AI round-up: Week of June 17, 2024

Welcome to this week’s round-up. It’s going to look a little different, so I will start with some quick housekeeping:

Today: a shorter version for a shorter week. (Hoping you were all able to pause midweek and celebrate Juneteenth!)

Next week (week of 6.24): Regular edition

The following week (week of 7.1): Regular edition

Weeks of 7.8 and 7.15: Off

Resuming week of 7.22.

So what’s up for today? Today we will just go with a quick rundown of some hot topics:

Biggest news: Ilya Sutskever is starting his own AI company. (The Verge)
And it’s ‘safe’.

You’re my boy, Claude! The new Claude update is here: Claude 3.5 Sonnet (CNBC)

An update on the ACLU’s request for a US probe into a company’s use of AI hiring tools. (Yahoo!)

What does an AI logo look like? Beats me. And all of these other companies. (TechCrunch)

AI is already killing web publishers. (Shelly Palmer Blog)

Target has a new AI tool to help store employees. (Axios)

Inquiring minds want to know: did AI write this? (Reuters)
Turns out people don’t trust AI-generated news any more than real news. Or fake news.

White collar impact: AI in finance is like moving from typewriters to word processors. (Financial Times)

AI took their jobs. Now they get paid to make it sound more human. (BBC)

Apple Intelligence, explained by Prof G in the No Mercy/No Malice blog. (Prof G)

Let’s end with these two:

Don’t be naïve. AI will take jobs. (by David Armano)

Latent expertise: Everyone is in R&D. (by Ethan Mollick)

An excerpt: 
Any efficiency gains must be turned into cost savings, even before anyone in the organization figures out what AI is good for. It is as if, after getting access to the steam engine in the 1700s, every manufacturer decided to keep production and quality the same, and just fire staff in response to new-found efficiency, rather than building world-spanning companies by expanding their outputs.

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.