Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 09/23 – Microsoft “Exclusively” Licenses GPT-3

Starting point is 00:00:00 On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the tech meme ride home for Wednesday, September 23rd, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. All the announcements and headlines from Microsoft's Ignite 2020 conference.

Starting point is 00:00:45 Microsoft is exclusively licensing OpenAI's GPT3, for example. Google has debuted an air table rival called tables. Ming Chi Kuo thinks we'll see an iPad with mini LED by the end of the year. What happened during Tesla's Battery Day? Pinterest has launched story pins and how, Spotify is enabling essentially SEO spam in audio form. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Microsoft's Ignite 2020 conference was yesterday, and I'm here to give you a rundown of all the announcements. First up, Microsoft launched Azure communication services, which will allow

Starting point is 00:01:24 developers to add voice and video calling, chat, text messages, and a whole lot more to their apps. This would be a direct challenge to Twilio, the current king of the sort of space. Quoting TechCrunch. As for the core services, the capabilities here are pretty much what you'd expect. There's voice and video calling and the ability to shift between them. There's support for chat, and starting in October, users will be able to send text messages. Microsoft says developers will be able to send these to users anywhere, with Microsoft positioning it as a global service. Provisioning phone numbers, too, is part of the services, and developers will be able to provision those for inbound and outbound calls,

Starting point is 00:02:05 port existing numbers, request new ones, and most importantly for contact center users, integrate them with existing on-premises equipment and carrier networks. Our goal is to meet businesses where they are and provide solutions to help them be resilient and move their business forward in today's market. Wright's Van Vlyent, we see rich communication experiences,

Starting point is 00:02:24 enabled by voice, video chat, and SMS, continuing to be an integral part of how businesses connect with their customers across devices and platforms, end quote. Microsoft also unveiled updates across Azure machine learning and Azure cognitive services, launched Metrics Advisor, bot framework composer, automated MLUI, and a whole lot more. But also let me introduce you to Azure Orbital, a cloud-based ground station as a service for satellite data processing. This competes with a product I didn't know existed called AWS Ground Station.

Starting point is 00:03:01 Quoting Geekwire. Like AWS Ground Station, Azure Orbital makes it possible for satellite operators to control their spacecraft via the cloud or integrate satellite data with cloud-based storage and processing. To cite one example, oil rig operators could monitor their equipment remotely via satellites and the cloud, end quote. Microsoft also debuted new teams features, including virtual commute, headspace integration, breakout rooms, and virtual coffee shops for meetings. So, you know, this one would be a shot across the bow. of Slack and Zoom. The breakout rooms are exactly what you'd think they'd be, and the virtual coffee shop is exactly the gimmick you'd think it would be. But I found this part interesting,

Starting point is 00:03:42 quoting Venture Beat. Nobody misses traffic and the wasteful practice known as commuting, but Microsoft research studies have found that, quote, the reflection typically done during that time can increase productivity by 12 to 15 percent, end quote. And so in the first half of 2021, Microsoft teams will let you schedule a virtual commute at at the start and end of your day. Quote, what we're finding is that that commute experience, it's good for it not to be too long, but it did play a role in helping us clear our heads.

Starting point is 00:04:11 Microsoft 365 corporate vice president, Jared Spataro said in a press briefing, think about what we're going into in the day, and think about clearing up what we are coming out of in a day. And so this virtual commute experience allows you to take a step back, again, going into and coming out of your day, to just organize your thoughts, and to make sure you're really processing,

Starting point is 00:04:30 doing some pre and post-processing of your work. It turns out the research shows us that can be very helpful, end quote. Sort of like a podcast for your ride home, even if you don't actually have a ride home at the moment. I dig it. Finally, if there was a big headline from yesterday, it was this. Microsoft says it will exclusively license OpenAI's GPT3 language model, which will continue to be offered via the Azure hosted API launched back in June, quoting Ventrabeat a final time. The implications of the licensing agreement weren't immediately clear, but Microsoft says that OpenAI will continue to offer GPT3 and other models via its Azure hosted API launched in June. To date, the API, which remained in beta, has received tens of thousands of applications according to OpenAI. Microsoft plans to leverage the capabilities of GPT3 in its own product, services, and experiences, and to continue to work with OpenAI to commercialize the firm's AI research.

Starting point is 00:05:26 We see this as an incredible opportunity to expand our Azure. juror-powered AI platform in a way that democratizes AI technology, enables new products, services, and experiences, and increases the positive impact of AI at scale. Microsoft EVP Kevin Scott wrote, The scope of commercial and creative potential that can be unlocked through the GPT3 model is profound, with genuinely novel capabilities, most of which we haven't even imagined yet, directly aiding human creativity and ingenuity in areas like writing and composition, describing and summarizing large blocks of long-form data, including code,

Starting point is 00:06:00 converting natural language to another language, the possibilities are limited only by the ideas and scenarios that we bring to the table, end quote. Completely different companies, of course, but you'll see why I'm pairing this segment with that last one. Google has debuted Tables, a work-tracking tool to rival Airtable, air table, that can set task-based email reminders, send messages when forms are submitted, manage tasks, do a whole bunch of stuff. This is from TechCrunch, quote.

Starting point is 00:06:31 Instead of simply tracking notes and tasks associated with a project in various documents that have to be manually updated by team members, tables bots help do things like scheduling recurring email reminders when tasks are overdue, messaging a chat room when new form submissions are received, moving tasks to other people's work queues, or updating tasks when statuses are changed. Tables aims to take on some extra manual processes like collecting data from different sources, collating it together, pasting into another document, then handing it off, for example. The tool, however, is made to work with existing Google technology. That makes it a better choice for those who are already invested in using Google's ecosystem

Starting point is 00:07:10 like Google's online documents, contacts, and more. To get started with tables, you can import data from Google Sheets or a .csv, share data with your Google groups, and assign tasks to people found in your Google contacts. You can also get started with one of the included templates, if you prefer. The bots handle automated actions, while the data itself can be presented in different ways, like grid views, record lists, canband boards, and maps. Forms allow you to collect data on the fly without having to give people access to your tables directly, end quote. Also, this is worth noting the Swift Project has announced that its language tools are now available for Windows 10, quoting Imore.

Starting point is 00:07:54 The Swift Project, the ongoing open source efforts to develop the Swift programming language, has announced that an initial release of Swift is now available for Windows 10. What this means is the tools, like the compiler and core libraries, are all available for developers right now. Swift was originally announced by Apple at WWDC 2014 as a modern language that would eventually take the place of Objective C as the primary language for building applications for Apple's platforms. Apple has since open source Swift, and the open source project has made tools for the language available for CentOS and Amazon Linux distributions, in addition to MacOS and MacOS. now Windows. You can download the Swift tool chain for Windows from the Swift Project website, end

Starting point is 00:08:35 quote. Ming Chi Kuo says the next 12.9 inch iPad Pro, expected to be coming by the end of this year, will have mini-l-D displays, which would be a first for any Apple products. Quoting Mac rumors. Quo has said that Apple has at least six iPad and Mac products with mini-l-D displays in its pipeline for launch at the end of 2021, but he indicates that the initial batch of displays coming through the end of 2020 will be for an iPad Pro. Apple's mini-l-D dies will be mass-produced in Q4 2020, but due to yield issues related to the production process of display module materials, the Q4 display shipments have been revised down by 50% to only 300 to 400,000. We believe that the mini-LED display in Q4-2020 will be used for the new iPad Pro. Quo has long predicted.

Starting point is 00:09:32 that a high-end 12.9-inch iPad Pro would likely be Apple's first mini-l-D product, end quote. You might have heard that Tesla and Elon Musk held a battery day yesterday. Here's what that was all about, quoting CNBC. During the battery day portion of the presentation, Tesla confirmed that it has designed and is producing its own battery cells at a facility in Fremont as part of its quest to make its cars affordable to a mainstream buyer. In general, the batteries of a Tesla, which contain thousands of cells, are the most expensive part of the car. Tesla's senior vice president of power train and energy engineering, Drew Baglino, described how the company's new cells, dubbed 4680, are larger and simpler to make than the 2170 cylindrical battery cells it purchases from Panasonic and other suppliers today.

Starting point is 00:10:28 A Tesla battery pack would require fewer cells with the new shape and design. Baglino said the larger cells, along with other manufacturing and design changes underway at Tesla, would eventually improve the range of its cars by more than 50 percent, end quote. It would also make them more affordable, and thus, as he is wont to do, Elon Musk also made headlines with some, shall we say, bold and aggressive predictions, as per usual. How about potentially, someday, a Tesla Model S that would only cost about 25,000 bucks, quoting CNN. After reviewing improvements in Tesla's own battery designs and manufacturing advancements that could result in huge reductions in battery costs, Musk promised a $25,000 Tesla electric car

Starting point is 00:11:14 that would be available in about three years. That would be much cheaper than any car Tesla has made so far. Musk has a history of sometimes under-delivering on promises or not even delivering at all. Years ago, Tesla promised a $35,000 electric car, the Tesla Model 3, but even then the model 3 was only available at that price for a short time. Musk also announced on Tuesday that the $25,000 car would be capable of driving fully autonomously, a difficult feat because the sensors and other equipment needed for even partly autonomous driving are expensive. And even as he touted the company's ambitious future plans, he admitted that the company's fully autonomous driving software experienced unforeseen challenges, prompting a fundamental rewrite of, quote, the entire

Starting point is 00:11:59 software stack, though he did not detail when that rewrite occurred, end quote. Is there anything the story's conceit can't be applied to? Pinterest is joining the story's bandwagon by launching story pins, which combine multiple pages of images, videos, voiceover, and overlay text, as well as a bunch of other tools for creators, quoting TechCrunch. We wrote about story pins back in June, and apparently various versions of the format have been in the work since last year. But the company is only officially launching storypins in beta today, along with a number of other tools designed to help creators on the platform. Asked yesterday how

Starting point is 00:12:41 storypins differ from the stories we'd seen on Snapchat, Instagram, or any other social media platform. Pinterest's head of content creator and home feed product, David Temple told reporters that Pinterest approach is different in a few key ways. Quote, story features on other platforms are designed to show you what people are doing, Temple said. Story pins are designed to show you how people are trying new ideas and new products. That means the features and intent are dramatically different, end quote. For one thing, he noted that they're not ephemeral, meaning that they don't disappear after a set period of time and can still be surfaced via search or other discovery mechanisms. Quote, the best ideas and story pins remain relevant for months, end quote.

Starting point is 00:13:22 In addition, the main interaction with a story pin, as with other forms of content on Pinterest, is to save it rather than a simple like button. And they can include lists of of the necessary supplies or ingredients. All of this, Temple argued, tilts storypins towards inspiration, utility, and a general positive tone, end quote. And finally today, I think we've talked along these lines before, but 1-0 takes a look at how Spotify's UX decisions have essentially led to the growth of adjective-laden general musical artist names. Basically, I'm describing a kind of SEO spam for music. Quote, You've probably never heard of them, but relaxing music therapy is an artist that has a pretty

Starting point is 00:14:11 damn successful musical career, at least on Spotify. This artist, in quotes, has more than 500,000 monthly listeners on the platform, all thanks to one simple trick, optimizing their name to show up prominently in Spotify search results. Spotify is full of quote-unquote artists like this, pro-sound effects library, on hold music, yoga, jazz music therapy for cats, and natural white noise, best nature sounds for sleeping, stress relief, relaxation, sound therapy. That's the entire artist's name. It's quite a mouthful. While the platform pays only in the neighborhood of a third of a penny per stream, if you're not Drake, it boasts more than a quarter billion active users. So if your music ranks highly for a search term,

Starting point is 00:14:57 you can accumulate enough listens to steadily make hundreds, in some cases, thousands of dollars a month with minimal effort. The key to success is to find a phony artist name that Spotify users are likely to type into search, like relaxing music therapy. Some of these artists use names inspired by an adjective commonly used to describe music. Others name themselves after popular uses for certain kinds of music, well-known generic tunes like children's rhymes or entire music genres. Often these creators optimize further by titling tracks and albums with related words and re-uploading the same songs add nauseam, which can look especially absurd when filtering to see just a single tune. Relaxing Music Therapy, for instance, has uploaded the track, stream in the forest with rain

Starting point is 00:15:43 616 times to date, end quote. The piece goes on to outline sort of how this musical SEO works in practice. The piece made me realize that I have actually interacted with one of these quote-unquote artists myself. The artist known on Spotify as Happy Birthday. Happy Birthday has uploaded hundreds and hundreds of versions of the birthday song in various styles like EDM and acoustic. They get roughly 140,000 monthly listens. And I realize that at the last children's birthday party, we hosted when I searched for Happy Birthday, I probably got them. That's all for today. Talk to you tomorrow.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 09/23 – Microsoft “Exclusively” Licenses GPT-3

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