Mid Week AI News

Mid week quick bites to keep you up to date

Sep 13, 2023

You might have seen this name floating around in the news lately, because he just published his book, The Coming Wave, on September 5th, and everybody had to write something about it. He’s more optimistic than I am and thinks that AI will radically reshuffle the world we live in and negatively impact the people in power.

This wave will fundamentally reshape and reorder society and it is those with most to lose, reliant on established capital, expertise, authority and security architectures, who are precisely the most exposed.

Read the Article | Read the Profile | Read the Dire Warnings

Person of the Week #2: Ayça Çakmakli

I was actually optimistic after reading these two articles. It sounds like at least some of the people at google are really concerned with ethics while building AI systems.

First, read this profile on Ayça Çakmakli, Google’s new Head of Responsible AI UX. And then read this article about why she thinks we are headed into a new golden age of UX design.

Illustration for Google by Mahima Pushkarna

in the Political Sphere

Google sets new transparency rules about AI content in Political ads. So if it’s a deep fake, you have to label it as such. read more

California Governor, Gavin Newsom, signed an executive order to study the development, use and risks of generative artificial intelligence. read more

For the UX Designers

I found this article to be really helpful in coaxing Chat GPT to help construct user stories, personas, and task flows. I’ll be sharing it with my current students in the first week of class. While the article promises 25 uses, it only provides 7 and directs you to a link where you can buy the entire list. You can enter a price of $0, but you don’t need the whole list, just use the article as a springboard for your imagination. read more

AI Audio Tool Roundup

The Verge has a great article about three different tools you can use to clone your own voice. read more

Meta has a new tool called Voicebox which is supposed to be terrifying in how fast and accurate it is. read more

The folks who brought you Stable diffusion, now have a music generator called Stable Audio. I had a blast playing with it yesterday, but now it seems to be on heavy load and bonking. check it out later

More Evidence That We’re Living in a Dystopian Science Fiction Movie

Finland is using low paid prison labor to help train Large Language Models.
Read about it in Wired Magazine

Coca Cola has an AI designed New Flavor

So Coca Cola realized that the public was really craving an AI flavored soft drink. And it’s supposed to taste like the future. And of course, they used artificial intelligence to help determine the flavor and packaging. read more