Weekly Link Roundup #43
Checking for dolphins....
TikTok plugs Getty Images into its AI-generated ads and avatars: I’m not a creator on TikTok but I do follow the development of capabilities. So read the following from the viewpoint of an org looking to unleash the creativity of its internal population to create training content > > “The integration will be available through TikTok’s Symphony Creative Studio — an AI-powered video generation tool that rolled out today for all advertisers. This tool can generate a video based on a product description, add an AI avatar to “speak” about it, and even incorporate AI-powered dubbing in different languages.”
EU AI Act: Draft guidance for general purpose AIs shows first steps for Big AI to comply: Global companies take note > > “A first draft of a Code of Practice that will apply to providers of general-purpose AI models under the European Union’s AI Act has been published, alongside an invitation for feedback — open until November 28 — as the drafting process continues into next year, ahead of formal compliance deadlines kicking in over the coming years.”
Gartner’s 2025 Strategic Technology Trends Are Just Right: Pet peeve alert! This looks likes a great image but really doesn’t tell me anything. The article adds context but still doesn’t get to what I want.
Here’s what I want - I want a true radar screen. First off, I want me or my org or my
industry to be in the middle. Then I want to plot the tech developments in relation to me and I want them to show distance, altitude (the lower, the closer to “landing), the speed of approach (helpful to know when it will get here, I want it to show “weather” or other compounding, potential hurdles in the area, and I want it to show all these developments relative to not just me but to each other. That’s a screen I can use to prioritize and deconflict and on and on. It’s actionable data.
GraphAide: Building and Utilizing Knowledge Graphs for Domain-Specific Digital Assistants: This will read as highly technical but this is what I mean when I say that leadership, at all levels, needs to both experiment with AI to understand its affordances and they need to raise their technical expertise so they at least know the right questions to ask: “GraphAide’s architecture combines agentic and chain-based approaches to create a complex RAG system that utilizes multiple LLM instances for diverse tasks. Unlike traditional chain-based systems with hardcoded instructions, GraphAide’s agentic components can dynamically interpret LLM responses and construct subsequent queries.”
How to Use AI to Build Your Company’s Collective Intelligence: Love this and think there is so much work on the org dev/design, and change management fronts that it will take years to incorporate these capabilities: “Recent research suggests that collective intelligence emerges from three interdependent ingredients: collective memory, collective attention, and collective reasoning. Managers can apply this idea to target specific areas in which AI can elevate the organization’s collective cognitive abilities and drive more informed decision-making in ways that are human centered and amplify human creativity.”
Google’s AI ‘learning companion’ takes chatbot answers a step further: Again, I’m not so much interested in this specific development but more so in the dynamics it affords. How would this change an instructional designer’s job? A SMEs involvement? How does this affect grading and assessments? > > “Google has launched an experimental new AI tool called Learn About, which is different from the chatbots we’re used to, like Gemini and ChatGPT. It’s built on the LearnLM AI model that Google introduced this spring, saying it’s “grounded in educational research and tailored to how people learn.” The answers it provides have more visual and interactive elements with educational formatting.”
Graph-based AI model maps the future of innovation: Here’s my thinking - this is great and amazing and comparing two, very large yet disparate data sets is a great task to set for AI BUT I will always wonder what will happen to those ideas when we find them? Will they run into the existing bottlenecks? “By blending generative AI with graph-based computational tools, this approach reveals entirely new ideas, concepts, and designs that were previously unimaginable. We can accelerate scientific discovery by teaching generative AI to make novel predictions about never-before-seen ideas, concepts, and designs,” says Buehler.”
Sticker shock: Are enterprises growing disillusioned with AI?: Need more articles like this - Money, Skills, Data Hygiene, and lack of Strategic Direction - these aren’t warning signs about AI but about how we’re approaching its use.
Can it run Doom? My journey through hell to discover why the answer is always ‘yes’: I’m a big fan of this.
Study finds bias in language models against non-binary users: Will go out on a really technical limb here and say “um, because humans.”
In Memoriam: Thomas E. Kurtz, 1928–2024: Legend. > > “Thomas Eugene Kurtz (Feb. 22 1928–Nov. 12, 2024) was an American mathematician, computer scientist and co-inventor, with John Kemeny, of the BASIC programming language and Dartmouth Timesharing System.”
Free: 356 Issues of Galaxy, the Groundbreaking 1950s Science Fiction Magazine: “Along with Astounding Science Fiction and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Galaxy Magazine was one of the most important science fiction digests in 1950s America. Ray Bradbury wrote for it–including an early version of his masterpiece Fahrenheit 451–as did Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl, Theodore Sturgeon, Cordwainer Smith, Jack Vance, and numerous others. Now a fairly decent collection of issues (356 in total) is available for your perusal at archive.org for absolutely free. It’s not complete yet, but it’s close.”
GOG's preservation label highlights classic games it's maintaining for modern hardware: “The GOG Preservation Program will label the classic titles that the platform has taken steps to adapt in order to make them compatible with contemporary computer systems, controllers and screen resolutions, all while adhering to its DRM-free policy. The move could bring new life to games of decades past, just as GOG did two years ago with a refresh of the 1999 title Wheel of Time. So far, 92 games have received the preservation treatment.”