KC DEBRIEF WEEK 21, FRIDAY 2024/05/24
DIGITAL TITANS
_What’s on TV? For Many Americans, It’s Now YouTube. People spent nearly 10% of their TV-viewing time watching the service, home to videos by creators like MrBeast. Nearly 10% of the time Americans spent in front of TV screens last month.
_Google's AI search is telling car drivers to consider changing their blinker fluid. That's not a thing, but Google's new overview feature is having a hard time discerning the joke. Remember when you could just search for the information you needed on the internet and be reasonably certain the internet would provide you with a useful answer? Google, has a new idea: What if there was a way to spend billions of dollars on a system that provides users with incorrect and or useless information? If you’ve been using Google lately, you know that that future is already here. Twitter user @daltoneverett recently got a good look at the incredible capabilities of Google’s new AI Overview tool when he entered “blinker not making sound” in Google’s search bar. In the past, he may have found a helpful forum entry that helped him solve his problem. In the more recent past, he may have been given piles of SEO optimized websites that were somehow trying to get him signed up for something. But here in the future, Google’s hyper-intelligent learning computer can fall for an absolutely ancient car person joke because it’s less capable of understanding context than the average dog.
_Spotify has launched a new bespoke brand typeface called Spotify Mix, which the music platform worked with the Berlin type design studio Dinamo to create. The typeface took around 18 months to develop and will, from this week, begin to be seen across all of the brand’s communications and marketing, and within the product itself. It’s even going to replace the font used in the Spotify wordmark.The typeface will replace Spotify Circular, which the music service has used for years. “Circular had been with us for quite some time and it served us really well, but it also felt quite limiting at times,” says Rasmus Wängelin, global head of brand design at Spotify. Circular didn’t offer enough options or expressiveness. “Being able to go from condensed to extended gives you an ability to communicate so many more emotions,” he says, “versus a typeface that only has a regular setting at different weights.” And this ability to dial the expressiveness both up and down is vital for Spotify, because, as he explains, “we need to show up in different ways in a lot of different places”.
_Can Artificial Intelligence Make the PC Cool Again? Microsoft, HP, Dell and others unveiled a new kind of laptop tailored to work with artificial intelligence. Analysts expect Apple to do something similar.Karen Weise reported from Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash., and Brian X. Chen from San Francisco.The race to put artificial intelligence everywhere is taking a detour through the good old laptop computer.Microsoft on Monday introduced a new kind of computer designed for artificial intelligence. The machines, Microsoft says, will run A.I. systems on chips and other gear inside the computers so they are faster, more personal and more private.The new computers, called Copilot+ PC, will allow people to use A.I. to make it easier to find documents and files they have worked on, emails they have read, or websites they have browsed. Their A.I. systems will also automate tasks like photo editing and language translation.
PEOPLE, MEDIA, CULTURE
_Neuralink’s first user Is ‘Constantly Multitasking’ with his brain implant. Noland Arbaugh is the first to get Elon Musk’s brain device. The 30-year-old speaks to WIRED about what it’s like to use a computer with his mind—and gain a new sense of independence. In 2016, Noland Arbaugh suffered a spinal cord injury while swimming in a lake. The details are fuzzy, but what he remembers is rushing toward the water with his friends, diving in, and hitting his head on something—or someone. He floated to the surface, unable to move.Doctors later confirmed that he was paralyzed from the neck down. Arbaugh went from being a self-sufficient college student to moving back in with his parents and relying on them for his daily needs. He learned how to get around in a wheelchair and use a mouth-held stick to operate an iPad, but the hardest adjustment was feeling like he was a burden on his family.The year 2016 was also when Elon Musk cofounded the brain implant startup Neuralink. This January, Arbaugh became the first person to receive the company’s investigational device, dubbed Telepathy, as part of a clinical trial. Known as a brain-computer interface, or BCI, it decodes intended movement signals in the brain and translates them into computer commands. Arbaugh just has to think about moving a cursor on his laptop screen and it moves.The experimental device has given Arbaugh, now 30, a sense of independence. Before, using a mouth-stick required someone to position him upright. If he dropped his mouth-stick, it needed to be picked up for him. And he couldn’t use it for long or he’d develop sores. With the Neuralink device, he has nearly full control of a computer. He can browse the web and play computer games whenever he wants, and Neuralink says he has set the human record for cursor control with a BCI.
AI AI LA LA LAND
//Generative artificial intelligence outperformed humans on theory-of-mind tests. Humans model other humans’ brains in their own: We think about whether someone knows things we know. Humans are subtle and complex, so AIs have struggled to do the same. But a new study found GPT-4 and other cutting-edge AIs were able to detect irony, hints, and false beliefs as well as or better than humans. It doesn’t mean AIs think like us, researchers told IEEE Spectrum, but suggests they are increasingly good at interpreting us, and convincing us we’re dealing with a real mind. That will become more relevant: Microsoft just released a new laptop with built-in AI features. It will soon become easier and easier to believe your computer understands you.
//AI AI and loneleeness. When I was reporting my ed tech series, I stumbled on one of the most disturbing things I’ve read in years about how technology might interfere with human connection: an article on the website of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz cheerfully headlined “It’s Not a Computer, It’s a Companion!” It opens with this quote from someone who has apparently fully embraced the idea of having a chatbot for a significant other: “The great thing about A.I. is that it is constantly evolving. One day it will be better than a real [girlfriend]. One day, the real one will be the inferior choice.” The article goes on to breathlessly outline use cases for “A.I. companions,” suggesting that some future iteration of chatbots could stand in for mental health professionals, relationship coaches or chatty co-workers. This week, OpenAI released an update to its ChatGPT chatbot, an indication that the inhuman future foretold by the Andreessen Horowitz story is fast approaching. According to The Washington Post, “The new model, called GPT-4o (“o” stands for “omni”), can interpret user instructions delivered via text, audio and image — and respond in all three modes as well.” GPT-4o is meant to encourage people to speak to it rather than type into it, The Post reports, as “the updated voice can mimic a wider range of human emotions, and allows the user to interrupt. It chatted with users with fewer delays, and identified an OpenAI executive’s emotion based on a video chat where he was grinning.”
//WPP Integrates Anthropic’s Claude Foundational AI Models into WPP Open using Amazon Bedrock, Elevating Capabilities for its 114,000 Marketers. WPP today announces that it has integrated Anthropic’s state-of-the-art Claude artificial intelligence (“AI”) model family into its intelligent marketing operating system WPP Open, using Amazon Bedrock, a fully managed service from Amazon Web Services (“AWS”).The integration of Claude, including Opus, Sonnet and Haiku, brings powerful AI performance, intelligence and speed to enhance the capabilities of WPP’s 114,000-strong marketing talent across its network of agencies, providing each with cutting-edge technology to deliver innovative solutions and better results with clients.Powered by AI, WPP Open delivers world-leading capabilities across the marketing process including creative, media, production and commerce, offering a range of outputs and tools tailored to the specific needs of WPP’s diverse client base. WPP Open is trusted and utilised by world-renowned brands including The Coca-Cola Company, L’Oréal and Nestlé. Built on WPP intellectual property and owned technology, and strengthened by WPP’s strategic partners, WPP Open leverages WPP’s experience in serving enterprise clients to deliver highly optimised, automated and transformative marketing solutions that elevate brand experiences, push the boundaries of creativity and drive measurable growth.
//Scarlett Johansson 'shocked' by AI chatbot imitation. Hollywood star Scarlett Johansson has said she was left "shocked" and "angered" after OpenAI launched a chatbot with an "eerily similar" voice to her own. The actress said she had previously turned down an approach by the company to voice its new chatbot, which reads text aloud to users. When the new model debuted last week commentators were quick to draw comparisons between the chatbot's "Sky" voice and Johansson's in the 2013 film Her. OpenAI said on Monday that it would remove the voice, but insisted that it was not meant to be an "imitation" of the star. However, Johansson accused the company, and its founder Sam Altman, of deliberately copying her voice, in a statement seen by the BBC on Monday evening. “When I heard the released demo, I was shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine," she wrote. "Mr Altman even insinuated that the similarity was intentional, tweeting a single word 'her' - a reference to the film in which I voiced a chat system, Samantha, who forms an intimate relationship with a human." Set in the near future, 2013 film Her sees Joaquin Phoenix fall in love with his device's operating system, which is voiced by Ms Johansson.
//Does AI have a gross margin problem? Can AI overcome the gross margin doubters? Financial operations are needlessly complex. You have to cobble together a patchwork of tools that aren’t integrated with each other, cost you time, and lead to errors.Mercury simplifies this with banking* and software that powers all your critical financial workflows — all together within the one thing every business needs — a bank account. And with new bill pay and accounting capabilities, you can pay bills faster, stay in control of company spend, and speed up reconciliation.
//NASA has appointed its first Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer, underscoring the crucial role AI tools play in the agency's missions and research initiatives. These tools enable NASA to analyze vast amounts of data, identify trends, and develop autonomous systems to support spacecraft and aircraft operations. As NASA plans future missions to the Moon and Mars, technology becomes even more critical. Nelson emphasized the importance of responsible AI deployment, highlighting its potential to accelerate scientific discovery while ensuring safety and ethical use.
//Electricity grids creak as AI demands soar. There’s a big problem with generative AI, says Sasha Luccioni at Hugging Face, a machine-learning company. Generative AI is an energy hog. “Every time you query the model, the whole thing gets activated, so it’s wildly inefficient from a computational perspective,” she says. Take the Large Language Models (LLMs) at the heart of many Generative AI systems. They have been trained on vast stores of written information, which helps them to churn out text in response to practically any query. “When you use Generative AI… it’s generating content from scratch, it’s essentially making up answers,” Dr Luccioni explains. That means the computer has to work pretty hard. A Generative AI system might use around 33 times more energy than machines running task-specific software, according to a recent study by Dr Luccioni and colleagues. The work has been peer-reviewed but is yet to be published in a journal. It’s not your personal computer that uses all this energy, though. Or your smartphone. The computations we increasingly rely on happen in giant data centres that are, for most people, out of sight and out of mind. “The cloud,” says Dr Luccioni. “You don’t think about these huge boxes of metal that heat up and use so much energy.”
//Humane, the startup behind the poorly-reviewed AI Pin wearable computer, is already hunting for a potential buyer for its business. That’s according to a report from Bloomberg, which says the company — led by former longtime Apple employees Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno — is “seeking a price of between $750 million and $1 billion.” That might be a tough sell after the $699 AI Pin’s debut: the device has been widely panned for its slow responses and a user experience that falls well short of the always-on, wearable AI assistant concept that its founders promised in the run-up to the device’s release. The product was pitched at least partially as a way for people to be more present and reduce their ever-growing dependence on smartphones.
_Pope clears way for 'God's influencer' to become a saint. A London-born teenager - whose proficiency at spreading the teachings of the Catholic church online led to him being called "God's influencer" - is set to become a saint. Carlo Acutis died in 2006, at the age of 15, meaning he would be the first millennial - a person born in the early 1980s to late 1990s - to be canonised. It follows Pope Francis attributing a second miracle to him. It involved the healing of university student in Florence who had bleeding on the brain after suffering head trauma. Carlo Acutis had been beatified - the first step towards sainthood - in 2020, after he was attributed with his first miracle - healing a Brazilian child of a congenital disease affecting his pancreas. The second miracle was approved by the Pope following a meeting with the Vatican's saint-making department. It is not yet known when he will be canonised. Carlo Acutis died in Monza, in Italy, after being diagnosed with leukaemia, having spent much of his childhood in the country. His body was moved to Assisi a year after his death, and it currently resides on full display alongside other relics linked to him. As well as designing websites for his parish and school, he became known for launching a website seeking to document every reported Eucharistic miracle, which was launched days before his death. Mr Acutis' nickname, God's influencer, has been attributed to him after his death due to this work. His website has now been translated into several different languages, and used as the basis for an exhibition which has travelled around the world. His life is also remembered in the UK, where in 2020, the Archbishop of Birmingham established the Parish of Blessed Carlo Acutis incorporating churches in Wolverhampton and Wombourne. And there is a statue of the soon-to-be-saint in Carfin Grotto, a Roman Catholic shrine in Motherwell. Miracles are typically investigated and assessed over a period of several months, with a person being eligible for sainthood after they have two to their name. For something to be deemed a miracle, it typically requires an act seen to be beyond what is possible in nature - such as through the sudden healing of a person deemed to be near-death. The most recent person to be canonised was Maria Antonia de Paz y Figueroa, also known as Mama Antula, an 18th Century religious sister who became Argentina's first female saint.
BRANDS
_Samsung's new ad campaign takes aim at Apple, accusing the tech giant of stifling creativity. The ad, which is both playful and provocative, highlights Samsung's innovation in comparison to Apple's more conservative approach. This latest move by Samsung is part of an ongoing rivalry between the two companies, each vying to outdo the other in the highly competitive tech market.
Samsung's ad points to several features that it claims are innovative and unique to its devices, contrasting these with what it depicts as Apple's reluctance to adopt new technologies. The ad suggests that Apple's approach limits user creativity and innovation. This campaign is not just about poking fun at a competitor; it is also a strategic effort by Samsung to position itself as the leader in technological advancements and consumer choice. The message is clear: Samsung wants to be seen as the brand that champions innovation and creativity, in contrast to Apple’s more restrained evolution.
MMM OF THE WEEK
_Lately, Bumble has been making some big changes. After a new CEO, Lidiane Jones, took over in January, the company recruited Barry Keoghanto thirst-trap potential swipers into submission and finally ditched its founding premise of making women message men first. But the app’s rebrand appears to have hit a snag: An anti-celibacy ad campaign has ticked off a lot of potential customers. Two weeks ago, Bumble rolled out a commercial that showed a woman attempting to “swear off dating” and become a nun, only to abandon her convent after drooling over a sexy shirtless gardener and receiving an illicit phone loaded with the Bumble app. “We’ve changed so you don’t have to,” an overlay text read, presumably referring to the slate of new features the app is rolling out alongside its “opening move” pivot. “Introducing the new Bumble.”