Wow. We Celebrate Our 100th AI News Show!!
An experiment that started last December now shows real promise
AI leaders, AI vendors, and AI investors consistently tell us, "I can’t keep up with all the AI news" despite subscribing to multiple AI newsletters.
To help, we started an experiment last December where our AI Analysts meet five times per week at 7:30 AM EST on a live internet show to rate the previous day’s top AI news articles as Essential, Important, or Optional (E, I, O).
This Tuesday, May 28, will be our 100th episode (archive episodes here and here).
I am extremely proud of the dedication and commitment of our team. Our colleague Adam Rappaport calls in daily from Melbourne, Australia, where it is midnight for each call. David DeDallo does a great job moderating and driving a daily email summary. Tim Andrews, Luda Kopeikina, Amanda Fetch, Tania DiCostanzo, and John Sviokla provide stellar analysis.
The show typically lasts 20 minutes and includes some light-hearted kidding and several bad jokes. Vacuous vendor press releases or research papers are awarded a “nothing burger,” and the best discussions occur when one analyst rates an article as Essential and another rates it as Optional.
The daily discussion has been a wonderful learning experience. For instance, it became clear last December that LLMs on edge devices was gaining traction and would be a reality in 2025, but this was rarely discussed in general.
Our daily show has included several “Guest Raters” who call in, rate articles and participate in the discussion. Ashish Bhatia, principal product manager at Microsoft, highlighted the importance of OpenAI’s new “Model Spec,” which fixes the problem of LLM calls mixing instructions and data.
Pete Blackshaw, CEO of BrandRank.AI, provided an outstanding analysis of OpenAI’s recent slate of announcements.
Join us live and trade online comments with others or listen to a recording. Click “Subscribe” on YouTube to watch and to receive notifications.
Articles rated “Essential” last week by our AI analyts.
The Foundation Model Transparency Index
Rationale: A comprehensive evaluation index for foundation models enabling leaders to have more insight into models before selecting the right one for their projects.
Rationale: Great example of a leading large firm transforming a key business using AI. Note that the person leading the effort does not have the tech background but is highly knowledgeable in the processes of the business being transformed.
OpenAI, WSJ Owner News Corp Strike Content Deal Valued at Over $250 Million
Rationale: The article highlights two mega shifts happening in the media industry. One, the power of distribution is winning over content creation demonstrated by the low number, $50MM a year, that WSJ will get from the partnership. Second, a fight for traffic and advertising revenue is on. Publishers are concerned that AI-powered search tools, such as Bing/OpenAI and Google, will serve up complete answers based on news content, eliminating a user's need to click on an article link and depriving publishers of traffic and advertising revenue. How will this fight play out?
Introducing Tako, a new way to reference real knowledge And our first integration, Perplexity
Rationale: Tako, an advanced knowledge search and visualization engine, is partnering with Perplexity's answer engine, creating a revolutionary capability that will make many applications across the enterprise visual and user friendly. Amazing combination of real data with visualization.
Microsoft wants to make Windows an AI operating system, launches Copilot+ PCs
Rationale: We knew something like this would be coming and here it is. 40 generative AI models power this new OS and deliver some great capabilities. The AI can view what you're doing on-screen and you can interact with it verbally in natural language in real-time as you work. And you get capabilities that are performed locally so your data is safe. No doubt this is an essential development.
Google’s broken link to the web
Rationale: Great commentary about the slow death of search as we know it and the implications for creators, publishers and any brand that relies on traditional search advertising (which is pretty much every brand). Anyone in business needs to track the trends here and should be preparing for changes now.
Slack users horrified to discover messages used for AI training
Rationale: Slack's policies seems to leave the door open for them to use customer data to train their models though they claim they don't. And you have to opt out via your Slack administrator rather than opt in. The confusion has caused some users to get angry and point out the discrepancies. Essential for AI leaders (and any organizational leader) to understand if their private data is being used for training by their service providers so we marked this essential
Notable upcoming events
Weekly GenAI Learning Lab (Zoom call) 7p ET/ 4 PT every Monday. The Showcase for this Monday (yes Memorial Day in the US) is From SEO to LLMs : Influencing LLMs to Return Your Content
Watch recent episodes
June 4 (in person, paid). The AI Advantage in Sales workshop presented by the Distribution Strategy Group. This 3 hours, hands-on workshop shows you how to use GenAI to increase your sales effectiveness to drive cash to your pocket.
June 7 at 9a ET (virtual, free). AI Blueprint for MA monthly Zoom call. AI Blueprint for MA is a volunteer effort to help attract and retain AI talent to the State of MA in USA. Email Paul Baier to be added to the calendar event. This event is open to the public.
June 7 (in-person, free). MIT CSAIL and Imagination in Action Conference focused on Academics and Technology. will.i.am is confirmed to speak. Apply to attend here
Oct 7-8 (2 days. in-person, paid): GAI Insights’ Generative AI World 2024 Conference Boston, MA. We have a great set of confirmed speakers already. UBS and Quantum Gears are our Gold sponsors.
“Show me that the good life doesn’t consist in its length, but in its use, and that it is possible — no, entirely too common — for a person who has lived a long life to have lived too little.” - Seneca
Onward,
Paul