I'm Back After a Break
Writing about AI is hard
Despite my conviction about consistent habits, I somehow lost my rhythm, and haven’t written a newsletter in over a month. I could blame it on the minor surgery I had on May 1st, but that was just a bump in the road and I was fine after a few days. The real issue is that writing about AI is emotionally draining and the more I learn about what’s happening at the top of they pyramid, the more discouraged I feel about the rest of us at the bottom. I originally started this newsletter as an enthusiastic booster who wanted to share knowledge about AI tools, but that’s been tempered by stunning job losses and corporate malfeasance. So I took a break and now I’m back, but the AI world is no less complicated. If you’re a new reader or you’ve been here since the beginning, thanks for being patient and supporting my work. I’m coming up on my one year anniversary and I’m looking forward to bringing you more insight. I have about 200 articles bookmarked that I’d like to discuss, but let’s just dive into the big ideas of the last month.
The Humane Pin and The Rabbit R1 Suck
The era of AI standalone devices was over before it started, but the release of OpenAI’s new ChatGPT 4o (o as in omni) was the nail in the coffin. You’ve probably already heard that Humane Pin and the Rabbit R1 were getting bad reviews, but the main problem was lag time because you needed to wait for it to get a response from a server over a cellular connection. Who really needed to buy another device and a service plan? Even before these devices were being shredded by Marques Brownlee (worst device ever) and and Tom’s Guide, (avoid this gadget) The Verge was telling us that The Future of AI Gadgets is Just Phones. I’m a little embarrassed that I gushed over Humane’s sexy marketing demo because of the pedigree of it’s founders (former Apple Execs), but now the company is already for sale. However, the real question is just how powerful is OpenAI? While Humane and Rabbit deserved to fail on there own, Open AI can now wipe out entire industries with each wave of innovation.
Sam Altman is Still a Jerk and Can’t be Trusted
Yeah, I spilled a ton of praise over Sora when it came out this winter, even though none of us have access to it. And I watched in awe when the ChatGPT 4o demos came out. But the whole Scarlett Johansen fiasco reveals that Sam Altman now thinks that he can do whatever he wants. OpenAI has a new safety and security committee as they work towards ChatGPT 5, but Sam Altman is actually on that committee. That’s like like letting the fox guard the henhouse.
Graphic Design Job Trend Alert
My colleague Jill V. and I were chatting about the future of our profession the other day and wishing that we had a crystal ball that would help us fine tune our curriculum so we could better serve our students. While it’s hard to predict the future, this article landed in my inbox later that day, Check it out
AI Will Need to Subsidize UBI
Universal Basic Income will be one of the defining ideas of the next half decade if someone figures out how to get it right. In my opinion, the enormous profits that will be generated by AI (and possibly AGI) will need to be converted into some sort of dividend like Alaska’s oil fund. Geoffrey Hinton, the Godfather of Artificial Intelligence, thinks so too. Check it out
Adobe Doesn’t Care About Photographers
Adobe appears to be tone-deaf to the needs of photographers when it runs an ad campaign for it’s new AI product with the tagline “Skip the Photoshoot”. Photographers are outraged and PetaPixel has you covered.
MS PAINT Now Has AI Drawing Built In
At the Microsoft Build event last week they announced a new line of super-fast laptops with Copilot running natively as part of the OS. One small tidbit of the presentation was that MS Paint, the app that many of us made our first digital drawings on, will now use AI to instantly transform your crude scratchings into fine art. I’ve reported on similar tools like Krea and Stable Diffusion Turbo that do this in the browser, but Microsoft’s potential reach is amazing. How do you convince a fourteen year old to learn how to draw when they can have it instantly? Check it out
Klarna Reduces Marketing Costs by $10 Million
Fintech firm Klarna, one of the early adopters of generative AI (GenAI), said on Tuesday it is using AI for purposes such as running marketing campaigns and generating images, saving about $10 million in costs annually. The company has cut its sales and marketing budget by 11% in the first quarter, with AI responsible for 37% of the cost savings, while increasing the number of campaigns, the company said.
"Traditionally, it would have been very costly to cater to these occasions with bespoke imagery, but with AI that is no longer an issue," Klarna CMO David Sandström said in a statement. "Essentially, we have removed the need for stock imagery."
Palo Alto Networks Can Afford Keanu Reaves
Well Keanu, I guess we all need to make that big cash grab while we still can.
Well, that’s just scratching the surface. I’ll be back with an in depth follow up in a few days. Thank you for reading, and if you have any questions, send them my way.
I'm glad your surgery went well. I was wondering, but I figured you were taking a break.