Weekly Link Roundup

If you've never seen this video...now is the time....

…hoping that video works because its an all-time classic (here’s the link if it doesn’t).

*was going to drop in links to the stories around OpenAI, but after this weekend, I’m afraid that any link I put here will be out of date by the time I hit send. One conclusion everyone seems to be reaching though is that Satya Nadella is coming out of this looking like a corporate Judo master.

Amazon will host free 'AI Ready' courses in an effort to attract new talent: Amazon has always been smart about training that next generation of customers.

In a Rapidly Evolving World of AI: This Contest Is More Important Than Ever: This is about the Natural Landscape Photography Awards but its really about what will become more and more prevalent - contests in which its clear where AI is allowed and where it isn’t . Here’s the most pointed quote:
"The competition aims to represent landscape photographers who recognize the power that comes from truthful depiction of the natural world, whether shooting digitally or on film. While other competitions may allow complete freedom in digital manipulation, this competition is for photographers who choose to work within the more traditional bounds of the medium, while still expressing themselves creatively. It addresses the idea that the unique quality photography has over other artistic mediums is its grounding in reality. The competition showcases the skill of these photographers in revealing the wonder of the natural landscape.”

10 Best Games Where Choices Matter: There are some great examples in here and I wanted to include this list because I think choice (and associated consequences good or bad) is one of the most compelling parts of any experience and one of the lessons that the #LearningAndDevelopment community hasn’t figured out how to embrace.

Meta Stamps Out its Responsible AI Team: This might’ve been missed in all the OpenAI news but read it again. This is different than outsourcing trust and safety work. This feels like a surrender.

How Microsoft is reducing its dependence on OpenAI: I honestly can’t tell if this story is way more relevant or way less relevant today. Here’s another one in that bucket: Microsoft CoPilot vs ChatGPT: How Do They Compare? Now I KNOW that this story is MORE relevant than before this weekend: Behind Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s push to get AI tools in developers’ hands. Wonder how Chris is doing this morning? Microsoft’s Chris Young on Bringing AI to Main Street.

Microsoft Loop is now generally available with a host of new features and improvements: “Finally, Microsoft is making it easier for users to hit the ground running when working on projects. At the end of a Teams meeting, a Loop workspace will be created and automatically populated with relevant and crucial documentation and notes shared throughout the entire session.” > How long before it goes ahead and automatically builds a course or some other size of training content at the end of a meeting or the launch of a project?

5 questions for Scott Aaronson (“a theoretical computer scientist, blogger, and director of the University of Texas Austin’s Quantum Information Center. Aaronson is also the author of “Quantum Computing Since Democritus,” a self-described “candidate for the weirdest book ever to be published by Cambridge University Press,” and is currently a guest researcher at OpenAI focusing on AI safety”).

Meta announces new breakthroughs in AI image editing and video generation with Emu: I have a couple reasons why I keep including links to stories about things like video and image creation/editing. First, is that while I love all the things that ChatGPT can do, I get a much more visceral reaction from working with the image generators. Second, these are all tools in the toolbox that someone else will learn how to use while others chose not to embrace change.

Kyutai is a French AI research lab with a $330 million budget that will make everything open source: AI + Open Source + $300MM = interesting.

Notion’s new Q&A feature lets you ask an AI about your notes: “It’s called Q&A, and CEO Ivan Zhao describes it to me as essentially an all-knowing AI executive assistant that knows everything about everything and can find it in a second or two.”

Microsoft Teams is about to go 3D with VR meetings: Please stop. No one, literally no one is asking for this.

Synopsys.ai Copilot accelerates AI-driven chip design: Remember, faster tools help build faster tools faster.

A Coder Considers the Waning Days of the Craft: Important read > “But as I write this my wife is pregnant with our first child, due in about three weeks. I code professionally, but, by the time that child can type, coding as a valuable skill might have faded from the world.”