B2B Insights on Generative AI, Kara Swisher fakes, Transcription, Charts, and Survey Tools
A smattering of everything this Monday morning.
Morning y’all!
It’s Monday and I’m hanging out at a coffee shop waiting for my first day at the new gig to commence! I’m excited and a bit nervous, which is understandable, but I’ve had so many jobs in my life that I’m used to how things can start. Heck, I even forgot some required documents for the I-9 form!
(－‸ლ)
I’m grateful for the work and the chance to build directly in the artificial intelligence space (as well as keeping a roof over my head and some yummy food in my belly). Here’s to new beginnings as we all venture forth into 2024.
※\(^o^)/※
— Summer
I’ve got a handful of interesting apps and reads for you today! Appreciate all of you reading and opening this newsletter up each morning — you’re the best!
Here are some insights from leaders of large companies like Databricks, Anyscale, and Microsoft — a few interesting tidbits:
Ali compares our present stage of AI development to the late 1970s, when Oracle launched its relational database management system. Oracle’s innovation dramatically simplified and improved the ways that companies organize and store their data, paving the way for a new era of data-centric software. Ali envisions “AI databases” as the natural next step. “We call it a ‘Lakehouse,’ but you can just think of it as a database with ML and AI abilities built in. Wherever there’s data, there’s going to be machine learning sitting right next to it.”
A solid reminder of Oracle as I had a taste of that when I first started writing software back in the late-90’s. Ali, CEO of Databricks, reminds folks to target startups and more agile and innovative companies first when selling. Matei, the CTO says:
Instead of treating LLMs as internet-scale encyclopedias, Matei proposes that we should focus on what they excel at: reasoning, interpreting language, and understanding context. “For founders building applications, really think of the LLMs, especially the large LLMs, as reasoning engines. And build the knowledge engine outside the model.”
Naveen, their VP, says:
“As the problem space itself is evolving, you’re defining the solution, but there’s a lot of value to doing that because you can actually change the way people think about that problem and think about solutions. […] You’re playing at a harder level, but you’re also doing something potentially much more impactful.”
A good reminder on the key point: True innovation isn’t just about creating new products; it’s about reshaping how problems are understood. In regards to open source, Robert, the CEO of Anyscale, says:
With the rapid advancement of AI technology, it won’t be long before open-source models are “good enough” for the majority of business tasks. The natural progression from here is to develop smaller, task-focused models using proprietary company data. As Robert puts it: “You’re going to need small, fast models. And task-specific models have a huge advantage when it comes to cost and speed because you can achieve the same quality with a smaller model if it’s specialized.”
I’ve started to see something similar as many companies start with the free and open source models and quickly find a problem they need solved with a more task-specific one. Then Bobby, of Microsoft shares an important truth:
To grow an AI application, making it part of users’ workflows might be just as important as the tool you’re building. “The technology and the speed of writing applications is going to far outpace the ability for people to change their behavior—if that’s what they need to do to adopt.”
Reviewing existing workflows and the improvements therein might be a good place to start instead of putting together a solution that’s looking for a problem.
Good decision.
Kara Swisher, whether you like her or not, is popular enough to spoof and as easy as it is to target big personalities, it wouldn’t take much to fool anyone else. A number of books have been generated through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing service that bear her name and image.
Of course, these were published ahead of Kara’s own biography that’s imminently coming. She had them removed, after she contacted the CEO directly, something that most folks won’t be able to.
The Author’s Guild has a few tips and guidelines too.
Another AI transcription tool for podcasts via Transistor. I’ve heard good things about their service, by the way, and seems to be a staple among more indy podcasters.
Another GPT for chart analysis! Here you can analyze charts instantly. Paste or upload an image, add indicators, and learn. Of course, there isn’t any financial advice and it’s only to be used for “educational purposes” only.
AI-powered surveys using real user insights via AI Surveys. You can:
Speed through survey analysis — AI automatically groups and summarizes responses for you
Quickly identify feedback topics without sifting through every single response
Access insights from open-ended questions that would take hours to analyze manually
Use organized feedback to make informed decisions faster and with confidence
And more.
Can you get personalized training and education via AI? That’s what Wisdom Plan is attempting to do with their new platform. With a few inputs they can create a tailored plan for you in just a few clicks.
Intelligent planning, scheduling, and sequencing
Centralize courses, docs, and webpages in one plan
Adapt your learning tasks as you go
Might be an interesting tool to try this year?
Finally, an interesting study on the power of social influence in the realm of AI:
The UCSB paper analyzed more than 8,000 AI and ML papers, considering both social media mentions and the number of citations. Reviewing tweets from December 2018 to October 2023, the researchers concluded AI/ML papers shared by two specific influencers had median citation counts two to three times higher than those of the control group.
Who are those two specific influencers? @_akhaliq and @arankomatsuzaki. The researchers suggestion? “Avoid the hype train,” if they can. For the sake of diversity, of course. Incentives drive everything so good luck with that!
And that’s a wrap. Have a great one folks!
✌(-‿-)✌
— Summer