I really like this part: "AI is a tool. It is not always the right tool. Consider carefully whether, given its weaknesses, it is right for the purpose to which you are planning to apply it."
On the video front, have you tried Descript @Ethan? I've delved into this recently and find it's AI features very helpful in my daily flow.
Ross, I'd love more on this too. I find Descript so helpful. What I loved most was it's interactive onboarding explainer video. I've never seen a company do that before and I was elated someone thought of it
This is brilliant. Thank you for the cogent utility! As you note: “Documentation-by-rumor is a weird choice for organizations claiming to be concerned about proper use of their technologies, but here we are.” I hope Altman, et al remember to send you a check.
Thanks Ethan for a most informative summary of the current state of play (& links to learn more).
The image at the end reminded me of Vannevar Bush's Memex, envisioned in 1945. Who knew it would take so long to come this far, and now we're here, the blistering pace of change makes it a challenge to keep up at times! https://history-computer.com/memex-guide/
I'm a writer and have been playing around with Writer.ai & Jasper and other tools. I write about it a lot and that's prompting (see what I did there?) a lot of my colleagues in the creative field to reach out to discuss this. Of course they are tracking with these changes and having various reactions as you can imagine.
A lot are centered around scraping. Even if Firefly is using licensed work, I've heard that those artists didn't agree to AI. It's not stated in their contracts. If you don't follow Jon Lam, he might be worth a look. He's very vocal.
I know this is a huge topic and not one you may want to enter but it would be nice (for me anyway) to hear your perspective.
As of today, I'm unsubscribing to several AI related newsletters b/c of their fear-mongering headlines (often paired with stupid tone-deaf emojis) b/c tech brahs and wanna-bes seem to forget about the anxiety this new technology is causing.
But not yours. So thanks again for the measured, thoughtful work you do. :)
If I may recommend another product - aimed at coders:
Fine transforms dev tasks into tailor-made specifications and uses AI agents to implement them. With it, devs can focus on solving problems and shipping higher quality software instead of solving bugs and manual work. It's free!
Great summary! I'm curious why you didn't list Perplexity Copilot under "Get Information And Learn Stuff". It's a fantastic tool that as replaced about 30% of my usage of Google -- anytime I think it's going to take me more than 3 min to sort through which links are most relevant for me on Google and find the information I need from them, I now use Perplexity instead.
For companies wishing to take advantage of the above but looking to protect their data, do you have any opinions on what's available or up and coming? e.g. Emad at Stability AI has been talking about develping bespoke versions for countries, vertical markets, companies with data security, but do you know of other such initiatives?
"If you are going to use AI as a search engine, probably don’t do that."
Absolutely. I have, however, had good results with the AI-assisted search engine Perplexity.ai. Ask a questions, get back a brief summary of answers, with (here's the important part) links to references on the web. Thus you can check Perplexity's work.
I find it very useful for resolving questions of how to do X in software package Y, or how to resolve hardware or software errors.
Thanks for this Ethan! Where you talk about the use of AI with code, maybe point to GitHub copilot? To me the implementation of this software inside the IDE seems a lot more elegant and it will likely catch up in power soon (as far as I know GitHub is owned by Microsoft as well, could hence benefit from OpenAi advancements)
I've been running parallel tests on Bard & Bing chat for image context recognition and surprisingly am finding better results on Bard. Have you experienced this? I'm wondering if GPT4's abilities have declined even for image recognition as few articles are suggesting.
I really like this part: "AI is a tool. It is not always the right tool. Consider carefully whether, given its weaknesses, it is right for the purpose to which you are planning to apply it."
On the video front, have you tried Descript @Ethan? I've delved into this recently and find it's AI features very helpful in my daily flow.
The key sentence is the one you quote!
Ross, I'd love more on this too. I find Descript so helpful. What I loved most was it's interactive onboarding explainer video. I've never seen a company do that before and I was elated someone thought of it
Same here. I continue to be impressed by its features and the ease for me to produce video. It must half halved the production time on many projects.
I wish I had more work to do with it. I go months between projects and forget everything! Ha. But it's easy to find a tutorial and get back at it.
This is brilliant. Thank you for the cogent utility! As you note: “Documentation-by-rumor is a weird choice for organizations claiming to be concerned about proper use of their technologies, but here we are.” I hope Altman, et al remember to send you a check.
Thanks Ethan for a most informative summary of the current state of play (& links to learn more).
The image at the end reminded me of Vannevar Bush's Memex, envisioned in 1945. Who knew it would take so long to come this far, and now we're here, the blistering pace of change makes it a challenge to keep up at times! https://history-computer.com/memex-guide/
Ethan, I'm a huge fan. Thank you for what you do.
I'm a writer and have been playing around with Writer.ai & Jasper and other tools. I write about it a lot and that's prompting (see what I did there?) a lot of my colleagues in the creative field to reach out to discuss this. Of course they are tracking with these changes and having various reactions as you can imagine.
A lot are centered around scraping. Even if Firefly is using licensed work, I've heard that those artists didn't agree to AI. It's not stated in their contracts. If you don't follow Jon Lam, he might be worth a look. He's very vocal.
I know this is a huge topic and not one you may want to enter but it would be nice (for me anyway) to hear your perspective.
As of today, I'm unsubscribing to several AI related newsletters b/c of their fear-mongering headlines (often paired with stupid tone-deaf emojis) b/c tech brahs and wanna-bes seem to forget about the anxiety this new technology is causing.
But not yours. So thanks again for the measured, thoughtful work you do. :)
If I may recommend another product - aimed at coders:
Fine transforms dev tasks into tailor-made specifications and uses AI agents to implement them. With it, devs can focus on solving problems and shipping higher quality software instead of solving bugs and manual work. It's free!
https://www.fine.dev/
Reading carefully all this information, my believe that A.I. will treaten mankind is growing.
It is one of the 10 modern plagues striking on our existence.
https://geography.classy.be/people/the-10-billion-question/
Great summary! I'm curious why you didn't list Perplexity Copilot under "Get Information And Learn Stuff". It's a fantastic tool that as replaced about 30% of my usage of Google -- anytime I think it's going to take me more than 3 min to sort through which links are most relevant for me on Google and find the information I need from them, I now use Perplexity instead.
Thanks Ethan,
For companies wishing to take advantage of the above but looking to protect their data, do you have any opinions on what's available or up and coming? e.g. Emad at Stability AI has been talking about develping bespoke versions for countries, vertical markets, companies with data security, but do you know of other such initiatives?
"If you are going to use AI as a search engine, probably don’t do that."
Absolutely. I have, however, had good results with the AI-assisted search engine Perplexity.ai. Ask a questions, get back a brief summary of answers, with (here's the important part) links to references on the web. Thus you can check Perplexity's work.
I find it very useful for resolving questions of how to do X in software package Y, or how to resolve hardware or software errors.
https://perplexity.ai
"Some things to worry about: Deep fakes are a huge concern, and these systems need to be used ethically."
Aren't deepfakes an entirely different thing compared to AI generated videos?
I'd like to share a tool I built, which makes you use ChatGPT, Bing, Bard, Claude in one place: https://chathub.gg
Thanks for this Ethan! Where you talk about the use of AI with code, maybe point to GitHub copilot? To me the implementation of this software inside the IDE seems a lot more elegant and it will likely catch up in power soon (as far as I know GitHub is owned by Microsoft as well, could hence benefit from OpenAi advancements)
Thank you, Ethan! This is super helpful! One piece of information from a German guy: Claude is only available in the USA and UK.
Comprehensive.
Can you give me some real-world examples of the current state of AI adoption in US schools and universities?
I've been running parallel tests on Bard & Bing chat for image context recognition and surprisingly am finding better results on Bard. Have you experienced this? I'm wondering if GPT4's abilities have declined even for image recognition as few articles are suggesting.