AI Top-of-Mind for Jan 5
Top-of-mind is continued reporting of NY Times v OpenAI and Microsoft, digging more into the implications and nuances of the filing. Noah Feldman in a ‘San Jose Mercury’ article offers perspective on how law lags technology, and quotes the 1976 Copyright Act:
The fair use test has four factors. Educational and nonprofit uses are more likely to be found to be fair use. Creative work gets more copyright protection than technical writing or news. The amount of the work that has been copied matters, as does the centrality to the copied work of the material that’s been copied. And perhaps most important for the Times’ lawsuit, courts also consider whether the copying will harm the present or future market for the work copied.
On the creative front, two different takes on AI. If you’ve ever been in a role where you needed to create technical diagrams, such as Microsoft’s Visio, it can be a real pain. David Oliver at ‘Medium’ looks at a few of the paid and free tools that can help. Still in the early days, but a start, and he mentions that a Co-Pilot type functionality is still not planned for Visio 365.
And for those with the inclination, a stable diffusion-based image generator that is said to not have many of the safeguards preventing NSFW ‘artwork.’ I’ve not tried it, but the link to Happy Diffusion is here.
Announcements last fall by the major (non-Apple) smartphone vendors and chip manufacturers paved the way for a bunch of exciting 2024 AI-enabled deliveries. The first shoe to fall will be Samsung, who on January 24 is expected to launch the Galaxy S24 with AI, and the article goes on to state that by 2027, over a billion smartphones with Gen AI embedded will be in the hands of consumers. Stay tuned!
The Doctor is In…. ‘CNET’ offers a dive into the increasing use of Gen AI for self-diagnosis, which I guess is a really the next-gen version of querying medical websites and Google. One term from the article — cyberchondria — just won’t leave my head. It is the over-diagnosis of common conditions, such as a headache turning into brain cancer. A positive view in the article:
“Patients often decide whether to visit urgent care, the ER, or wait for a doctor based on online information,” Allen said. “This self-triage can save time and reduce ER visits but risks misdiagnosis and underestimating serious conditions.”
More from my Dec 26 posting. I guess I’ll take an aspirin and see the bot in the morning!
Also, on the chatbot front, ‘CNET’ offers perspective on how they are changing the ways we live and work. We’ve seen surveys on productivity, but this from the article offers hope on the job front:
Before you start worrying that AI will eat all the jobs, Goldman Sachs cautions that such concerns may be overblown, since new tech has historically ushered in new kinds of jobs. In a widely cited March 2023 report, the firm noted that 60% of today’s workers are employed in occupations that didn’t exist in 1940.
Turning to marketing, revisiting a ‘McKinsey’ report on six strategies that B2B and B2C marketers can use to leverage AI for enhanced customer experience, productivity, and growth.
Finally, a practical use of AI that is sure to resonate with anyone who travels and arrives at their destination…. sans luggage. ‘CBS News’ reports on better outcomes at DFW International Airport via the use of AI.
