Use your palm to pay, verify your age, or gain venue access

☕️ Greetings tech aficionados! Happy Friday, September 1st. Welcome back to our daily exploration of the AI landscape. Together, we'll navigate the latest updates, trends, and insights steering the AI and the business world. Let's dive in!

🗞️ Today’s Highlights:

• LATEST NEWS & TRENDS — How AI-Powered Virtual Mentors Will Revolutionize Learning and Onboarding

• INDUSTRY | FUNCTION — Walmart will give 50,000 office workers a generative AI app

• RESOURCES — Options for Solving Hallucinations in Generative AI

• WORK — How advertising agencies are future-proofing themselves as AI takes over

• AI TOOLS — Beautiful.ai: AI presentation software for the workplace

• CHARTS — AI tools, spotlighting their broad applications across industries

🤖 Amazon One employs cutting-edge biometrics, optical engineering, and generative AI to create a frictionless shopping experience. Users can pay, verify their age, or gain venue access with just the palm of their hand. Powered by synthetic data, the technology has been deployed with unparalleled accuracy, promising to transform not just payments but also loyalty programs and identity verification while adhering to robust privacy standards. Amazon One is currently rolling out to various venues, including Whole Foods and entertainment locations.

Source: Amazon

🗞️ LATEST NEWS & TRENDS

1️⃣ Generative AI, particularly in the form of a 'Virtual Mentor,' promises to revolutionize enterprise learning and onboarding. Traditional methods are often costly, quickly outdated, and lack customization. Virtual mentors, built on generative AI, are conversational, adaptive, and generate content on-the-fly based on learner queries. They balance the need for confidentiality with the expansive capabilities of AI, making them valuable for specialized and general-purpose learning. Despite potential challenges such as data privacy and system reliability, this disruptive technology has the potential to drastically reshape the landscape of organizational learning and human capital management.

Reference: (How AI-Powered Virtual Mentors Will Revolutionize Learning and Onboarding)

Image source: IDC

2️⃣ Recently, major tech players such as X and Reddit have altered their platforms in ways that impact user experience, particularly focusing on restricting data access. The underlying reason for this is to protect their conversation databases from generative AI systems, which are growing increasingly advanced. This move not only raises ethical questions around data access but also presents practical challenges for AI development. The ripple effects of these decisions are felt in search functionality, global data sharing, and even the trajectory of software engineering. In this unfolding landscape, it's essential to strike a balance: we must weigh the functionalities that AI offers against the importance of ethical considerations and maintaining an open flow of information.

Reference: (4 ways Generative AI is Changing the Internet)

3️⃣ Google Cloud's newly announced Multislice technology redefines AI training by allowing tens of thousands of Cloud Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) to be seamlessly integrated. This removes historical bottlenecks and inefficiencies. Utilizing Google Cloud's Jupiter network, Multislice enables TPUs in a pod or across multiple pods to communicate efficiently. The platform is developer-friendly, requiring minimal setup and focusing on scalability. With metrics like Model FLOPs Utilization showing promising early results, Multislice seems poised to revolutionize the efficiency and scale of AI training.

Reference: (How to scale AI training to up to tens of thousands of Cloud TPU chips with Multislice)

4️⃣ OpenAI has rolled out ChatGPT Enterprise, offering enhanced features and security to businesses. Klarna, known for its "buy now, pay later" services, stands out as the only bank among the launch clientele. Utilizing ChatGPT Enterprise, Klarna aims to bring AI capabilities to all its employees, building on its existing use of AI tools and OpenAI's API. While other major banks shun AI over data concerns, Klarna's adoption is viewed as a divergence, likely to impact both employee productivity and customer experience.

Reference: (Klarna is all in on ChatGPT Enterprise. Here's why that's so surprising)

5️⃣ Despite rapid technological advancements, the growth rates in developed economies like the U.S. have stagnated. This is partly because technology alone doesn't fuel productivity; it needs the spark of a tight labor market to force firms into technological adoption. Generative AI could potentially fill this gap, especially in services, by replacing human labor and driving down costs. Yet, the impact of AI on macroeconomic growth is likely to be modest, affected by factors like societal acceptance and regulatory hurdles.

Reference: (Why we need to be realistic about generative AI’s economic impact)

🗞️ INDUSTRY | FUNCTION

Walmart is rolling out a generative AI app for its non-store workforce, aimed at automating tasks like summarizing documents and generating content. Dubbed "My Assistant," the feature is integrated into Walmart's existing employee app. While boosting efficiency, the retail giant also hopes to liberate workers from mundane tasks. The company believes a synergy of human and machine is vital for optimal productivity, even as the tech's limitations are acknowledged. The move marks a significant step in corporate America's ongoing debate over the role and risks of adopting AI technology for business operations.

Reference: (Walmart will give 50,000 office workers a generative AI app)

Gary Gensler, chair of the U.S. SEC, warns of the significant but precarious role AI could play in the financial sector. He's among the first to propose AI-specific regulations, aiming to minimize risks such as data uniformity, model design flaws, and inadequate existing laws. Gensler’s concerns also extend to "herding" behavior, where dependency on a few AI models could create systemic risks. His call to action underlines the need for thoughtful regulation to ensure both innovation and investor safety in this transformative technological era.

Reference: (This 2020 paper details SEC chair’s concerns about AI and finance)

🗞️ RESOURCES

Pinecone's article highlights the challenge of "AI hallucination" in Large Language Models (LLMs), wherein the AI produces factually incorrect but convincing responses. The article discusses various solutions to mitigate hallucination, ultimately advocating for Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) as the most scalable, cost-effective, and high-performing approach for building trustworthy Generative AI applications.

Reference: (Options for Solving Hallucinations in Generative AI)

🗞️ WORK

The advertising industry is grappling with a paradox: AI as a tool that augments human creativity versus AI as a threat to jobs. While some see generative AI as a game-changer for efficiency and targeting, others argue that it lacks the nuance and emotional depth of human-led creativity. The data suggests both scenarios are valid: AI is projected to replace 7.5% of the U.S. agency workforce by 2030. This conundrum has not incited unified action within the industry, unlike Hollywood, which has strong unions. As AI's role continues to expand, the ad industry faces critical decisions on upskilling its workforce and implementing ethical standards.

Reference: (How advertising agencies are future-proofing themselves as AI takes over)

🗞️ AI TOOLS

🔧 OpenRead: Experience the future with AI-powered interactive papers.

🔧 Observe.ai: Boost contact center performance and drive business outcomes. Faster.

🔧 LangoTalk: Master a language faster by chatting with AI.

🔧 Beautiful.ai: AI presentation software for the workplace.

🔧 PolyAI: Customer-Led Voice Assistants. Consistently deliver your best brand experience, achieve accurate resolution, and uncover data-driven business opportunities.

Disclaimer: 1) The tool descriptions are from the company behind each tool/app. 2) Please read the site details thoroughly before using and/or acquiring any of the tools listed above. We have not tested these tools and we will not be liable for anything.

🗞️ CHARTS

 👀 This infographic provides an in-depth look into the burgeoning field of generative AI tools, spotlighting their broad applications across industries—from text and image creation to music composition. By identifying influential companies in each category and showcasing practical use-cases, it offers a comprehensive understanding of how these AI tools are not just transforming but, in many cases, redefining our professional and creative landscapes.

Source/credit: DataCamp

Disclaimer: The audio-visual content is courtesy of the source provided above.

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_{I'm not a newsletter expert so you might find my approach a tad different. In my daily dives into the world of AI, I handpick the latest gems, initially to support the AI projects that I’m working on. Realizing that these snippets might resonate with others, I thought, "Why not share this with my community and fellow AI enthusiasts?" I truly want this newsletter to be valuable to you so if there's anything on your mind—praises, critiques, or just a hello—please drop me a note. You can hit reply or shoot me a message directly at my email address: [email protected].}