Innovation Brief: YouTube, Amazon, & Meta
Bob Dylan said it best, “the times, they are a-changin.” College students are graduating and booing every commencement speaker who utters the word “AI.” Google had its annual I/O conference and announced approximately a hundred new products that they hope will change the face of AI. Publicis acquired the Switzerland of adtech (LiveRamp) and wants to change how major advertising agencies operate. And we’re not even covering any of these stories this week!
On that note, here are the stories in The Brief we feel are diamonds in the rough: YouTube expands AI likeness detection, Amazon can now deliver within 30 minutes, and Meta Ray Ban smart glasses lets users write messages by tracing words in the air.
The theme this week is a mix of acceleration and attention. How can we all even keep up with all these technological advances and massive changes that are thrust upon us at breakneck speeds?! The metaphor that comes to mind is swimming. Major caveat: I can’t really swim IRL, so take this with a huge grain of salt (and if you ever see me in open water, please call for help).
On with the metaphor! If you decide to completely be paralyzed by it all and do nothing, you’ll sink and drown. If you try to swim as fast as you can and exert all your energy (and brainpower) to comprehend it all, you’ll gas out and drown. But if you keep a steady, mindful pace and choose when to go with, and against, the current…you’ll keep moving forward. That’s my advice for this week; change is inevitable and out of your control, how you react to all that change is up to you. For all the things AI may or may not take away from us, the ability to think our own thoughts is off the table. Whether you want to use that time for reflection or rumination is completely up to you.