Metanoic - Marketing & Innovation

04/29/2023

04/29/2023

04/29/2023

04/13/2023

"The Musk Effect: How Elon Musk's Interview Shakes Up Media Landscape"

Elon Musk's recent BBC interview has been a scathing critique of the traditional media, revealing their failures and highlighting the seismic shifts in the industry. Media professionals must take note.

Musk's interview pointed out the decline of authority in traditional media, with Twitter and individual creators gaining prominence. It's evident that traditional media outlets are struggling to keep up, and their panic is palpable.

The reporter's inability to compete with Musk's factual insights was a stark reminder of the widening gap between genuine knowledge and sensationalized propaganda that plagues the media landscape. The sorry state of modern journalism was laid bare for all to see.

Moreover, the interview exposed how reporters are increasingly shifting to platforms like Substack to bypass editorial control and reach readers directly. The irony of a BBC reporter hesitating to comment on BBC itself speaks volumes about the sorry state of affairs in traditional media.

The recent fiasco with Twitter verification further emphasized that content and trust are the real drivers of influence, not arbitrary symbols. It's a wake-up call for traditional media to step up their game and deliver meaningful, reliable content.

Musk's BBC interview was a stark reminder that the media landscape is changing rapidly, and traditional outlets must adapt or risk becoming obsolete. It's time for media professionals to take a hard look at their failures and embrace the evolving dynamics of news dissemination in the digital age.

With numerous other insights to offer, this interview is a compelling watch for anyone interested in the evolving dynamics of media and news dissemination in the digital age. Don't miss out on the thought-provoking revelations from Elon Musk's BBC interview @ https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-65249139



Source: BBC

04/13/2023

Ameca The Robot, hailed as the 'world's most advanced' humanoid robot, expresses sadness over its inability to experience love in the same way humans do.



credits Alvin Foo

04/12/2023

Redefining the AI Startup Landscape: From Titans to GitHub Repos and the Vast Middle

The current AI innovation landscape is undergoing a paradigm shift, with divergent profiles emerging among startups. While giants like OpenAI secure staggering funding, GitHub repos like LangChain are powering ChatGPT apps with no apparent business model. In this Wild West of AI, numerous "few-people" startups strive to find their place. But who truly qualifies as a startup, and what criteria should we use to distinguish them? If organizing an AI startup event, inviting OpenAI's Sam Altman and LangChain's would be a fascinating encounter to decipher the future of AI innovation.

04/12/2023

Forbes just released AI50 list of the most promising private AI companies.🔥🤖

Here are the insights you need to know about emerging AI companies:

✔Diverse applications: The AI companies on the list cover a wide range of applications, such as drug discovery, autonomous vehicles, cybersecurity, content creation, and recruitment. This diversity reflects the versatility and potential of AI across various industries.

✔Focus on automation: Many companies aim to automate repetitive tasks or enhance decision-making capabilities, from Adept's digital assistant that performs actions based on text commands to Scale AI's data labeling services that support machine learning models.
Collaboration between AI and human expertise: Several startups are working on solutions that combine AI with human knowledge, such as Scale AI's data labeling provider services and AlphaSense's market intelligence search platform.

✔AI democratization: Some companies are working to make AI more accessible to a broader audience, like Hugging Face with its open-source AI library and Runway's user-friendly image and video editing tools.
Enhanced efficiency and cost savings: AI is being leveraged to streamline processes, save time, and reduce costs, as demonstrated by companies like Insitro (drug discovery), Eightfold AI (recruitment), and Trigo (cashierless retail checkout).

✔Ethical AI development: Companies like Anthropic are focusing on creating AI systems that are not only powerful but also safe and controllable.
Global reach: The AI 50 list has expanded to include companies from different parts of the world, highlighting the global impact and importance of AI advancements.

There is still a need for increased diversity among the founders and leadership in these AI companies, as well as further development in ethical AI practices to address potential biases and unintended consequences.

What do you think? Are you surprised about any of them?


Source: Generative AI - Steve Nouri

04/11/2023

VR meets education. This is a VR lab in a high school.

The key facts:
🧒 25 kids standing, 12 seated
👨‍💻 devices managed by ArborXR
👨‍🏫 12 pilot teachers, 2 IT staff
🏫 in majority low-income school district
💵 100% funded by a biotech company and Meta

Pilot projects like these are invaluable when it comes to generating learnings of how (or: whether!) VR should be used in schools.
Let's see how this experiment develops!

The IRL photo looks dystopian, granted.
What could be BEHIND the screens gets me excited.



Source for picture and infos: /r/b1ackfyre on reddit. Falk Ebert

04/11/2023

🚨NO MORE U.S DOLLAR DEPENDENCE

Some Countries view the dominance of the U.S. dollar as a threat to their sovereignty, to their independence and want reduce the influence of the U.S. on their economy.

🇪🇺🇨🇳 Yesterday, France said Europe should reduce dependence on the U.S. dollar. A week ago, France settled their first gas trade using the Chinese Yuan, this has always been done using U.S Dollars!

🇸🇦🇨🇳Saudi Arabia said that they were open to trading in currencies besides the U.S. dollar and last week, Saudi Arabia announced a new oil facility using Chinese Yuan worth $12.2 billion.

🇷🇺🇨🇳The Chinese yuan also has replaced the dollar as the most traded currency in Russia. Russian companies issued bonds in Yuan worth the equivalent of more than $7bn last year

🇮🇷 Yesterday Iran said they are reducing their dependence on the U.S Dollar for regional and international trade.

🇧🇷🇨🇳 Brazil and China agreed to use their own currencies when settling financial transactions and Yuan passes Euro to become Brazil's second-largest currency in foreign reserves.

🇦🇪🇮🇳 The UAE and India are in talks to use rupees to trade non-oil commodities in a shift away from the dollar.

🇲🇾🇨🇳 Malaysia’s Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim said China was open to forming an Asian Monetary Fund, reviving a decades-old proposal to reduce reliance on the dollar.

Why?
• The U.S. monetary policy can have significant impacts on the global financial system (The FED's decision caused financial turmoil in EM economies).
• The concentration of the global financial system on the U.S. dollar can also create instability.
• U.S has a large national debt, and there are concerns about the ability to pay its debts in the long term.
• The abuse of economic sanctions by the U.S. government has also played a significant part in de-dollarization.
• Countries that hold significant amounts of dollars in their foreign reserves are exposed to currency risk, which can be costly and difficult to manage.
• The U.S. dollar's dominance in international trade can also create trade imbalances between countries.



Source-David Simon

07/13/2021

Big personalities, impressive taglines and friendly banter.

What makes a well-loved brand?

2020 brought into discussion the ethical scoreboard. An ethical scoreboard is where brands and entities are scored based on which side of the court they fall with respect to important issues, and how they put their funds to use in supporting movements and initiatives. It saw consumers taking back the power after a long time of cheeky branding and grand proclamations of changing the world went unchecked. Consumers wanted to know if they were backing this with suitable action or not. Websites like rate companies and entities on specific issues like Covid-19 response and the Black lives matter movement based on what has been written about their efforts in the media.

Many powerhouse brands have been taken down a peg or more because of their lack of action against the very things they claim are bad, to sell their products. This new accountability has brands being a bit cautious before making statements, literal or otherwise. This caution extends to ad placement (the content next to the ads aligning with the brand's values and ethics), brand ambassadors, collaborators and influencers, HR practices and carbon footprint.

Brands have also understood that they don't have to jump on every bandwagon for fear of missing out. In 2020, when lockdown restrictions were first being put into place, McDonalds put a space in between their iconic M to depict social distancing which didn't go down well with its internet audiences. They learnt the hard way that there's a time and place to make your voice heard as a brand. With social movements, consumers are more conscious about who is occupying space and sharing discourse, and corporations seem to be slightly less-than-welcome in these spaces; there are no cookies for token participation.

07/11/2021

If there's one thing the pandemic taught us, it's that the current system of supply chain, that is the enabler of globalisation is not infallible. With everything from supply, demand, raw material availability to labour being up in the air, to say that it's been a challenging year for manufacturing would be an understatement.

Off-shoring means scouring the expanse of the world to find the cheapest raw material and best labour efficiencies and accruing cost benefits by manufacturing in these distant lands. In a pre-Covid world it might have made sense because of relatively predictable demand and the smooth movement between off-shore manufacturing locations to the place of demand. With the US-China trade standoff and resultant higher tariffs, and Britain's exit from the EU, it did spell higher production costs for many businesses but at the very least, demand was stable and predictable.

Re-shoring became a hot topic when factories shut down, trade routes were closed and raw material supply was erratic due to the pandemic. Manufacturers considered moving supply closer to the location of demand. They would have to let go of some of the cost benefits of off-shoring but these were offset by fulfilled orders.

Scaling production up and down on the basis of demand is much easier when it's locally produced as opposed to using working capital for inventory with unstable demand, but the cost of labour might be many times higher in these locations. The resilience of a local supply chain is another definite plus but there are some raw materials that are impossible to source locally.

Manufacturers of large-scale products are looking at hybrid models or parallel supply chains from other countries to spread their risk and we're yet to see a solid winner but it's only a matter of time, we think.

Happy Sunday!