Weekly Link Roundup #18
an 18.5 roundup will be following shortly.....
Can Xerox’s PARC, a Silicon Valley Icon, Find New Life with SRI?: Some of you know but part of my journey is that I'm a historian (and an anthropologist) and was pursuing a PhD in History when I left to work in the Pentagon. The part of history that has always fascinated me are the moments and places when technology leaps over the status quo and forces a change. Lot of examples on the military history front and the industrial. I also still have my C64 in its original box with the manual if that tells you how much the historian in me is also a geek.
When I started working for SocialText, with an office in Palo Alto, I flew out to meet the folks. As I got off CalTrain with my little rolling suitcase, I didn't head for the office first. No, first stop was the HP garage - to pay homage if you will. I consider places like the Apple and HP garages, Bell Labs and yes, SRI and PARC to be not sacred exactly but important in so many ways. So get comfy and read this article about two of the places that created the technology that underpins and makes possible almost everything we are able to do online today.
There are also a couple of important points related to innovation in this piece. This quote couldn’t be more on point “PARC is dead,” said Bernardo Huberman, a physicist who was a PARC researcher during the 1970s and 1980s and who now heads a research group at CableLabs, a development organization sponsored by the cable television industry. He added that “the value system that made people feel like they were part of something intellectually by working at PARC has disappeared.” I’d argue that we’re already dealing with the consequences of shifting out culture to a place that doesn’t exactly favor basic, foundational research.
Here is the final kicker - “The challenge, said Curtis Carlson, a physicist who was SRI’s chief executive from 1998 to 2014, will be to create a culture that is able to make the connection between invention and innovation, which he described as invention delivered into the marketplace with a viable business model.” Love that definition, great focus on the challenge, and if they succeed, we will all benefit.
Americans’ use of ChatGPT is ticking up, but few trust its election information: “It’s been more than a year since ChatGPT’s public debut set the tech world abuzz. And Americans’ use of the chatbot is ticking up: 23% of U.S. adults say they have ever used it, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in February, up from 18% in July 2023.” >That’s almost a quarter of the population in a little over a year.
AI21 Labs’ new AI model can handle more context than most: Great read not just for this particular product announcement but because it does a good job explaining things like context in terms of AI models and what a token is. (let me keep saying, L&D could be the smartest ones in the org on these things and actually be educating the whole org on them).
YouTube now lets creators share exclusive Shorts with their paying subscribers: Three words - internal creator economy.
Hacking internal AI chatbots with ASCII art is a security team’s worst nightmare:
Is AI’s next big leap understanding emotion? $50M for Hume says yes: Are you having a bad day Dave? You sound frustrated. “Hume AI’s differentiator from numerous other AI model providers and startups is in its focus on creating an AI assistant — and an API for that assistant that other enterprises can build chatbots atop of, as well as some of its underlying data — that understands human emotion, reacts appropriately to it, and conveys it back to the user. Unlike ChatGPT and Claude 3 which are primarily known for being text-based chatbots, Hume AI also uses voice conversations as its interface, listening to a human user’s intonation, pitch, pauses, and other features of their voice alone.”
Google.org launches $20M generative AI accelerator program: “Google.org, Google’s charitable wing, is launching a new program to help fund nonprofits developing tech that leverages generative AI. Called Google.org Accelerator: Generative AI, the program is to be funded by $20 million in grants and include 21 nonprofits to start, including Quill.org, a company creating AI-powered tools for student writing feedback, and World Bank, which is building a generative AI app to make development research more accessible.”
Meta’s Smart Glasses Are Becoming Artificially Intelligent. We Took Them for a Spin: “We wore the glasses to the zoo, grocery stores and a museum while grilling the A.I. with questions and requests. The upshot: We were simultaneously entertained by the virtual assistant’s goof-ups — for example, mistaking a monkey for a giraffe — and impressed when it carried out useful tasks like determining that a pack of cookies was gluten-free.”
Every US federal agency must hire a chief AI officer: “Vice President Kamala Harris announced the new Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance in a briefing with reporters and said that agencies must also establish AI governance boards to coordinate how AI is used within the agency. Agencies will also have to submit an annual report to the OMB listing all AI systems they use, any risks associated with these, and how they plan on mitigating these risks.”