Have We Passed the Tipping Point?
Are there any good big tech companies?
AI wont Steal Your Job, it Will be Your Coworker
Are you under pressure to be more productive at work? Is there an expectation that you will use AI to increase your efficiency? If not, it will probably happen soon. Here’s a roundup of productivity tools headed towards your office.
Clickup has launched “ClickUp Knowledge Management,” which combines a new wiki-like editor with a new AI system that can also bring in data from Google Drive, Dropbox, Confluence, Figma and other sources. Check it out
Asana, the maker of project management software, is rolling out an initial version of its "AI teammates" — an artificial intelligence-based feature that aims to assist users by doing some of their tasks. Check it out
Building AI co-workers is going to be the largest opportunity of tech in our lifetime, measured by impact and measured by the amount of revenue, amount of money you can make building these kinds of technologies. -Jake Heller
Or, if you’d just like to jump to the bad news: A comprehensive list of tech layoffs for 2024
Two More Reasons to Hate Instagram
Okay, I don’t want to tell you what to, but like many of you I have mixed feelings about Instagram. Sure, I want all the cool kids to see my latest accomplishments and I feel a little disappointed when my post receives only 3 likes. I’ve read several articles and heard numerous complaints that Instagram hides your content from your actual friends and everyone now just receives more ‘suggested posts’ and advertising. Yet, I keep coming back for fear that I might become irrelevant if I don’t contribute something. If you’re on the fence in a similar way, you might want to read this article about Unskippable Ads. Instagram is testing a feature that will force you to stop and look at an ad for a period of time before you can continue scrolling. While not yet formalized, an IG spokesperson confirmed it’s a thing, saying “We’re always testing formats that can drive value for advertisers”.
And if you’re an artist and you’re still trying to use IG as the promotional arm for your creative career, you might want to know that Meta says it’s using your images to train it’s AI image generator. Oh yeah, and your selfies, your travel pics, and your family photos…and there’s no way to opt out.
Make that three reasons: Meta’s AI chatbot trained on millions of YouTube Videos
But Adobe is still cool, right?
Nope, take a look at this article about Adobe’s new Terms of Service where they say they can basically ‘study’ your work at any time, and there’s no way to opt out. You can’t even uninstall Photoshop until you agree. Check it out
Ten Breakthrough Technologies from MIT Press
While AI is the obvious #1 on this list, if you’re a thoughtful creative-tech type person, you should really be knowledgeable about the rest. Many of these are topics I’ll be discussing with my students. I think their will be big opportunities and impacts from these technologies in the near future. Here’s the short list, if you don’t feel like clicking on the link
Super-efficient solar cells
Apple Vision Pro
Weight-loss drugs
Enhanced geothermal systems
Chiplets (even smaller microchips)
Gene Editing
Exascale computers
Heat pumps
Twitter killers
Thermal batteries
AI Education and Workforce Training
While I realize that my audience is growing (thank you!) and not everyone is from Seattle, I’ll still occasionally report on local news. Geekwire reports that Sen. Maria Cantwell introduced new legislation Thursday packed with initiatives to strengthen American education and workforce training in artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
“Demand for AI expertise is already high and will continue to grow,” Cantwell said in a statement. “This bill will open doors to AI for students at all levels, and upskill our workforce to drive American tech innovation, entrepreneurship and progress in solving the toughest global challenges.”
As an educator, I’m really excited to ear this and I’m already working on new curriculum ideas to bring more AI skills to my students next fall.
Pixverse.ai, My New Fave AI Video Generator
So It’s almost summer, but I’ve already begun my ambitious list of creative projects. “I’m going to become an AI filmmaker!” I said, but Sora isn’t here yet and RunwayML and PikaLabs are way to expensive to justify their output. However, Pixverse just added a “Magic Brush”, similar to Runway’s “Motion Brush”. By quickly and roughly drawing with my mouse, I can select regions of my uploaded image and then draw a directional arrow to coax it where I want it to go. While I had a few glitch failures, I had an 85% success rate, which is much better than RunwayML. Best if all, their intro plan is only $5/month and I’ve barely used 5% of my credits, so I could make 20 experimental projects like this. Ready to start making AI films? Check it out
Images generated in Midjourney, voice over and sound effects from Eleven Labs, music from Google Test Kitchen, video generated in Pixverse. Edited in Capcut. Total time about 90 minutes.
Comment of the Week
Thanks to everyone who sent in a comment or suggestion. This is a collaborative process and I really love your feedback, so keep it coming. Former student AJH writes:
“Just want to say that Canva is great—I love empowering "non-designers." I worked on a collaborative deck with clients, and it was lovely that they could go in and update the copy themselves rather than sending a link to an updated Google Doc or a dozen PDFs. Sure, it has limitations, but I think the benefits outweigh. Of course, I will never give up the Adobe Suite, I just can't stand folks shitting on Canva.”
Also. Johannes Ippen from Humane Deluxe has this defense of Canva
The Letter
You might have heard about the letter of warning that several former employees of OpenAI have written. Matteo Wong of the Atlantic writes this about it:
OpenAI appears to be in the midst of a months-long revolt from within. The latest flash point came yesterday, when a group of 11 current and former employees—plus two from other firms—issued a public letter declaring that leading AI companies are not to be trusted. “The companies are behaving in a way that is really not in the public interest,” said William Saunders, a signatory who, like several others on the letter, left OpenAI earlier this year.
If you’re a civic minded person, you should read it. Right to warn
That’s it for today. I hope you’re having a great week. Keep learning, stay creative, reach out and say hello. And thanks for reading my newsletter, it means a lot to me.