Benedict's Newsletter: No. 548

NO. 548 FREE EDITION TUE 9 JUL 2024

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My Work

Another Podcast: The AI Summer

As we go into the summer, we know a lot more about generative AI than we did six or nine months ago - or at least, we have better questions. LINK

News

Apple gets an OpenAI board seat?

Apparently, part of Apple’s deal with OpenAI is that it gets a board observer seat, with the slot probably going to Phil Schiller. Microsoft had to pay for this. This will give Apple visibility into everything the company does, and important insight into the cutting edge of AI research, since Sam Altman is scrupulously open, honest and transparent with the board. LINK

From magic to software

YouTube previewed a tool to use generative AI to replace copyrighted music from your videos without affecting anything else. A few years ago this would have been expensive and time-consuming if it was even possible - soon it will just be a button. This is the natural life cycle of all ‘AI’. LINK, VIDEO

Model efficiency

Google Deepmind published a paper proposing a new method for training ML models that uses 10x less compute. If this doesn’t work, there will be others that do. LINK

Google AI on-device?

Google devoted pretty much all of this this year’s IO developer event to generative AI, but Android was hardly mentioned, which was an obvious contrast to Apple’s focus on on-device features. Now, apparently, it will offer some new AI features on its own Pixel devices. This is much harder for Google, of course - Apple controls the entire device and has industry-leading silicon to support its strategy of running models locally - Google’s strength is in the cloud, whereas it has limited control over Android (and the Pixel has a tiny installed base). LINK

Anthropic pushes for risk measurement

Anthropic announced a programme to fund people trying to build new ways to assess LLMs against a broad range of different criteria, including so-called ‘AI risk’. LLMs are now in the ‘feeds and speeds’ phase, but we really don’t have a good common set of ways to measure them. LINK

More French AI

Kytuai, a new French AI lab backed by Xavier Niel (google him), launched its first voice models. There will be a lot more of these. It’s amusing to put this next to California’s Doomers’ charter, which moved further forward this week. I think doomers are often deeply naive about how complex the world is - they think it would be easy for an AGI to take over, and they think that a law in California can change what happens in France or China. LINK, CALIFORNIA

Software eats cars

We may be deep in an autonomous car winter, but Waymo keeps shipping: it’s now opened up its robotaxi service to everyone in San Francisco. Meanwhile, Ferrari is planning a battery subscription service - $7k a year for a full battery replacement every 8 years. Makes sense for a product that’s supposed to be timeless. WAYMO, FERRARI

This week in Shein and Temu

The FT and Bloomberg both report that the EU is looking at closing the same de minimus import tax threshold / loophole that is probably about to be closed in the USA, and that Shein and Temu have both benefited from. Meanwhile, the WSJ reports that these two companies are up to a third of total air freight on some routes. FT, BLOOMBERG, FREIGHT

Amazon does luxury?

Saks, a US luxury retailer, is buying another, Neiman Marcus, for $2.65bn - noted here because Amazon and Salesforce are apparently taking minority stakes. Amazon has always wanted to get into luxury, but it’s kind of antithetical to Amazon’s entire model - I’m not sure what Salesforce is trying to do. LINK

About

What matters in tech? What’s going on, what might it mean, and what will happen next?

I’ve spent 20 years analysing mobile, media and technology, and worked in equity research, strategy, consulting and venture capital. I’m now an independent analyst. Mostly, that means trying to work out what questions to ask.

FIND OUT MORE

Ideas

Sequoia Ventures on the gap between the (massive) amount of capital investment in generative AI and the revenue that will be needed to justify it. LINK

Notion’s data use has increased 10x in the last 3 years. LINK

A long profile of a mid-western American farm town full of e-commerce warehouses. LINK

Goldman’s CIO on deploying generative AI. LINK

Verge interview with Netflix on advertising. LINK

Outside interests

Florida Man shoots down drone. LINK

A graphic novel made (almost) entirely in Stable Diffusion. LINK

RIP Robert Towne. LINK

Why did interface designers standardise on ‘purple sparkles’ to denote generative AI?