Exploration #94

Hate the Longscroll? Why Not Take a Shortcut?

• If You Click Only One…

• Things to Think About…

• Things to Know About…

• And finally…

Hi all. I want to start off by thanking the hundreds of you who registered and attended Public Media Innovators’ first 3rd Thursdays webinar last week. We were blown away by the response.

From your in-chat feedback, two key takeaways for future webinars are: 1) try to screen share demos of generative AI (gAI) tools; and 2) keep a focus on accessibility and inclusion as they relate to emerging media. That feedback will impact both how we program future sessions and the types of sessions that we pitch for conferences like the PBS Annual Meeting and the NETA/CPB annual meeting.

If you missed it, you can see the video of the webinar here.

Next Month’s Webinar

Fortunately, I know that our February presenter will be doing some screen sharing examples of ChatGPT. In February, we will be featuring Ethan Mollick, a professor studying entrepreneurship and innovation at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. He also leads Wharton Interactive, an emerging media lab focused on AI and on games. I’ve featured Mollick’s writings multiple times (including today). His approach, as an educator focused on innovation, aligns with our public media values better than just about any other writer I’ve seen on the topic of gAI. If you are interested in gAI and haven’t started following his newsletter, One Useful Thing, I highly recommend it.

The next 3rd Thursday webinar, featuring Mollick, will be Thursday, February 15 at 1pET/10aPT. To register, click here.

The Vision Thing

Last Friday saw the opening of the order window for Apple’s Vision Pro spatial computing (don’t call it “VR”) headset. Thanks to our immensely patient Director of Labs, Mike Fields, we are now in the long queue to receive one. The ordering process is involved, but some people did appreciate it. I’d like to think that this will ensure that the first experiences with these headsets will feel more magical (onboarding is notoriously hard for VR demos because of how personalized each individual’s reaction is to a given headset), but this is definitely not a swing-into-BestBuy-and-grab-one-on-the-way-home piece of hardware.

It’ll likely be months before ours arrives, but when we have more to report, I’ll get back to you here.

Okay, on to the links…

If You Click Only One…

Reshaping the tree: rebuilding organizations for AI (Ethan Mollick - One Useful Thing) - If you run a public media organization, or a division/team within a public media organization, this is a must-read article. My advice is to jump to the "How to Rebuild Organizations" section at the end, read that first, and then go back and read the background info. This line from that How-to section very much resonates with me. "You don’t have time. If the sort of efficiency gains we are seeing from early AI experiments continue, organizations that wait to experiment will fall behind very quickly. If we truly can trim a weeks-long process into a days-long one, that is a profound change to how work gets done, and you want your organization to get there first, or at least be ready to adapt to the change. That means providing guidelines for short-term experimentation, rather than relying on top-down solutions that take months or years to implement."
—Extra Credit: For those who’d like more of the B-school perspective on AI, here is Deloitte's State of Generative AI in the Enterprise Quarter One Report and BCG's From Potential to Profit with GenAI

Things to Think About…

What Kind of Bubble is AI? (Cory Doctorow - Locus Magazine) - I love a good contrarian polemic. The sci-fi author and journalist cuts right to the chase by stipulating from jump that AI is a bubble, and then digging deeper in to what that could mean.
— And for another, different dose of contrarianism, try Eric Hoel's: Excuse me, but the industries AI is disrupting are not lucrative

5 Forces That Will Drive the Adoption of GenAI (Alexander Bant, Helen Poitevin, Nicole Greene, and Erick Brethenoux - Harvard Business Review) - This piece also assumes that the bubble will burst or, rather, that the "peak of inflated expectations" will give way to "the trough of disillusionment." However, the authors argue that the forces driving gAI are such that even while in the trough, gAI deserves an investment of time and experimentation to achieve competitive advantage once gAI climbs out of trough (i.e., the "slope of enlightenment").

Generative AI and intellectual property (Benedict Evans) - A good look at how all the handwringing about AI and IP has happened before (and it will all happen again).
—Emma Roth reports in The Verge on one of the more high profile AI/IP battles: The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement
—OpenAI responds to the suit with their take on AI+IP: OpenAI and journalism
—For comparison, here is what OpenAI said in a written statement to the House of Lords in the UK
—And here is reporting from Dan Milmo of The Guardian on what OpenAI said: ‘Impossible’ to create AI tools like ChatGPT without copyrighted material, OpenAI says
—But, as Nilay Patel’s interview shows, Adobe seems to have a different take on the above assertion of impossibility: How Adobe is managing the AI copyright dilemma, with general counsel Dana Rao

Whoever Controls Language Models Controls Politics (Hannes Bajohr) - While the headline of the piece seems self-evident, the piece itself actually takes aim at the open letter published last March calling for a minimum 6-month moratorium on the development of AI (which, of course, no one followed). His argument is that the open letter takes too long a view, and that we need to focus on a nearer term where AI may control or at least stagnate political discourse.
—Kyle Wiggers reporting for TechCrunch shows one reason why the concern is valid: Anthropic researchers find that AI models can be trained to deceive

The Six Economic Principles for an Open Metaverse (Tom Ffiske - Immersive Wire) - Right now "metaverse" is still somewhat a dirty word. But that doesn't mean there aren't people thinking through how a next-gen internet could function constructively. Used to be, we'd get new metaverse manifestos about as often as we get OpenAI product announcements today, so when one comes around now worth considering you'll see it here.

Internet Privacy Is A Disability Rights Issue (Ariana Aboulafia - Tech Policy Press) - This is good perspective to hear, regardless of whether or not your organization's privacy policy addresses data collection for accessibility features.

Things to Know About…

Test Yourself: Which Faces Were Made by A.I.? (New York Times) - The images in this quiz were not generated by Midjourney (so not the highest end tool), but I guarantee they will still surprise you.

As Gen AI Inches Closer To TV News, Stations Build ‘Policy Groups’ To Be Ready (Michael Stahl - TV News Check) - H/t to my boss, Mark for sending this my way. If you haven't started thinking about an official gAI policy for your organization (or at least an official framework for experimentation, as we have in Nebraska), now is the time to start having those conversations.

How less, not more, data, could help journalism (Gina Chua - Semafor) - One journalist's experience experimenting with the power of custom bots (using only a subscription to the Poe chatbot aggregator).

POLITICO Launches AI-generated Bill Summaries Available to POLITICO Pro Subscribers (Melissa Cooke - Politico Blog) - During our webinar last week, we were introduced to the Planet Money Bot, and this seems similar in approach. Could be a 'steal this idea' moment for some stations out there.
—And, as Michael Thrasher reports in Institutional Investor, it's not just Politico that is getting into the summary game: Bloomberg’s First Generative AI Tool Hits the Terminal

OpenAI announces first partnership with a university (Hayden Field - CNBC) - Last week we saw OpenAI's announced partnership with a state government (Pennsylvania). This week's announcement may be of special interest to university licensees.

AI models that don’t violate copyright are getting a new certification label (Emilia David - The Verge) - While I appreciate the concept, I'm 50/50 on whether this will actually take off. According to the article, "Fairly Trained said in a blog post that it has already certified nine generative AI companies that work in image, music, and voice generation. These include Beatoven.ai, Boomy, BRIA.ai, Endel, LifeScore, Rightsify, SOMMS.AI, Soundful, and Tuney." I've not heard of any of these, but if you've tried them then drop me a line. It is unclear yet if the market is even asking for this.

Slew of deepfake video adverts of Sunak on Facebook raises alarm over AI risk to election (Ben Quinn - The Guardian) - Lots of folks are now getting concerned about how photorealistic images are being used for deepfakes and misinformation. Welcome to 2024.
—Kevin Collier and Scott Wong report for NBC that it's not just happening across the pond: Fake Biden robocall telling Democrats not to vote is likely an AI-generated deepfake
—Carl Franzen reports in VentureBeat that, for their part: OpenAI will release AI citation and image safeguards ahead of 2024 global elections
—And how is our federal legislative branch approaching this in the US? Janus Rose reports in Vice that: Congress Is Trying to Stop AI Nudes and Deepfake Scams Because Celebrities Are Mad

Nazi Chatbots: Meet the Worst New AI Innovation From Gab (Tom Dickinson - Rolling Stone) - Just in case you thought deepfakes were the only awful thing you could do with large language models.

Amazon brings its AI-powered image generator to Fire TV (Lauren Forristal - TechCrunch) - We don’t talk much about Amazon in this space because they haven’t given us much to discuss. And though this probably won't be near the quality of Midjourney v6, if you have a FireTV at home and haven't played with generative art tools, this could bean opportunity.
—In other Amazon AI news: Amazon Adds an AI Shopping Assistant
—But as Elizabeth Lopatto reports, AI is popping up at Amazon in other, more regrettable, ways: I’m sorry, but I cannot fulfill this request as it goes against OpenAI use policy

How much detail is too much? Midjourney v6 attempts to find out (Benj Edwards - Ars Technica) - Midjourney still appears to have a lock on the generation of photorealistic images, and it is getting increasingly hard to tell the difference between those Midjourney creations and actual photos. 

Nightshade, the free tool that ‘poisons’ AI models, is now available for artists to use (Carl Franzen - VentureBeat) - For those artists wary of having their work turned into fodder for voracious AI models, the arms race is tilting (slightly) in your favor.

Winner of Japan’s Top Literary Prize Admits She Used ChatGPT (Jordan Pearson - Vice) - It's been a while since we've had one of these stories pop up, and those were mostly art-based. But all of them showcase the power of humans working with gAI to further their artistry.
—But, as Morgan Sung reports in TechCrunch, the Japanese literary world seems way more forgiving than the world of fashion: Selkie founder defends use of AI in new dress collection amid backlash

The Metaverse Is Open, but Not Everyone's Invited (Asia Easton & Sophie Madddox - Psychology Today) - The author William Gibson once wrote that “the future is already here - it's just not evenly distributed.” This article reports on the results of the authors content analysis, with a goal toward articulating to whom the metaverse is being distributed. Spoiler alter: capitalism is a driving force.

Startup Investors Have Fled The Metaverse (Joanna Glasner - Crunchbase News) - I'm always going to have a soft spot for a follow-the-money take on a technology. That said, this is one additional data point to prove something not in dispute: that we are still in a metaverse winter.

And finally…

How different languages laugh online (Amy Thorpe and Ravi Hiranand - Rest of the World) - And finally, I've traveled quite a bit in the last few years and even with that I was struck by the resilience of the English bubble that we Americans occupy. But what better way to understand the world a bit more than through laughter.

Have a creative, productive week!