FT: “Scientists have raised the alarm about the potentially existential threat of “mirror life” — manufactured bacteria that are structural reflections of natural microbes and could overwhelm the defences of people, other animals and plants. An international group of almost 40 researchers, including two Nobel laureates, warned on Thursday that such synthetic organisms might “pose unprecedented and largely overlooked risks to much of existing life”. The stark message highlights how advances in synthetic biology that have helped drive big health breakthroughs could one day have the capacity to generate deadly new organisms by accident or design.”
WSJ: “Companies that succeed with modern generative AI tools…or offerings from a raft of new startups…are discovering that in order to get real value from AI, they have to organize their data in ways they might not have before. And this isn’t a one-and-done effort. To keep their shiny new AIs up-to-date, the information they feed them must be kept constantly updated—creating more work for humans…Every company I talked with mentioned that to get real value out of their shiny new generative AI systems—no matter the application—they needed to overhaul or double down on their strategy for feeding it the kind of data that today’s AI excels at processing—“unstructured” data. About 90% of the data most companies have is this kind of data—not numerical, not in a spreadsheet, but in the form of documents, emails, manuals, customer-service chats, contracts and the like. And the real value of today’s generative AI for companies is in unlocking it. Think of it as centralizing all the know-how that is typically spread out across the brains and storage accounts of all the humans in an organization. Making all of that information and knowledge available to everyone else in an organization has long been the dream of corporate IT—and generative AI can get companies one step closer to it.”
Jaspreet Bindra: “The pre-internet customer, who I call the industrial customer, gave way to the digital customer as Instagram, Google and other apps started dominating their lives. Now the digital customer will give way to the AI customer, as ChatGPT and other AI tools and agents inveigle themselves into our lives. The industrial customer had limited and standardized choice, while the digital one reckoned with the abundant variety that Amazon threw open. The AI customer’s choice will be infinite and hyper-personalized, as agents scour the internet to find what she wants based on her innate preferences. Interaction with products was transactional and local for the industrial customer, while it’s social and omnichannel for the digital one; for the AI customer, chatbots will make this interaction conversational (as with another human) and digitally immersive as companies like Meta infuse AI into our visual and tactile environments.”
WSJ: “Madison Avenue has been rapidly changing for over a decade, but the threats to an industry once centered on creatives have never been so great. Tech giants control more than half of the $1 trillion ad market, and quants armed with reams of data direct ad buying. Now, generative artificial intelligence is sending shock waves through the marketing world, promising to create and personalize ads cheaper and faster than ever.”
Business Standard has a review of Kevin Rudd’s book “On Xi Jinping”: “The major theme of the book is that Xi has abandoned Deng Xiaoping’s dictum to “hide the strength, and bide the time”. Under Xi, China is ready to flex its muscles. The primary argument is that China under Xi is moving left on the economy and right on foreign policy. The author calls this “Xi’s Marxist Nationalism”. The clampdown on the private sector has been the norm under Xi, who perceives its existence as an aberration to CPC tenets. The trend is towards the “contraction of the private sphere and expansion of the public sphere controlled by the party”. When it comes to domestic policy, the posturing is closely dependent on nationalism. This is apparent with the rise of “wolf warrior” diplomacy. These two trends are crucial because Xi does not want the Chinese state to become a challenger to the “political and operational primacy of a Leninist Party”. The Leninist Party is the soul of China and being “red’ is mandatory. No surprises that Xi has executed the longest anti-corruption drive in the CPC’s history, with the projected goal of preserving the party’s sanctity.”
