Will the great flattening crush or extend?

How orgs are succeeding with AI right now.

Next:Economy Newsletter "Flattening can prepare the terrain for something new." Generated with Adobe Firefly.   Flattened or expanded? Earlier this month, Apple released a controversial ad for the iPad, which showed an assortment of creative tools being crushed before revealing the new flatter device. For many, the ad perfectly encapsulated the thorny relationship between creators and technology in the digital age. And it certainly does. Stratechery 's Ben Thompson reasons that the ad would probably have worked a lot better in reverse, highlighting technology's expansive potential rather than emphasizing destruction. But as he explains in this insightful post , both versions are true, and together they offer a useful framework for considering the future: while we shouldn't overlook the damage technology has wrought, in "our eagerness to criticize the bad, we ought not lose sight of the potential good." It's a crucial point. As Thompson notes, in the digital world, everything has been flattened as Big Tech platforms disrupt the "aggregators" that depended on scarcity for their success. And generative AI is only continuing that trend. But what we make of that flattened terrain is still to be determined. We have the opportunity to harness technology for great good—but that will require new ways of thinking about the role Big Tech companies will play in that success. Here's Thompson reflecting on the diverging paths that lie ahead (invoking Steve Jobs's concept of the computer as the "bicycle of the mind"): Will AI be a bicycle that we control, or an unstoppable train to destinations unknown? To put it in the same terms as the ad, will human will and initiative be flattened, or expanded? The route to the former seems clear, and maybe even the default: this is a world where a small number of entities "own" AI, and we use it—or are used by it—on their terms. This is the outcome being pushed by those obsessed with "safety", and demanding regulation and reporting; that those advocates also seem to have a stake in today's leading models seems strangely ignored. The alternative. . .means openness and commoditization. Yes, those words have downsides: they mean that the powers that be are not special, and sometimes that is something we lament, as I noted at the beginning of this article. Our alternative, though, is not the gatekept world of the 20th century—we can't go backwards—but one where the flattening is not the elimination of vitality but the tilling of the ground so that something—many things—new can be created. + As I and my colleagues at UCL's Algorithmic Attention Rents project contend, one means to ensure "that value from AI is widely shared" is by correcting the "misalignment between a company's economic incentives to profit from its proprietary AI model in a particular way and society's interests in how the AI model should be monetised and deployed."   AI skills may soon be table stakes Companies are still searching for a revelatory AI use case. In the meantime, uptake of generative AI tools remains fairly low. However, proficiency with those same tools is quickly becoming a requirement for jobs in the tech industry—"Microsoft says most company execs won't hire anyone without an AI aptitude." And Morgan Stanley's Edward Stanley recently argued in a Financial Times opinion piece that "investors are still underestimating the long-term impact of AI." + Here's former Google CEO Eric Schmidt in conversation with Noema's Nathan Gardels: "Mapping AI's Rapid Advance." + And here's Blood in the Machine's Brian Merchant earlier this week: "Generative AI is not going to kill your job—but your manager might." + From The New York Times: "If AI Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO." + This February 2024 report from the American Enterprise Institute, The Age of Uncertainty—and Opportunity: Work in the Age of AI, examines how AI has begun impacting the workplace, finding that the "most important step [workers] can take is to promote and strengthen [their] noncognitive skills to enhance their ability to adapt and persevere amid rapid change."   Upcoming event: Generative AI Success Stories I believe that one of the best ways to showcase the transformative power of AI is through real-world examples from companies actually putting the technology to work. That's why I'm happy to be cohosting Generative AI Success Stories on June 12. The event will bring together practitioners from HCLtech, Tabnine, Intuit, and ElevenLabs—plus the University of Pennsylvania's Ethan Mollick—to share how they're already leveraging AI to solve problems and get more done faster. If you're an O'Reilly member, you can register on the O'Reilly learning platform. And if you're not, you can register free of charge here. I hope to see you there! + From O'Reilly Radar: "What We Learned from a Year of Building with LLMs: Part 1 and Part 2" (Stay tuned for Part 3 on Radar soon.)   Even more stories of success Conversations with AI might help dispel conspiracy beliefs for some. (This one's a preprint, so take it with a grain of salt.) And AI-generated images of car-free cities can boost support for greener infrastructure policies. AI has also helped decode sperm whale vocalizations. Predict floods. Train doctors. Build top-notch shock absorbers. And even give us more art from Lou Reed (or at least from a "Lou Reed" chatbot created by his wife, conceptual artist Laurie Anderson).   —Tim O’Reilly and Peyton Joyce This message was sent to alexvarboffin.abbb@blogger.com. You are receiving this because you've signed up to receive email from us. Privacy Policy | Unsubscribe From All | Unsubscribe From Next:Economy O'Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA, 95472 (707) 827-7000