Time Travel, AI Overlords, and Robot Dentists: Just Another Week in Tech
Time Travel, AI Overlords, and Robot Dentists: Just Another Week in Tech
Buckle up! We're diving into the past, present, and future of tech - no DeLorean required (but a sense of humor is highly recommended).
This week I want to take you on a time-traveling trip – not to the future, but to the past. The BBC recently added this delightful video on “will Internet Shopping ever take off?” from 1997 to its archive, featuring—amongst others—a rather young Jeff Bezos. I love watching these clips, not just for their entertainment value, but to calibrate my view of the future. What was my perception of the topic at the time? What did Bezos see that others (myself included) missed? What did they get spectacularly wrong (and why)?
I hope you enjoy this week’s edition of your Weekend Briefing — see you for the next one!
Have a beautiful day!
P ツ
The Thin Wisps of Tomorrow
Yuval is Back At It — Best-selling historian Yuval Harari, in a recent Guardian Op-Ed, paints a bleak picture of our AI-powered future. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree, it is worth thinking about the broader implications AI will have on our lives and societies and contemplating how we want to deal with a world that will, increasingly, be mediated by artificial, or as Harari puts it, alien intelligence. (link ↗)
”AI Editing is Just Like Photoshop” — Tech news site The Verge recently ran an article arguing that the assertion that editing images using AI is akin to using Photoshop over the last couple of decades is sloppy and ultimately dangerous. As someone who has made this argument before, I concede: AI image editing, at the level it is already possible (just check out the abilities of the new Google Pixel phone AI), is outright dangerous. The Verge article is a timely reminder that we need to get on top of this fast. (link ↗)
One AI Assistant to Rule Them All — Here at be radical, we have a couple of analysts we closely follow, one of them being Ben Thompson. His take on the strategic approach Google is taking with its deep AI integration into its new Pixel phone (and down the line Android overall) points to a new battleground: AI Assistants. We had this before when Alexa and Siri (and to a much lesser extent Cortana) took it to the mat. Now that these systems have become AI superpowers, the game is really on. (link ↗)
No AI for TinTin — The use of AI in the creative industries is controversial at best (see our reporting in earlier editions of this dispatch). Now the European comic industry has come out in force and said: AI - Non, Nein, No! It makes you wonder how this will all morph over time. (link ↗)
Lidl Goes Cloud — Another European “no” leads to a very different outcome. European companies, looking for an alternative for hosting their data and servers with US companies (usually in US data centers), are embracing German grocery giant Lidl’s cloud offering. Similar to Amazon’s initial launch of AWS, which was originally built to serve internal use cases at Amazon, Lidl built a multi-billion dollar cloud business on top of its own use case and the fact that its servers are located in Germany, and thus under German (and European) data regulations. Fascinating. (link ↗)
The Inner Workings of AI — Large Language Models are still largely a black box. Slowly but surely, we start to peel the layers and figure out what’s actually going on and how to best work with GenAI. A new study conducted by Amazon and UCLA shows why AIs work so much better when you provide some examples in your prompts. (link ↗)
The Metaverse is Dead. Long live the Metaverse. — I (in)famously declared the Metaverse “bullshit” at a client event a couple of years ago. My stance hasn’t changed, but my understanding of the Metaverse has evolved. The incredible success of Roblox, a kid-friendly gaming platform, shows that the Metaverse isn’t about Zuck’s legless avatars floating from meeting to meeting. It’s not about Oculus-wearing gamers or sports fans, nor is it about blocky avatars wandering through the vastness of Second Life. Instead, it’s about kids guiding cute Lego-inspired figures through vibrant, candy-colored virtual worlds. Matthew Ball’s excellent analysis of Roblox and its business model is truly eye-opening. Still not convinced how big a deal it is? How about 3x bigger than Sony’s PlayStation, 5x bigger than Minecraft, 2.5x the size of Fortnite, or 2/3 of the users of Spotify—with players spending six billion (!) hours in the game each month. (link ↗)
What We Are Reading
🚀 How Did Walmart’s Drone Delivery Service Grow So Big, So Fast? Did you know Walmart is soaring ahead in the drone delivery race? Learn more about how they are partnering with tech innovators to conquer the skies and redefine retail logistics. @Jane
📵 Australia’s ‘right To Disconnect’ Laws Are Here. Does This Mean No More Work Intrusions On Personal Time? People are so overworked that there’s now a ‘Right to Disconnect’ law that enables an employee to refuse to monitor, read, or respond to work-related contact, or attempted contact, from a third party. Yikes. @Mafe
💊 Why Does Ozempic Cure All Diseases? There’s a pretty compelling argument to be made for the claim that GLP-1 drugs—a technology that’s, you know, already here—will have a greater impact on the economy (and life) than any other innovation this decade. Here’s a great primer. @Jeffrey
⚖️ Google’s Antitrust Defeat Opens The Door To Lawsuit From Yelp After the initial court ruling at the beginning of August that Google abused its power as a monopoly in the search market, it didn’t take long for others to seize the headwind against Google. Yelp is now suing Google in line with its long-stated criticism of the search giant. @Julian
🤖 Fully-automatic Robot Dentist Performs World’s First Human Procedure Would you leave your teeth in the hands of a robot? You probably will, thanks to Perceptive. @Pedro
🍖 Is Cultivated Meat For Real? We have been promised lab-grown meat for nearly a decade, yet it has not materialized beyond small-scale trials. The reasons are numerous, but the future may indeed allow us to eat meat produced without slaughtering animals. However, achieving this requires significantly more capital and time. @Pascal
(Random) Bits & Pixels
☢️ Admittedly a little morbid, but this dandy map ↗ shows you potential nuclear hotspots in your area. Happy!
🌩️ A little less morbid (alas, as deadly if struck by it), this neat website ↗ locates lightning strikes in real time.
🧑🏼💼 In case your boss needs this in writing: Micromanagement is bad. Actually bad—as this new research ↗ in Psychology Today shows. The essence: Micromanagement = mediocrity.
🕵🏼♂️ Looking for some creative uses for your Apple AirTags? How about crime-fighting? A California woman used an AirTag to find a parcel thief ↗.