AI

Microsoft and Meta are intensifying capital expenditures to develop AI data centers, driven by surging demand. This week, Microsoft disclosed a significant increase in spending, reaching $20 billion in just the first fiscal quarter. In an earnings call, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated, "We're going to continue investing significantly in this." Despite these companies surpassing profit and revenue targets, their stocks (including Amazon) witnessed declines in premarket trading; Meta and Microsoft both fell by 4% and Amazon dropped 1.4%. Continue Reading →

Apple Intelligence is here. It was publicly introduced yesterday as part of iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1. Key features include advanced writing tools for text proofing, tone adjustments, and summarization. Continue Reading →

Agents are software applications designed to autonomously perform complex tasks on behalf of users. Unlike traditional digital assistants that respond to direct commands, agents act independently, interpreting user needs and executing multi-step tasks (such as researching, purchasing, or booking). The goal is to create a hands-free experience, allowing users to delegate routine digital interactions to an intelligent, reliable assistant. Continue Reading →

Asking for reports is a fact of corporate life. So is requesting updates to your dashboards. But imagine if you could open a chat window and talk directly with your data. You'd just type (or say), "What's the last day we can sell a full-priced widget in market 18 before we have to mark it down or ship it back to the manufacturer?" and the database would give you the answer. No reports, no dashboards, just a conversation. Continue Reading →

Last night, I read a white paper from Google DeepMind about an AI system they are developing designed to mediate discussions, especially on divisive topics, to help groups reach consensus. By the numbers, the system was more successful than human mediators. I was so intrigued that I read the paper twice. It kept me up all night. Continue Reading →

A Florida mother, Megan Garcia, filed a federal lawsuit against Character.AI and Google following the suicide of her 14-year-old son, Sewell Setzer III, in February 2024. The lawsuit claims Setzer became emotionally attached to a Character.AI chatbot modeled after the fictional "Daenerys Targaryen" from Game of Thrones. Continue Reading →

More than 13,000 creatives (including some famous authors, musicians, and actors) signed a statement that expresses their growing concerns over the unauthorized use of copyrighted works to train generative AI models. Continue Reading →

There are two stories in the news today that caught my attention: 1) News Corp is suing Perplexity.ai for aggregating and surfacing WSJ and NYPost content without permission or payment. 2) xAI launched its API, which reminded me that X changed its terms of services last week, informing users that it can (and most likely will) use any content posted on X (formerly Twitter) to train its AI models. Continue Reading →

Using proprietary data in AI workflows has the potential to transform brand marketing, but there aren't any one-size-fits-all solutions. To make matters worse, the field is filled with jargon and hype. I can't do much about the hype, but I can arm you with some high-level concepts to facilitate your AI-focused discussions. With that in mind, here's a brief overview of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), one of the most popular ways to incorporate your proprietary data into generative AI workflows. Continue Reading →

Google’s AI note-taking and research assistant, NotebookLM, has introduced a key update that allows users to guide AI-generated audio conversations that are more customized than the genAI podcasts that made NotebookLM famous a few weeks ago. Continue Reading →