June 26, 2023
what we've excited about...
empowering you with insights and information from the edge of today’s headlines
Technology
AI Rage: ChatGPT was released to the public just 7 months ago, and AI quickly went viral: the chatbot received record breaking user growth with 100M active users (in January 2023) to 173M in April 2023 and 1.8BN visitors per month. AI also replaced Web3 from everyone’s talking points, and we are now seeing the same phenomenon that the quickest way to raise money or garner any interest is to add AI to your name even if you have nothing to do with artificial intelligence. In 2017, the Long Island Ice Tea Corporation changed its name to Long Blockchain Corp and immediately saw a jump in its stock price of 432%. While the company continued to sell drinks, it planned to “leverage blockchain technology.” (Its shares were delisted in 2021 after failing to file financial reports.) On a side note, the iced tea craze continued to fuel the crypto frenzy when fanatics realized that AriZona Iced Tea had remained at 99¢ since 1996, and they decided to create a stable coin: USD Tea. We are huge fans of AI (see our banner images), but we also recognize that there are lots of scams out there. Are we in the midst of an AI bubble? There are also multiple AI companies created and destroyed daily, whether they are “sherlocked” by major players by adding new features (see chatgpt plugins) or they run out of funding. Even the Grammys just created a rule around AI music. So do your research and enjoy the ride. Or read the McKinsey report.
Unusual Activity: Google Cloud has developed Anti-Money Laundering AI which aims to help financial institutions improve their customer surveillance. Traditional compliance platforms use machine learning on top of human monitoring but often lead to a high number of false positives or bad leads (“Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence puts the percentage of false positives generated by such systems at as high as 95%.”) Google’s AI-first approach increases the accuracy by two to four times. While the systems can be tailored to the individual institution and its risk profile, we agree with the skepticism of the compliance officers mentioned in the articles — regulators will want them to know how the models reach their conclusions (KYC or CYA).
AI DJs: You might have already set up your own AI DJ using Spotify, but if you live in Portland, your midday radio might be taken over by a clone. Live 95.5 will be using RadioGPT to clone host’s Ashley Elzinga’s voice and broadcast the script to listeners. Wimbledon is also using AI-generated audio and text commentary for its online highlights generated by IBM. And there was some controversy this weekend about the new Marvel “Secret Invasion” using AI generated credits rather than artists. Bad time for a writer’s strike.
Amazon Hub: Amazon is recruiting small businesses to take up the last mile delivery and build out its network. The Amazon Hub Delivery aims to partner with mom-and-pop small businesses in 23 states with a goal of connecting 2,500 drivers out of those small businesses. The businesses are paid per delivery, and the network is not limited to rural communities.
2 Weeks: In case you missed it, I-95 was expected to be shut down for months after a tanker fire destroyed an elevated section of the major roadway near Philadelphia on June 11. However, the construction of a temporary roadway took only 12 days, and the Governor even called in a jet dryer from the Pocono Raceway to keep the rain away during the last few days of construction. The first travelers across the span: none other than the Philly mascots.
Law and Order
Let them wear pants: It is 2023, and the women of North Carolina had to go all the way to the US Supreme Court to get permission to wear pants in public school. A North Carolina publicly funded charter school had a code of conduct that “required girls to wear skirts in order to “preserve chivalry” based on the belief that every girl is a ‘fragile vessel.’”
One vote one person or not: A Delaware city is about to give corporations the right to vote in elections, and since Delaware is pretty corporate friendly, and there are no limits to the number of corporations that can be created, get ready for some interesting ballots. The town of Seaford only has about 8,000 human residents, and currently only 234 registered entities, although only 340 people turned out to vote in the last election. Seaford wouldn’t be the first town to pass such an ordinance, and other towns have had difficulty stopping LLCs and their managers from voting multiple times in multiple jurisdictions.
Honesty is for the Birds: We recognize that the end of expertise is all the rage in the United States, but we didn’t expect it when it comes to studying honesty. A prominent Harvard behavioral scientist who was renowned for studying honesty has fabricated some of her studies as far back as 2012. Dr. Francesco Gino unfortunately has co-authored so many studies with other academics throughout the community, that the academic field is up in arms and attracting watchdogs. Behavioral science is similar to psychology although it is often tied to economics and management, and has often attracted skeptics. Strangely, one of her findings that escaped peer review: how networking can make professionals feel dirty.
Culture
Music to your ears: We used to live in New York and we have fond memories of being stranded in the subway and “hearing” a transit announcement come over the loudspeaker but the only sound we could discern was the wa-wa-wa of the adults in a Charlie Brown cartoon. Well, don’t worry, the MTA has figured out that if they are paid to play announcements, they play really clear and really loud. This week riders were blasted with ads for the new Indiana Jones movie during their commutes. Evidently, there is a scene in the movie where Indy rides through the 59th Street/Lexington Avenue subway station on horseback, so we guess there is a crossover. Yes, we can’t wait for the movie, but no, we don’t want to hear about it underground (that is why we are all wearing Airpods).
Fashion Designers are Fighting: Pharrell Williams is the new creative director of Louis Vuitton menswear, and he debuted his first collection in an over-the-top fashion show last week which involved shutting down half of Paris, ferrying spectators across the Seine even though the show was accessible by land, and draping the historic Pont Neuf bridge in gold. The show was extreme celebrity with Rihana, Jay-Z and Lebron James in attendance, but aren’t all fashion shows? Lewis Magazine echoed many in calling Pharrell’s prints “fkin hideous,” while quoting Grace Coddington of Vogue magazine fame calling it “any old sh*t.” (He created a pixelated version of the LV Damier print dubbed “Damouflage.”) Following his own debut, however, Pharrell has been spotted attending other shows with a €1M LV Speedy Duffle made of crocodile and accented with pavé diamonds. If you’d like to follow the new Creative Director’s progress, he’s opened a new Skateboard Instagram account.
Let them eat cake: You might remember the “everything is cake” craze of 2021. Well this instagram account takes it to a whole new level where every item in the kitchen is cake, and frankly we got a stomachache just watching, but enjoy.
TikTok Products: We are a little late to the game, but we aren’t big watchers of TikTok, so apologies if you have already heard of these. We are all probably familiar with the trend of the crazy Starbucks drink with more items on the recipe than can actually fit on the sticker — most of these iced, sweet rainbow concoctions got their life from TikTok. Last year, the craze was frozen fruit roll ups and ice cream (and they even sold out on Amazon). Now the TikTok revolution has forced Chipotle to add a new menu item: the Keithadilla, a fajita quesadilla with honey vinaigrette dressing named for the TikTok influencer who inspired it. While we won’t be taking menu advice from TikTok, our favorite hacks come from Everyone’s Grandma (brunchwithbabs).
On the flipside, teens are having a field day with the Grimace shake from McDonald’s. Grimace is celebrating its 52nd birthday, so the chain introduced a purple shake, and fans have been ordering the shake and acting as if they have been poisoned. Guess any content is good content?
Aging Barrels: Have you ever wanted to try your hand at aging your own whiskey but you don’t have the thirty years to wait? Now you can just wait a week with the Moba Smart Barrel, a wi-fi enabled urn that “ingests a bottle of booze and spits out a barrel-aged version after a week.” We have no idea why you’d want to age tequila or already aged bourbon, but if you have a spare $399 lying around, and are feeling the chemistry bug, why not?
— Lauren Eve Cantor
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