless. Slop, slop, hooray!
Just Read (and Understand) These 30 Books: OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever (yes, the one who departed) offers straightforward advice originally intended for 3D gaming legend John Carmack: to truly understand AI, simply read and comprehend these 30 articles. No big deal.
Rinse, Repeat, Regret: AI hype follows a predictable cycle of initial excitement, overblown promises, and eventual disillusionment. Each breakthrough, from neural networks to deep learning, starts strong but plateaus, and while these cycles yield useful tech, they never quite live up to the hype. Maybe it is time to prepare for the current AI boom to fizzle out like its predecessors.
Copilot Becomes Your Copilot: You have to give it to Microsoft - their ‘all-in’ effort on AI is impressive and likely a very smart move. Adding its Copilot technology to literally everything, from their office software products to the operating system, will lead to some very interesting use cases (and seems a lot more coherent than what rival Google announced at Google I/O last week).Keep up with their announcements here.
Pony Up: Meanwhile, Amazon is pondering plans for its Alexa assistant—including making users pay for it. This leaves us wondering: would anyone actually pay just for Alexa in a world where ChatGPT is on your phone, Copilot on your computer, and I am sure Apple’s Siri will gain AI smarts sooner rather than later?
All the Other Things
From Gas to Batteries: One of the major obstacles to large-scale renewable energy deployment is managing peak demand. Until now, conventional energy sources like gas have been the solution. However, big batteries are now outperforming natural gas in this role—and the transition (in the US) is swift.
For Now, Hollywood Sells: After Wes Anderson’s (admittedly brilliant) Montblanc ad—for which he created his own pen, arguably the most Wes Anderson thing to do—we now see Martin Scorsese promoting Chanel’s new perfume. How long until AI artists and their creations dominate this space?
Moonshot No More: Google’s (in)famous moonshot factory [X] shifts from moonshots to startups. Innovation still thrives, but now it’s all about market viability. In the end even Google can’t afford to spend too much of its head (and time) in the sky.
What We Are Reading
🤖 AI’s Trust Problem AI’s rapid growth is being hindered by a significant trust deficit stemming from 12 key risks such as disinformation, security threats, bias, job losses, and state overreach. This emphasizes the crucial role of human judgment in ensuring its responsible deployment. @Jane
📊 2024 Gen Z And Millennial Survey Deloitte’s annual survey highlights familiar concerns from millennials and Gen Zs: cost of living, unemployment, and climate change. However, for the first time in a while, one-third of respondents said they were cautiously optimistic about the economy. @Mafe
🧟♂️ Spam, Junk … Slop? The Latest Wave Of AI Behind the ‘Zombie Internet’ Maybe you’ve heard people worrying about the advent of an informationally bankrupt “zombie” internet? This is what it looks like and how we’re creating it with Gen AI. @Jeffrey
🤝 OpenAI, WSJ Owner News Corp Strike Content Deal Valued At Over $250 Million In a pivotal moment, publishing houses are showing approaches of either embracing and collaborating with or resisting OpenAI and similar tools. Considering what queries might look like in the future, a collaborative stance seems reasonable in order to play some part in bringing relevant content in front of those looking for it. @Julian
🤖 Can AI Solve Legacy Tech Problems? Companies Are Putting It To The Test Is your tech stack dependent on COBOL? Don’t worry, GenAI to the rescue! @Pedro
🔍 The Search Squeeze Google’s latest updates are squeezing the life out of small publishers. With AI summaries taking over, it’s time for the little guys to find a new game plan. @Pascal
(Random) Bits & Pixels
Floor796 is an ever-expanding animation scene, showcasing life on the 796th floor of a massive space station! The project’s goal is to create a vast animation with numerous references to movies, games, anime, and memes. Most characters are clickable, allowing you to learn about them and follow links to their sources. It is madness (and brilliant!).