Five Things Tech: Amazon, SAM, Tech Workers, Russian Tech Industry, Twitter
Read this to appear smart this evening at the dinner table!
Big Tech is an interesting thing to watch right now. Everybody scrambles to get ahead on AI, meanwhile Twitter is afraid of Substack and while Substack launches Notes, Twitter offers its users their own version of paid content. Elsewhere, the Uber CEO for the first time in six years finally sat in a car and tried the software by himself, which has its shortcomings. And then there is Italy going against OpenAI due to data privacy concerns and the EU will probably also find a way to deal with this issue in a way that will put Europe behind in the development of AI.
On a totally different subject, Germany is taking a big leap forward and is shutting down the remaining three nuclear power plants today. Nothing will happen, although conservative pundits already talk about Germany running out of energy. Instead, lots more solar and wind will be used in the future. We’re moving into a greener and safer future.
Speaking of which, my company NMA has been tasked with getting greentech startups to come to Hamburg and establish a presence here. If you run a greentech startup, apply now! If not, tell your friends who do!
Amazon Is Joining the Generative AI Race
Amazon is doing things differently, throwing in their cloud services and offering access to two different Large Language Models. So while OpenAI and Microsoft on the one side and Google on the other side are battling it out, Amazon is using AWS to provide infrastructure to all those companies out there building specific solutions in the AI space. (Wired)
Meta’s New AI Can Identify and Remove Objects in Images
It seems that in these past weeks nobody wants to be seen as left behind, so Meta just showed of their new SAM technology, which looks pretty amazing. Image manipulation will drastically change with this tech, which will redefine lots of jobs in agencies and on Fiver. (Singularity Hub)
These Tech Workers Say They Were Hired to Do Nothing
Big Tech just made too much money in the last decade. This development was not healthy, neither for the companies hiring people just to increase headcount (and to make it harder for competition to hire people), nor the people who got well-paid jobs where they weren’t productive. (WSJ)
How Russia killed its tech industry
It is estimated that more than 10% of the people working in the Russian tech industry have left the country after the Russion invasion in Ukraine. I’m curious how many new startups outside of Russia will be started by these talented people. (Technology Review)
Twitter Is Broken. Thanks, Elon.
I’ve been on Twitter since the beginning. I liked it a lot for more than a decade, but it had lost its appeal long before Elon Musk took over. Now I just feel sorry about the sad state of Twitter. (New York Times)
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