AI round-up: Week of July 22, 2024

Let’s talk politics. Biden. Harris. Trump.

No, no, I don’t want to talk about who you will or should vote for. Remember, this is an AI newsletter. I want to talk about which candidate will continue the development and advancement of AI.

The answer?

Both. Because, like it or not, the rest of the world is looking to us for AI guidance.

Ah, it’s good to be back.

The Big 5

1.    Experiment shows that AI boosts creativity individually. But lowers it collectively.
So, do you want more of us to be creative? Or a few of us to be really creative? (Techcrunch)

I started this newsletter mainly to share updates on AI. But it’s interesting that a year later, the newsletter has ALREADY evolved to show how these tools are impacting us. That happened fast.

You know what hasn’t happened fast? Companies preparing for how AI could impact their organizations. Ethan Mollick wants to know why. (And so do I.)

2.    Confronting impossible futures.

So why isn’t AI part of your 2025 planning? Here is a link to a one-question survey. Survey Monkey says it takes less than a minute to answer – can you do it, please?

3.    Microsoft and Apple have given up their OpenAI seats.

4.    Google has quietly cut down on AI Overviews to search queries. 
See. AI didn’t kill SEO.

Or maybe that’s what they want us to think… (TechRadar)

5.    Desperate for power, AI turns to the nuclear industry.
It's always a little scary to see ‘desperate’ and ‘nuclear’ in the same headline, no?

Learn a little

Have you heard of the California bill SB 1047? It’s one you should probably be aware of, mainly because a.) it raises some good points about AI security and b.) it shows the real reason people hate any type of AI regulation.

Read up on it here, in this very informational interview between Vox and the bill’s author, California state Senator Scott Weiner (D-San Francisco).

Did you hear about…

…JD Vance being AI-friendly? (404 Media)

…Rufus arriving just in time for Prime Day? (Search Engine Land)

…Gemini making robots in the office far more useful? (Digital Trends) I hope they include this kind of stuff in “The Office” reboot.

…former OpenAI, Tesla engineer Andrej Karpathy starting an AI education platform? (Reuters)

…OpenAI released a ‘mini’ version of GPT-4o? (Tom’s Guide)

…There’s a new Llama? (Axios)

Must read/must discuss:

Universal Basic Income. UBI.

Get to know it. You’re going to hear a lot about it, especially now that the results of Sam Altman’s UBI study are available.

Wait, Sam Altman was doing a UBI study? Yep. Started it back in 2019.

The gist:

• You have to make less than $28k a year.
• Be from Texas or Illinois.
• A third of the participants received an extra $1k a month, no strings attached, for three years.
• The other 2/3’s received $50 a month (this was the control group).
• The results over those three years were supposed to show how we would adapt to receiving ‘free’ money.

Check out the findings here.

This topic is fascinating. Consider who did it – and why (a small model to follow should we need to receive income in the face of AI taking jobs) – and you have all the makings of a topic that I am going to be following very closely.

Thanks for reading!

-Ben

As a reminder, this is a round-up of the biggest stories, often hitting multiple newsletters I receive/review. The sources are many … which I’m happy to read on your behalf. Let me know if there’s one you’d like me to track or have questions about a topic you’re not seeing here.