Introducing Apple Intelligence - Your Very Own AI Assistant
Going from tech-curious to tech-literate can be simple if you have access to the right resources. Here are some recent highlights to keep you informed:
Welcome to the new subscribers who have joined us since the last newsletter! We’ve heard your feedback and understand that many of you are eager to enhance your skills in emerging technologies like AI and understand their practical impacts on your life.
Going from tech-curious to tech-literate can be simple if you have access to the right resources. Here are some recent highlights to keep you informed:
Introducing Apple Intelligence - Your Very Own AI Assistant
Apple just announced ‘Apple Intelligence,’ your very own personal assistant set to revolutionise how you interact with all your Apple devices. The Apple Intelligence feature will run across all devices and is a suite of AI based capabilities that promises to deliver personalized AI services while keeping sensitive data secure.
Here’s what it can do for you:
Productivity buddy: It can prioritise notifications on your iPhone and filters only the most important notifications based on your activity and context.
Elevate your writing: It can rewrite, proofread, and summarise text across mail, notes, and third-party apps.
Contextual assistance: Siri now understands you better, remembering recent commands to perform subsequent tasks, and performing tasks like “play a podcast”.
Cross-app actions: Siri can take actions across apps and handle new commands, such as extracting your driver's license information from a photo and inputting it into a form.
Text-to-personalised images: It can create personalised images in the photo library, including sketches and illustrations.
Apple’s new AI model, and those released by OpenAI and Google last month, are bringing us closer to a future where interacting with AI feels more natural and seamlessly integrated into our daily routines. These AI agents could anticipate our every need and handle tasks like grocery shopping or assisting with work-related activities.
But it’s also getting us to confront a critical question:
“What role, if any, do we want AI to play in our lives?”
18 months ago, ChatGPT was just a text generator that could proofread our work and write quirky poems. Now, less than two years later, tech giants are investing billions, banking on our trust to share our private information with these systems.
While the rapid advancement of AI brings many benefits, achieving human-like AI is both exciting and terrifying. A recent research paper by Google DeemMind highlighted the ethical risks of more human-like AI assistants, warning they could become highly persuasive and addictive.
CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman has previously described his dream AI tool as being “one that knows absolutely everything about our whole lives, every email, every conversation we’ve ever had."
But, is that something that we want?
How is AI helping level the playing field for small business owners?
High-quality content creation
Generative AI is empowering smaller companies with capabilities that were once unattainable, helping to level the playing field when used strategically. Producing high-quality, consistent, and engaging content has often been a luxury beyond the reach of small and mid-sized businesses.
GenAI is now stepping in as a creative partner for small businesses, enabling them to identify emerging trends and quickly capitalize on them. Tools like ChatGPT and Bard can analyze past content, determine what performs well, and create optimized content quickly. Jasper can help marketers experiment with messaging variations to find the most effective versions for performance.
Cost-effective market research and personalisation
Today, AI can sift through vast data sources and generate valuable market and customer insights. For example, a small business owner trying to understand customer purchasing patterns can use tools like OpenAI’s Code Interpreter to conduct advanced analyses.
Generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Bard act as effective empathy assistants, helping marketers define clear objectives and create compelling messaging for distinct customer segments. Marketers can create their own ChatGPT chatbots for specialized tasks or explore the ChatGPT store for others’ creations. Branding GPT™, accessible via the ChatGPT store, is my favourite tool for strategic branding activities.
With OpenAI’s Custom GPT functionality, marketers can create personal business advisors to simulate customer conversations and generate tailored messaging for different audience groups based on their personas. This FastCompany article outlines how you can create a custom ChatGPT chatbot for your brand.
What could the future of the internet look like?
An evoking thought piece by MIT Technology Review which looks at how the internet has evolved and what it could look like in the future. Sharing some snippets from the article below:
We’re in a very strange moment for the internet. We all know it’s broken. But there’s something in the air—a vibe shift, a sense that things are about to change.
The stranglehold that the big social platforms have had on us for the last decade is weakening.
The question is:
What do we want to come next?
There’s a sort of common wisdom that the internet is irredeemably bad, toxic, something to be avoided.
But the internet has also provided a haven for marginalised groups and a place for support, advocacy, and community.
How did the internet become what it is today?
The internet's original sin was its insistence on freedom. Initially designed for the military and academics, it wasn't meant for profit.
To support its free culture, a business model relying on advertising emerged. Our modern internet thrives on highly targeted ads using personal data, making it free but invasive.
This targeting is so precise that it feels like our phones are eavesdropping, when in fact, our data trails map our interests and behaviours.
“Humans were never meant to live in a society of 2 billion people,” says Yoel Roth, a technology policy fellow at UC Berkeley.
“Instagram, if seen as a society, is governed by a company overseeing the largest population in history. Failure is inevitable.”
How to fix it?
We’re in a rare moment where change seems possible; previously unmovable platforms are showing potential for transformation. A positive sign is the growing willingness of people to pay for content, as seen with Substack, Patreon, Twitch, YouTube Premium, Spotify, and Hulu. This shift shows that alternative models can work, even if they’re not perfect.
Another hopeful trend is the decentralised social networking model. This allows individuals to leave toxic environments without losing their entire online community, simply moving to another server with all their contacts intact.
The solution to the internet’s issues isn’t to shut down major platforms or disconnect entirely. Instead, we need more internet: more apps, spaces, funding, and thoughtful engagement. This means more utility, more voices, and more joy.
What do you think?
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