AI Top-of-Mind for 3.21.24 — Evolution of God
Amongst recent postings, one struck a chord with me. Cezary Gesikowski writing in ‘Generative AI’ offers a well-written and fascinating history of human views of an ‘artificial being,’ something different from the ‘real.’ The intro to the article:
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a term coined in the 1950s but have you ever wondered what it was called before that?
• When did homo sapiens conceive the idea of inanimate replicants that could move and think on their own?
• And what terms did our ancestors use to describe visions representing artificial forms of existence and reasoning?
• This article traces the timeline from our earliest embodiments of artificial beings to the latest technological breakthroughs toward a new species derived from the collective human imagination.
• Unlike dry historical accounts, our timeline covers the evolution of ancient representations, symbolism, mythological concepts, philosophical ideas, literary narratives, and technological prototypes exposing the fantastic roots and precursor threads leading to our modern conception of AI as an engineered replication/extension of cognition in synthetic form.
And speaking of news, though Nvidia garnered the lion’s share of coverage this week, and for good reason, slipping under the radar was an absorption of sorts between Microsoft and Inflection. It helps investors, employees, and offers a path to technology licensing. More at ‘The Information.’ A key point:
Inflection said in a blog post that it would reorient its business to focus on selling customized AI models to developers rather than AI applications for consumers.
Turning to marketing, more evidence that AI is taking more an already limited budget. ‘Campaign US’ details a survey conducted by ‘Billion Dollar Boy’ (really?) finding that 70% of marketers have increased their Gen AI investment, with 65% pulling this from other channels. Link to the survey. And one of the findings:
And if you are into tube amps and such, some musings by Eric Engheim on why analog interfaces could once again become common, assisted by AI. But are they then truly analog?
Also on the corporate front, besides CEOs, CFOs, CMOs, CTOs, and more recently, CISOs, CPOs, and CROs, there is now one more, a Chief AI Officer, or CAIO. As described, the role helps sets usage guardrails, rules of conduct, and transparency on AI adoption, while interfacing with others in the C-suite. From the ‘CIO’ article:
They should be a champion for smart AI adoption, and be able to recognize and balance AI benefits with risks. They should be able to work collaboratively with many departments in developing AI strategy and vision, and they should be able to design and target relevant business use cases, assess project outcomes, and measure ROI in each case.
Finally, from the Bay Area, celebs are always under threat from people trying to steal their likenesses, or in the extreme case, create illegal deepfakes. Chalk one up for the good guys, as the ‘SJ Mercury’ reporting Steve Wozniak winning a round against a bitcoin scam based on the fact that YouTube didn’t pull down the content in a timely manner.
