😂 Gen AI is many things, but boring is not one of them

Due to popular demand, we’re organizing a new Xebia Data Academy learning week next week!

• On Tuesday the 28th, Lysanne van Beek will guide you through a non-technical session on how to use Gen AI successfully through intelligent prompting, avoiding all the common pitfalls when leveraging tech as ChatGPT naïvely! Registere here: https://xebia.ai/gl-chatgpt-lysanne
• On Wednesday the 29th, David Coba will introduce you to the wonders of dbt by dbt Labs, the new standard to power everything in your business with  high-quality, trusted, and reliable data. Register here: https://xebia.ai/gl-dbt-david
• On Thursday the 30th, Steven van Duin will answer the question many of us wake up with: how will data add value to my business? Register here: https://xebia.ai/gl-at-steven On Friday the 31st, Tennyson Wu will give a gentle introduction to Power BI, enabling you to go from 0 to working with the tool in just one hour! Register here: https://xebia.ai/gl-powerbi-tennyson

It won’t be robots that destroy humanity; instead, AI will make us poison ourselves by hijacking our best recipes!

These jokes practically write themselves.

Thanks Google!

Have you ever thought of adding some non-toxic glue to your pizza? 🍕

No? Well, Google AI Overview has got your back!

Do they have no honor left?

Samsung asks small shops to

• Share “Daily” dumps of customer data
• The “immediate destruction” of any phones a shop comes across that has third-party parts

https://www.404media.co/samsung-requires-independent-repair-shops-to-share-customer-data-snitch-on-people-who-use-aftermarket-parts-leaked-contract-shows/

How’s that Gen AI ROI looking now?

Tech companies are pushing Gen AI everywhere.

The latest case is Windows Recall (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/retrace-your-steps-with-recall-aa03f8a0-a78b-4b3e-b0a1-2eb8ac48701c) a feature that is the worst nightmare of people suffering domestic abuse. It’s baffling that the industry is failing even to pretend to care for a good portion of the population—mostly women—that will be negatively impacted by their products.

Why is it happening?

In short: the insane amount of investment in Gen AI is causing it.

Why? Investment demands return, and given the amounts needed for the current generation of Gen AI models, the returns will have to be extra juicy. Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft alone might spend around $200bn this year, mostly on data centers and electricity.

But where are the Gen AI applications offering a 10x return on this investment?

Where is the $2 trillion Gen AI market?

Such a market is nowhere to be seen: all companies I speak with are hardly going beyond proof of concept, let alone creating a steady revenue stream.

So, instead, we’re all getting Windows Recall and Slack snooping on your company data without your explicit consent.

Is Europe cyber infrastructure ready for a war(-like) situation?

The short answer is no.

Bert Hubert lays is out skillfully in a talk — now transcribed, see link — and the reason we’re not prepared boils down to:

• Politicians being willfully ignorant about technology, hence taking immense risks without realizing it
• Dumbing down our IT sector by outsourcing skills and knowledge to either the US (for the cloud), or Asia (for outsourcing and 5G tech).

Ironically, the best prepared nation west of Moscow and East of New York is Ukraine, battle-hardened by years of cybersecurity conflicts with Russia.

You need 5’ to read this, but if you work in tech — or politics — you must read it.

https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/cyber-security-pre-war-reality-check/

Slack had the time to set up all the controls to train AI model on your data, but they couldn’t bother to create a checkbox to opt out.

Instead, the admin needs to send them an email, with a particular subject line, to opt out!

Another responsible AI failure, and the irony when you read trust on the URL!

https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/trust/data-management/privacy-principles

This is also mighty interesting in terms of #sustainability and AI.

In 2020, Microsoft was on track to be carbon-neutral by 2030.

Three years later, though, and they were emitting 30% more carbon, inverting the trend.

What happened?

#genai!

The need to build data centers (steel and cement contribute a lot to your carbon emissions, turns out) reversed their course and might fatally compromise their green ambitions.

Ouch!

Credits to Bloomberg for the visuals!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-15/microsoft-s-ai-investment-imperils-climate-goal-as-emissions-jump-30