Tag: ai

Predictions ’23 – The Summary

I’ve used the image above for many years, mainly because I love how surprised the guy looks as he gazes into the crystal ball. Or maybe he’s just sat on something unpleasant. In any case, it pretty much sums up my approach to this, my 20th edition of annual predictions. I sit down, I might have an adult beverage on hand, and I just write until I feel like I’m done.

While reviewing my ’22 predictions (I did pretty well!) I promised to do something new: One post per predictions, ten posts total. But as I began that promised work, I realized it would test the limits of even my most dedicated readers (I see you, kids). So instead I wrote three long form posts, each with three or four predictions apiece. The first focused on AI, the second on advertising, and the third on markets, with a bonus call related to the ’24 election. Having now written all of them, I’m going to summarize them briefly in this “master post.” Grab your own favorite beverage, have a wonderful New Year, and read on!

  1. ChatGPT finds a business model. Because of course it will. Which leads to…
  2. Google launches a ChatGPT-inspired search interface. Because paranoia. Related…
  3. Microsoft launches “Enterprise Explorer” – because there isn’t a big company CEO who doesn’t want some AI to play with.
  4. There’ll be a war between the duopolies of Google/Facebook and Amazon/Apple. Grab your popcorn.
  5. Netflix will triumph. I know…but the next one’s even more far fetched…
  6. Twitter will rebound. (I’ll leave it there for now)
  7. Crypto will go sideways in ’23. But that’ll be a good thing.
  8. Tesla will continue to tank, and not because of Twitter.
  9. Tech IPOs will make a comeback by EOY.
  10. Trump will pull out of the ’24 presidential race.
Read More
1 Comment on Predictions ’23 – The Summary

SIGN UP FOR THE NEWSLETTER

Stay up to date on the latest from BattelleMedia.com

Predictions ’23: AI Gets a Business Model (or Three)

Let’s start our 2023 predictions off with some thoughts on artificial intelligence. With ChatGPT, Silicon Valley seems to have gotten a bit of its mojo back. After two decades spent simmering the magic of Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook into a sticky lucre of corporate profit, here was the kind of technological marvel the industry seemed to have forgotten how to make – a magical tour de force that surprised, mystified, and delighted millions.

Even better, ChatGPT didn’t come from any of those corporate titans – not directly, anyway. Instead it came from a non-profit artificial intelligence research laboratory called OpenAI.  Founded in 2015 with a mission of furthering “responsible AI,” OpenAI is backed by some of the most celebrated names in Valley technology – LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, PayPal’s Peter Theil, Tesla’s Elon Musk among them. Now this was more like it!

Read More
5 Comments on Predictions ’23: AI Gets a Business Model (or Three)

Predictions 2021: How’d I Do? Pretty Damn Well.

As has been my practice for nearly two decades, I penned a post full of prognostications at the end of last year.  As 2021 subsequently rolled by, I stashed away news items that might prove (or disprove) those predictions – knowing that this week, I’d take a look at how I did. How’d things turn out? Let’s roll the tape…

My first prediction: Disinformation becomes the most important story of the year. At the time I wrote those words, Trump’s Big Lie was only two months old, and January 6th was just another day on the calendar.  A year later, that Big Lie has spawned countless others, culminating in one of the most damaging shifts in our nation’s politics since the Civil War. The Republican party is now fully captured by bullshit, and countless numbers of local, state, and national politicians are busy undermining democracy thanks to the Big Lie’s power.  A significant percentage of the US population has become unmoored from truth – and an equally significant group of us have simply thrown our hands up about it. Trust is at an all time low. This Barton Gellman piece in The Atlantic served as a wake up call late in the year – and its conclusions are terrifying: “We face a serious risk that American democracy as we know it will come to an end in 2024,” Gellman quotes an observer stating. “But urgent action is not happening.” I’m not happy about getting this one right, but as far as I’m concerned, this is still the most important story of the year – and the most terrifying.

Read More
3 Comments on Predictions 2021: How’d I Do? Pretty Damn Well.

Predictions 2021: Disinformation, SPACs, Africa, Facebook, and a Return to Tech Optimism

Never in my five-plus decades has a year been so eagerly anticipated, which makes this business of  prediction particularly daunting. I’m generally inclined to be optimistic, but rose-colored glasses stretch time. Good things always take longer to emerge than any of us would wish. Over 18 years of doing this I’ve learned that it’s best to not predict what I wish would happen, instead, it’s wise to go with what feels most likely in the worlds I find fascinating (for me, that’s media, technology, and business, with a dash of politics given my last two years at The Recount). As I do each year, I avoid reading other folks’ year-end predictions (though I plan on getting to them as soon as I hit publish!). Instead, I just sit down at my desk, and in one rather long session, I think out loud and see where things land.

And off we go….

Read More
2 Comments on Predictions 2021: Disinformation, SPACs, Africa, Facebook, and a Return to Tech Optimism

Sundar Pichai in the FT: Please Regulate Us (And Good Luck with All That)

Google’s (and now Alphabet’s) CEO opines in the FT (sub required) on why AI needs to be regulated, joining the chorus of tech leaders who have taken the apparent high road when it comes to regulation, even as governments around the world have shown next to no ability to actually regulate anything (well, I guess the Chinese have certainly regulated tech…in a not so great way). Astute readers will note that an op-ed in a paywalled publication, on a holiday no less, is not exactly placed to go viral. However, look a bit deeper, and you’ll realize that the Financial Times is very well read by Wall St., number one, and number two, it ain’t a holiday in Europe, where the most powerful people on the planet are gathering for Davos this week. Indeed.

While most of the op-ed is pretty weak sauce, a predictable call for governments to “work together” to “harness this technology for good,” I found this quote the most interesting: “Companies such as ours cannot just build promising new technology and let market forces decide how it will be used.” I wish Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple had that point of view before they built the AI-driven system we now all live with known as surveillance capitalism.

Maybe they’re learning. Or, maybe we’re not.

2 Comments on Sundar Pichai in the FT: Please Regulate Us (And Good Luck with All That)

Else 9.2.14: Don’t Worry, The Robots Are Our Friends. But the People?

Blade-Runner_610
“All these moments…will be lost in time…”

Else is back after an extended summer hiatus – thanks for taking the time off with me. I wasn’t sure if I was going to return to this newsletter, but its a good ritual for me to condense and annotate my daily and weekly reading habits, and enough of you have subscribed that I figured you might be missing the updates. I kind of was.

 Like this newsletter? Sign up! 

Read More
Leave a comment on Else 9.2.14: Don’t Worry, The Robots Are Our Friends. But the People?

Why You Need to See ‘Her’ (Or, ‘Her’ Again)

her-poster

A while ago I wrote a piece about Dave Egger’s latest novel The Circle. I gave the post the too-clever-by-twice title of  Why You Should Read The Circle, Even If You Don’t Buy It. While the book had (to my mind) deep flaws, it was far too important to not read.

Before a long flight today, I noticed that The Circle is now in paperback – it’s prominently featured in the JFK terminal bookstores. It reminded me that I enjoyed the novel, even if I found it somewhat disappointing. And it further reminded me that I tend to wait before consuming popular culture interpretations of what I consider to be my story – or perhaps more accurately our story. They so rarely seem to get it right. Of course, I understand there’s no “right” in the first place – so perhaps what I mean is…I feel like I’m going to be disappointed, so I avoid anything that might attempt to interpret the man-machine narrative in a way that maybe, just maybe, might prove me wrong.

Read More
10 Comments on Why You Need to See ‘Her’ (Or, ‘Her’ Again)

Else 5.19.14: I Too, Shall Be Forgotten (At Least By Europe)

Oh-Im-sorry.-I-forgot-I-only-exist-when-you-need-something.(image) If ever you wanted proof we are renegotiating our social contract in the Internet age, this week’s roundup of the best links provides plenty of fodder. Onwards…

The Myths & Realities Of How Of The EU’s New “Right To Be Forgotten” In Google Works – MarketingLand Google and other search engines will have to hew to new EU rules. But how they will be implemented is a big unknown. This looks to be a huge issue moving forward – what is a person’s right to ‘dignity’? In the US, it’s not much. In the EU, far more. But at what price to free speech?

Transparency Reports Database – Silk A roundup of the ever increasing number of transparency reports from digital companies subpoenaed by the US government. This promises to be one fat file a year from now.

Read More
1 Comment on Else 5.19.14: I Too, Shall Be Forgotten (At Least By Europe)

Else 3.31.14: Skulls, Bitcoin, AI, Souls, and Corporate Religion

ieee-spectrum-technological-singularity-thumb(image) If you’re a reader of this newsletter, you’re in elite company. Each week I chose ten or so stories from the score or so that I save to Evernote, and I annotate them after about three glasses of wine on a Sunday night. I make no pretense to be Jason or Dave, instead, this is a way to remember the most important stories of the past week through the filter of “the book.” And when I say “the book,” I mean That Project That Has Haunted Me For More Than Five Years But Is Increasingly Becoming Real. In other words, if you read this newsletter (or post), you’re a true fan of my work. And for that, I am thankful.

This past week was full of gems. The New Yorker reminded us how poignant digital life can be. We struggled with the ethics of 3D printing, even as we reveled in its power to save lives. Oh, and then there’s the singularity, and protecting us from the same. An epic Facebook rant, more Bitcoin, more brain-twisters about who’s a person, alive, dead, or corporate, in our increasingly mashed up world. To the links…

The Afterlife of Pia Farrenkopf : The New Yorker

Read More
1 Comment on Else 3.31.14: Skulls, Bitcoin, AI, Souls, and Corporate Religion

Else 3.3.14: Is The Internet A Utility?

elecutilThe week was dominated by Google related stories, but the top dialog had to do with the Internet itself. I’m sensing something of a shift in society’s beliefs about the Internet’s central role in our humanity. Five years ago, no one wanted to talk about Internet access as a basic human right. In 2012, the UN called it exactly that. With access consolidating into what looks like a natural monopoly, might regulation as a utility be far behind?

Real Time (Medium) Another, denser version of previous essays asking whether it isn’t time to call the Internet a basic utility. “..the immaterial organisation of the internet has now become the most dominant force on this side of the planet...” Unfortunately, this piece is too dense. Try this one instead: The Internet Is Fucked (TechCrunch) in which the author enjoins: “Go ahead, say it out loud. The internet is a utility.There, you’ve just skipped past a quarter century of regulatory corruption and lawsuits that still rage to this day and arrived directly at the obvious conclusion.” Of course, that created a rejoinder: More? – “The Internet is an incredibly useful tool in modern society, but it isn’t essential to the basic functioning of society. Utilities are.” My take: The Internet is a basic need now for the info-organism we are all becoming. So I’m leaning toward the utility camp, I’m afraid. There’s a new book on the subject, should you be interested.

The Monuments of Tech  (NYTimes.com) A meditation, with far too photos, on the meaning of the campuses built by Google, Twitter, Apple, Facebook. Have you read The Circle yet? Read The Circle. Then read this.

Read More
1 Comment on Else 3.3.14: Is The Internet A Utility?