Sunday Morning Reading

AI, politics, culture and a bit of history in some Sunday Morning lake time reading to share.

We’re on lake time this weekend, but there’s always some Sunday Morning Reading to share. Especially when you get to share it from a lovely morning looking over the lake. Lots of AI, some polticis, some culture, and some just fun this Sunday. Enjoy.

It’s Father’s Day weekend, which prompts delving back into memories for me and also comes at a time when the debates around Artificial Intelligence touch a bit on how we collect, save, and share what may have once been memories but might be hallucinations. While this piece from Natasha MH isn’t aimed specifically in either of those directions, it struck some of those chords when I read it. Check out No Proof of Existence.

Speaking of AI, Miles Klee thinks Brands Are Beginning to Turn Away From AI. 

Holy moly. Even the Pope is getting into the AI discussion. Antony Faiola, Cat Zakrzewski and Stefano Pirelli take a quick look at How Pope Francis Became the AI Ethicist for World Leaders and Tech Titans. The AP also has a larger report here.

I’ve compiled a large reading list on Apple’s move into AI that it has now branded as Apple Intelligence. It’s way too early in this game to understand or predict the technology and financial games ahead, but as the previous link suggests perhaps not the ethical. Check out Eshu Marneedi’s Why Apple intelligence is the Future of Apple Platforms.

Fascinating piece by Renée DiResta on how online conspiracy theorists turned her into “CIA Renee.” Check out My Encounter with the Fantasy Industrial Complex.

Joan Westenberg does some comparing of our political life between the 1850’s and now in A Republic, If You Can Keep It: How 2024 Rhymes with the 1850’s. The parallels are black and white. The ability for too many to see where this will all lead not so much, as evidenced by this piece from Gregory S. Schneider and Karina Elwood: A School Board Reinstated Confederate Names. It Split The Community Again.

Anna Spiegel reports for Axios on The Folger Shakespeare Library’s Reimagining. This institution is a treasure and worth a visit. I’m looking forward to seeing it again after the new reopening.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here.  You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Apple Intelligence Crawling Under the Skin for Some

Apple Intelligence is the latest AI effort upsetting web publishers.

As we learn more about Apple Intelligence how Apple is training its AI efforts is crawling under the skin of some web publishers. Apple has been reasonably transparent about how it’s crawling the open web and using data it can grab for its efforts. Even so that’s not sitting well with everybody. But that’s been an uneasy road we’ve all been on with AI in a general sense since those gates were thrown open by OpenAI in 2022.

Screenshot%202024 06 10%20at%2011.36.33%E2%80%AFAM.This is a sticky wicket. Web publishers justifiably don’t feel great about having their content grabbed, regurgitated and spit back out without some consent or control. The other side of that coin is that the info is on the open web and by and large folks can access it through a variety of methods. There’s also the reality that the horse is already far from the barn because most of these AI models have been doing the same thing Apple is doing. AI has a been both a cash grab and a content grab from the get go, because without the content there’s diminishing returns on the cash.

There are methods to exclude a website from being crawled. Dan Moren at Six Colors has posted a good piece on how to do so and what that could mean here. Keep in mind any method used for this only excludes content and data going forward. Federico Viticci at MacStories has already stated that he’ll be excluding his website going forward.

Also keep in mind that this isn’t the only way Apple will be putting Apple Intelligence to work. Regardless, this is going to be an issue to follow as we continue to learn more about Apple Intelligence, which is just the latest in these Artificial Intelligence efforts that we all need to pay attention to. Like it or not it’s here and a fact of life. AND this isn’t the only issue getting under some folk’s skin since Apple made its announcement.

As a side note, my reading list on Apple Intelligence continues to grow with both punditry and technical info that I discover along the way. I imagine that list will just keep growing.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. 

Terrific MKBHD Interview with TIm Cook

A relaxed Tim Cook talks Apple Intelligence with MKBHD

There are several Tim Cook interviews bouncing around the Internet while Apple’s WWDC is ongoing this week. They focus on all of what Apple has publicly announced, and it doesn’t take artificial intelligence to know a big part of the discussion is Apple Intelligence. 

 Prolific YouTuber Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) sat down with Tim Cook in one of the most relaxed interviews I’ve ever seen Apple’s CEO give. Given the promotional nature and pace during WWDC week, I think that’s a bit of a rarity. So credit to MKBHD.

Yes, the interview covers Apple Intelligence, but it’s fun to watch MKBHD challenge Cook to a blind ranking of Apple products. Cook doesn’t take the bait of picking favorites, but does talk about the five products MKBHD brings up and it is especially fun to watch Cook’s reaction as he spins a bit about the Magic Mouse. 

All in all it’s well worth watching and Cook’s answers to MKBHD’s questions do shed a bit more light on what Apple is thinking about Apple Intelligence and where that might take technology.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. 

Getting Smart About Apple Intelligence

Time to start getting smart about Apple Intelligence

Everybody on the Apple Intelligence Bus! Everybody on the bus! That sure seems to be the rallying cry from Wall Street to tech blogs and the pundit beat. It’s quite exciting but only in the way a trailer for the next big movie might get us excited. The story the feature will tell isn’t ready yet, and only those in the know have knowledge of the script and what secrets it might contain.

I’m not poo-pooing what Apple will be offering. I have no way to make any judgment on whether it’ll be the next big thing, the future of computing, a train wreck or an also ran. All we have to go on is a very polished presentation designed to illicit interest. Apple boldly promises Apple Intelligence is AI for the rest of us. If that proves to be the case it begs the question as to who are the “them” or “they” that aren’t “us.”

On a promotional level alone Apple achieved success and at the moment it looks like it accomplished one of its goals with the announcement. Wall Street is certainly jumping on the Apple Intelligence bus based. Investment trends don’t always prove that intelligence and common sense go hand in hand but the market has indeed moved with Apple setting a new record high.

If all or most of what Apple promises comes close to reality it indeed does look promising. But as most of us should have learned by now, technology promises, especially AI promises of late, can have some bumps along the hallucination highway.

The timing will also be interesting, given that most of this won’t be rolling out when new iPhones debut this fall. Apple may have shifted the focus and succeeded in swinging the spotlight squarely back onto itself and yet, all we really know at the moment are the promises with a big helping of “coming later this year” tagged on at the end.

That said, it is probably wise to add to our own knowledge bases with what we do know about Apple Intelligence to this point and going forward. To that end I’ve put together a reading list of what I’ve seen so far that attracts my attention. Some of it is punditry. Some of it is technical. All of it makes for interesting reading.

First up is an interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook by Josh Tyrangiel in The Washington Post. When asked what his confidence was that Apple Intelligence will not hallucinate Cook responded:

“It’s not 100 percent. But I think we have done everything that we know to do, including thinking very deeply about the readiness of the technology in the areas that we’re using it in. So I am confident it will be very high quality. But I’d say in all honesty that’s short of 100 percent. I would never claim that it’s 100 percent.”

John Hwang in Enterprise AI Trends lays out what he views as Apple’s AI Strategy in a Nutshell.From what I know his thoughts make sense to me.

Casey Newton says Apple’s AI Moment Arrives. Here’s a quote:

“The question now is how polished those features will feel at release. Will the new, more natural Siri deliver on its now 13-year-old promise of serving as a valuable digital assistant? Or will it quickly find itself in a Google-esque scenario where it’s telling anyone who asks to eat rocks?”

Craig Federighi did an interview with Michael Grothaus of Fast Company about Apple Intelligence.

For some historical context and picking up on the discussion on how this changes (hopefully improves?) Siri, M.G. Siegler gives us The Voice Assistant Who Cried Wolf.

Wes David on The Verge gives us a list of every new AI feature coming to the iPhone and Mac. 

Security and privacy are two of the big picture concerns that accompany anything about AI in general. A couple of technical entries into the discussion that I find informative include Private Cloud Computer: A new frontier for AI privacy in the Cloud from Security Research and Introducing Apple’s On-Device and Server Foundation Models. Both are released via Apple and focus on privacy and responsible AI development.

A terrific interview with Tim Cook from YouTuber MKBHD. Most relaxed I’ve ever seen Cook in an interview.

Brian Fung of CNN takes a look at how Apple is handling your data with Apple Intelligence and the differences between Apple Intelligence and ChatGPT.

Sebastiaan de With ponders Apple’s Intelligent Strategy. 

Michael Parekh weighs in with his thoughts on how Apple is thinking different.

Steven Aquino weighs in talks about how Apple’s efforts have the potential to affect Accessibility.

Peter Kafka has published a transcript of an interview with Ben Thompson. Here’s a quote:

The real risk is execution risk. Apple does have the luxury of coming to market later, and they benefited from a huge amount of research and improvements. Like shrinking down these models, giving them high efficiencies, so they can run on-device. They’ve had all those benefits.

What they are proposing to do — to actually orchestrate different apps and different bits of data — no one has done well, yet. Apple’s bet is they can do it well because they have the data, because they are on the device. But there is a real execution risk.

Will Knight on Wired suggests that Apple Proved AI is a Feature, Not a Product. 

Some folks are concerned that one of the ways Apple is training its Apple Intelligence includes crawling the open web. If you run a website there are ways to exclude it from being crawled, but unless whatever data has already been crawled is jettisoned by Apple prior to a new training it’s a bit late. Here’s some coverage from MacStories and Six Colors on that. This issue will be one to watch in the future.

Jason Snell of Six Colors opines that Apple’s skin the game might not have been as willingly all in as Apple would have preferred.

Dwight Silverman of The Houston Chronicle wonders Will Apple’s new AI plans Help Siri Fulfill its Promise or will it disappoint again?

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. 

WWDC 2024: iCloudy Forecasts Ahead Amidst Dampening Expectations

iCloudy Forecast Ahead for Apple at WWDC

Here it comes. Apple is heading into its annual World Wide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) with announcements of its next big things beginning June 10th. By all accounts, this year those next big things will center on AI which is short for Artificial Intelligence. There won’t be any shortage of AI in a tech world that has grown both AI crazy and AI fearful, putting Apple is in the unusual position of playing follow the leader in more obvious ways than in the past.

CleanShot 2024-06-04 at 08.54.35@2x.

There will be other new features announced for iPhones, Macs, Apple Watches, perhaps even the Vision Pro, but as always the focus will be on what’s new. Even though a goodly portion of what’s new and exciting each year often ends up being a bit “meh” in the end. Either “meh” or rolled out and forgotten as Apple shifts its attention to what next year’s next big things will be. That seems to be what’s happening this year as Apple has turned most of its focus to AI.

Apple is also unfortunately positioned to have to work harder in making its splashy announcements splashy and dodging seemingly already diminished expectations on a number of fronts. Most anticipate Apple’s AI announcements to be less than sexy and the iPad faithful/hopeful seemed to be poised to continue piling on the criticism (some necessary, some not) that greeted newer iPads less than a month ago.

So, on two big fronts, AI and iPadOS, Apple has some tougher challenges ahead than it usually does this time of year. And bad timing is at the root of both.

The iPad Issue Is Touchy

On the iPad front, for whatever reason Apple went more than a year before releasing new iPads. When they did debut them last month they surprised everyone by including new M4 chips in the new Pro lineup, upsetting every pundit’s attempts at trying to assign a predictable timetable to the continued Apple Silicon evolution. Coming just weeks ahead of WWDC, and without any new operating system software to accompany it, Apple opened up a slew of doors for the salivating pundit class to rush through, cranking up the complaints about iPadOS not taking advantage of very powerful and much loved hardware. And, as always, the married at the hip debates about being able to run macOS on an iPad or adding a touch screen to the Mac tagged along as noisy bridesmaids.

It’s a bit frustrating for a regular and religious iPad user. While the issues are genuine, they negatively dominate the conversation given that they come from the influential voices that helped turn the iPad into a success in the first place. I know the issues are long simmering, well intentioned, and come from the heart of those who love the device, but the recent sudden crescendo was deafening enough to fire up a Loud Environment warning on an Apple Watch. With WWDC just around the corner everyone knew the new devices alone were not going to offer anything remotely close to a new and different iPad experience. It just seemed premature to me. If they were meant as a warning to Apple, then I would call it not only premature, but a misfire given the timing.

Those debates and complaints probably aren’t going to end in the foreseeable future as entertaining and exhausting as they can be. Between manifestos, and well thought through lists of what some desire on iPads, there was some general vitriolic piling on. It heralds a tough year ahead for Apple and its iPad lineup.

My prediction is that no one is going to be remotely satisfied with this year’s iPadOS release. Most rumors say not much of consequence will be announced. It’s certainly going to be interesting to follow the commentariat class as they wrestle with how many different ways they can say the iPads are great devices but Apple keeps holding them back for another year.

Perhaps this year changes things, but typically big OS changes come to the iPhone first with iPads and Macs bringing up the rear in the year or years that follow. Given Apple’s push into AI as this year’s big iPhone tent pole, if the iPad doesn’t get included it will add even more to those complaints and increase the volume.

Continue reading “WWDC 2024: iCloudy Forecasts Ahead Amidst Dampening Expectations”

Sunday Morning Reading

Secret octopi, culture wars, convictions, and reading between the letters. In this week’s Sunday Morning Reading.

Life is beginning to settle in after the big move, although there’s parts of it we still can’t figure out which box we packed some of it in. Perhaps we need some sort of A.I. bot to help us figure that out.  But we’ll get there. In the meantime here’s some Sunday Morning Reading to share.

Speaking of AI, WTF is AI? That’s the question posed with some attempted answers by Devin Coldeway. It’s a decent primer on the topic. Watch out for secret ocotopi.

A couple of pieces on AI from Nico Grant at the NY Times shows just how unknown and perhaps reliably unreliable this fast evolving tech territory is. First up is Google’s A.I. Search Leaves Publishers Scrambling. Follow that up with Google Rolls Back A.I. Search Feature After Flubs and Flaws. I wonder how AI will spit all of this back at us once articles like these are trained in. I also wonder when publishers will start to standardize whether or not we’ll write it as AI or A.I.

Some think The AI Revolution Is Already Losing Steam. I happened to agree with Christopher Mims, the author of this piece.

Even in the midst of moving it’s been tough to ignore the political comings, goings and convictions in the news. Check out David Todd MCCarty on Bedtime for Bonzo, Or Nothing To See Here. Even after 34 convictions for the orange dude, this piece holds up.

This piece from July of 2021 by John Pavlovitz resurfaced in my feeds in the last week. The Sadness of Sharing A Country With Trump Supporters is worth a re-read in the wake of this week’s news. Somehow I think it will remain relevant for quite some time.

With all that is going on in the political world, it’s a good idea to always remember there is so much more going on behind the scenes than we ever want to realize. Check out Ken Silverstein’s look behind the curtain in Off Leash: Inside The Secret, Global, Far-Right Group Chat. You might be sorry you did.

I hope The Wonkette is writing you visit often. There’s an excellent serial novel there called The Split by Ellis Weiner and Steve Radlauer. It’s up to Chapter 30. It’s terrific and worth your time.

There’s a new book worth highlighting and highlighted by Laura Colliins-Hughes in the NY Times. James Shapiro’s The Playbook chronicles the history of The Federal Theatre Project. The subtitle teases well: A Story of Theatre, Democracy and The Making Of A Culture War. A great story from back in the day when live theatre was actually something folks believed was dangerous enough that it could change minds.

And to close out this week’s edition check out Natasha MH’s Writing The Unpretentious Prose. Don’t just read the words. Look between the letters.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here.  You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

The iPad Pro Ad Apple Should Have Released In The First Place

Less Crushing. More Creative Fun.

Just before this year’s World Wide Developer Conference debuts Apple has released a new ad for the iPad Pro. It’s probably the one it should have released in the first place, instead of the now infamous Crushed ad. It’s better than the previous ad in a lot of respects. Certainly it better shows off the iPad Pro’s capabilities, but I’m not sure it’ll ever erase the crushing response from that first ad. CleanShot 2024-06-01 at 07.53.37@2x.

You’ll remember that furor visited on Apple after releasing Crushed featuring all sorts of musical instruments and other creative tools being crushed by a hydraulic press into an iPad Pro. I for one wasn’t that upset about the ad, but quite a few folks thought Apple misread all sorts of rooms and moments. Given how the creative classes are a bit squeamish about AI possibly replacing artists and crushing the human element out of the act of creation it lit a spark that eventually led to a rare Apple apology. 

This new ad shows off what the new iPad Pro’s can do featuring three different artists creating three different backgrounds while actress Sofia Wylie dances around in front of a green screen. Even the Apple Pencil gets some screen time. 

Here’s the new ad called Worlds Made on iPad. Better to make than crush.

 You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Sunday Morning Reading

Sunday Morning Reading is back while we continue to unpack. The environs are different, but everything remains the same.

Everything changes and everything remains the same. We’ve completed the Big Move and are now in our new abode. Heads sleep on the same pillows, coffee is sipped from the same mugs, but we’re still living out of boxes and unpack others. That’ll be the state of things for a bit still. That’s life on the home front as everything has changed but remains the same. That seems to be the case in the world in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading.

Kicking things off is an excellent series of articles from The New Republic. What American Fascism Would Look LIke is a collection of essays by a collection of writers, each one worth your time. Start with Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s The Permanent Counterrevolution, but check them each out.

The Roberts Supreme Court continues to show its true colors witih all sorts of flag flyiing controversy from Samuel Alito. Blaming your wife is becoming a thing also. Check out Alitio and Thomas Aren’t Really Jurists. They’re Theocratic Leninists by Michael Tomasky.

There was lots of big news on the Artificial Intelliegence front. There was also not much new in much of that news. LLMs still bung things up. Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI pushed their newest in a race that feels very much like the runners keep tripping over themselves. Nico Grant in the New York Times points to the ongoing snafu in Google’s A.I. Search Errors Cause a Furor Online. At some point this is all going to end up like the streaming entertainment wars. Once all the players are on the field there will be consolidation. There will still be problems. Those new subscription prices will rise. And everyone will complain.

Even so, Steven Levy says It’s Time to Believe The AI Hype. 

Naveen Kumar takes a quick look at how AI might be worming its way into live performance in AI Is Getting Theatrical.

David Todd McCarty takes on the contradictions of believing that more than one thing can be true at the same time in An Angel With An Incredible Capacity for Beer. 

NatashaMH pens a nifty piece about how the act of writing gives a teacher a window into the mind of her student in Writing The Unpretentious Prose.

And while we were busy moving, Apple released new iPads. Not surprisingly everything changed and everything remained the same. The new software that may or may not yield potential changes is due to roll out in a few weeks, but until it does, those iPads remain behind the software curve while setting the hardware pace. Or at least that’s the accepted line in Apple circles. Federico Viticci penned an excellent summary of what he feels iPads are still missing in Not an iPad Review: Why iPadOS Still Doesn’t Get the Basics Right and Steve Troughton-Smith also put out The iPad Pro Manifesto (2024 Edition).

Closing things out this weekend as I try to get these old bones moving again to unpack some more boxes, check out Margaret Dean’s A Mutiny of Bones about recalcitrant bones and aging and how it’s not just the joints that stop bending. The one constant as everything changes around and within you, some things just don’t work the same as they once did.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here.  You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Thoughts on Thoughts About New iPad Pros

Let iPads be iPads. Trying to be all things to all people doesn’t work in life, and I don’t think it works in tech.

Years ago when I was a Microsoft MVP for Tablet PCs I attended an MVP Summit in Redmond. It was an exciting and stresssful moment for Tablet PC advocates, of which I was one. The winds of change were kicking up and hinting that Microsoft would favor Touch over pen based Tablet PCs in the future. For broader context, the PC Pundit industry had already declared the Tablet PC a largely failed niche device. 

Then Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was to give the keynote and take questions from the audience. As I lined up to ask a question I noticed that he was taking notes on a piece of legal paper. I never got a chance to ask my question which is probably a good thing because I changed what I had prepared to ask. Had I gotten the chance I was going to ask why he wasn’t using a Tablet PC to take notes. It certainly would have made a big statement if he had done so. It certainly did make one that he didn’t. 

Preparing to watch Apple’s recent Let Loose announcement about new iPads I was reminded of that moment in watching the usual, now almost cliché, iPad criticism flow through my social media timelines. There are two routinely rhetorical responses about the iPad:

  • The iPad lineup is confusing. 
  • The iPad Pro needs to be more Mac like and/or run macOS. 

Each of the above is true. Clichés are rooted in variants of truth. Yes, there is confusion, but on the first point I think Apple largely let loose the air out of a that balloon.

There’s now an easy roadmap to follow if you’re interested in a full-sized iPad. $349 will get you an iPad without many of the bells and whistles, perfect for a child or a mother-in-law. You can spend upwards of $3000 for the fully kitted out iPad Pro. Or you can settle in the middle for a $700 starting point for the iPad Air that now includes most of the technology previously only seen in the iPad Pro lineup. That all makes good sense to me. Oh, and the iPad mini is still around and I’m guessing we’ll see an update of that later this fall.

Apple is largely to blame for the second confusion point, due to a rare misfire in its marketing years ago. Before we had Apple Silicon in MacBooks things weren’t looking great for the MacBook. There was lots of talk about the iPad being the future and what it would take to make it so.  Apple even launched a What’s a Computer? campaign in 2017 promoting iPads that helped confused the issue. 

Tech pundits took their cue. They pushed the envelope on their devices and pushed Apple to keep on keeping on and the iPad Pro (introduced in 2015) kept getting more powerful and more capable right along side the “The iPad is the only computer I need but it needs more” stories. But hardware is only part of the story.

Things continued to get confusing when Apple split the iOS operating system into two and birthed iPadOS in 2019. Certainly that hinted at more to come from the software. Even so, the software narrative continued to feel incomplete while the parallel story of the immediate success of Apple Silicon Macs intensified the dissatisfaction. 

Now, let me be clear. I’m not one of those who feels the iPad needs to be more Mac like or run macOS. Could there be advancements to iOS? Yes. I’d love the File system to work more intuitively. Quite frankly, I’m fine with how iPads sort of multi-task now, Stage Manager being the exception.

I use an iPad Pro with a keyboard at times, but I mostly use it as a tablet in landscape mode for work with an Apple Pencil. I’m a use the right tool for the job kind of guy when it comes to tech. Since both Microsoft and I abandoned Tablet PCS, an iPad has always been the right tool for most of my work in the theatre, alongside a Mac for portions of that and other work. I don’t see that changing, given that I’ve tried most of the other tablet options out there. Let iPads be iPads and Macs be Macs. Trying to be all things to all people doesn’t work in life, and I don’t think it works in tech.

In my view, the “iPadOS isn’t complete until it can be a Mac software” story has created a myth like reverse branding similar to the negative one of Microsoft’s Tablet PC. So much so at this point, I don’t think Apple will ever be able to counteract it, even if it did create an iPadOS that runs macOS or some version of it. And that’s a damn shame.

I made this comment prior to the Let Loose event, yesterday.

 

I could very easily be wrong, but I don’t think we’ll ever see that mythical iPad that some wish for. Personally I don’t think it’s necessary and I’d be more than happy if we just let iPads be iPads and Macs be Macs. We’ll see how and if the story changes at WWDC in a few weeks. I’m guessing it won’t and I’m just fine with that.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

What Happens to Ads with AI Summaries of Web Pages?

Will AI summarize web ads into submission?

Artificial Intelligence is still the dominate tech craze of the moment. Big announcements are expected within the next several weeks from Apple, Google and just about anyone else who can prompt an AI generated press release into being.  I’m sure AI will continue to be on the tips of most digital tongues.

Or will it all just be summarized? 

One of the trends I’m seeing predicted is how users will take advantage of Artificial Intelligence to summarize web pages. That sounds like a useful, perhaps noble idea but it raises questions. The web relies so much on advertising to generate revenue. AI is supposed to help ad creators and marketers do better and more efficient designing and targeting. What happens when users stop visiting web pages and just rely on summaries? That’s a genuine question I have and would love to read some possible answers.

It’s not that I’m a big fan of ads, but I remember back in the heyday of RSS that there was all sorts of tension regarding losing ad impressions between web publishers and web users that relied on RSS readers. Then RSS feeds of web articles got truncated into teasers to send users clicking. Then ads got inserted into RSS. Will the same thing happen with ads being inserted into AI summaries? How would that work with something like an AI Pin or the Rabbit R1? (Although I doubt those devices will be around for us to find out.) 

Given that one of the other predicted AI trends is being able to verbally converse with whatever AI machine you choose, how would that work with advertising? Will a user need to listen to ads before getting a response to their prompt? There’s already a lag in compute capacity resulting in delays delivering responses to queries with most current AI engines. I don’t imagine waiting for an ad insertion will help improve on that. 

Again, these are sincere questions that I’d love to hear some thoughts on. Just don’t summarize them.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.