076: The more we talk, the easier it gets
Humans invented AI and interactive marketing associations, and lunch
You can feel the urgency of change. It’s coming from all corners, clamorous, persistent, and taking unending forms.
In 29 days we’ll mark one year since the launch of ChatGPT.
Hard to imagine a world without it.
Last week I spoke with a room full of CFOs and finance managers about generative AI. As expected, most had heard of tools like ChatGPT, but few were seriously engaged. So I demonstrated how you can now upload an Excel doc and have a conversation with its data. I am not a spreadsheet jockey, so this newfound ability is profound. I sensed the room thought so, too.
Yesterday I had a fabulous lunch with a colleague who writes elaborate prompts for legal and finance clients. He’s an artist by training, so viewing words as both instruction and symbol has proven useful. Approaching GPTs literally, like calculators, tends to elicit unenthusiastic results. My lunch mate talked about the intricacies, frustrations and occasional joys in training two different GPTs to communicate back and forth to discern fresh perspectives. We humans do this effortlessly, but alas, we also need to sleep. What if our agents could continue and augment our quests to discern potent solutions?
We are so early into this new realm it’s difficult to gauge what’s next, but that’s why we get together for lunch.
Minnesotans invented water skis, nail guns, and interactive marketing associations
Speaking of sharing a journey to discover what’s next…
25 years ago a handful of curious Minnesotans gathered in a Perkins restaurant and plotted the very first interactive marketing association in the country. (We’ve invented many potent items in MN.) On November 9 MIMA will celebrate its lengthy tenure with a fabulous half-day event. ⚠️ You should absolutely attend the conference—and fill your brain with useful insights, your belly with tasty food, and your community with powerful connections.
Entrepreneurs can’t thrive without community
In this week’s MCAD creative entrepreneurship class we welcomed David and Sara Russick and the amazing history of TUBS, Bagster and the Gopher Angels accelerator.
Throughout their time with us, we heard a refrain: So many people volunteered to guide us, to nurture us in our entrepreneurial journey—without them, we wouldn’t be here.
Community is a difficult concept to teach. You can experience being in one, you can feel the benefits of helping hands, you can summarize the benefits of working together and shared purpose… Maybe it’s simply this: To leverage community, you need to make room for the generosity of others. Which can be a struggle if your ego, your drive, your vision is convinced only you can solve the problem at hand.
Many thanks to David and Sara for their candor, kindness and generosity with our budding entrepreneurs.
AI+Creativity Update
📣 The big news this week is the Biden Administration’s Executive Order on AI. Here’s the official fact sheet. The good news: Government can move quickly! And in partnership with industry! As many have noted, EOs are crude instruments; what we really need is legislation. Today the U.K. is hosting its AI Summit. Creativity benefits from contexts and guardrails, i.e. a “box.” And truth be told, the AI conversation is so radically broad—encompassing literally every industry—we will all benefit from the collective term setting, and hashing out of meaning.
👩🏽⚖️ More specifically, a judge has ruled against some artists’ claims of copyright infringement by Midjourney and DeviantArt. Here’s the Hollywood Reporter, and ArtNet on the case. This feels like a “my needle” in “your haystack” situation—where the haystack is in a room of unknowable size and there’s no light. As the Reporter articulates, Midjourney, “maintains that training its model does not include wholesale copying of works but rather involves development of parameters — like lines, colors, shades and other attributes associated with subjects and concepts — from those works that collectively define what things look like.”
🎶 New Music Alert
My 16 year old son Eli just released a new track (listen on Spotify, Apple Music and other platforms) which he wrote, sang and performed all the instruments. 👂🏼🪱