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Author: Bonnie

Did Video Just Kill the Radio Star – Again?

Did Video Just Kill the Radio Star – Again?

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Image by Pikurā from Pixabay

Ok, the proverbial radio star, this time around. When the once iconic MTV first launch, the first video the network aired was the Buggles’ Video Killed the Radio Star.

And it did. That was then and this is now, and as we often warn, no one stays on top forever. Now we’re witnessing the demise of cable in favor of streaming services et al, and where is this leading?

“There was a time, not long ago, when Americans — regardless of region, class, or politics — shared a common cultural foundation,” said The American Spectator in this must-read: Gen Z Isn’t Just Online — They’re Living in Parallel Realities. “From the Saturday morning cartoons children watched to the nightly news programs adults relied on, mainstream culture was both a mirror and a glue: it reflected our values while keeping us tethered to the same national experience. That era is over. Read More...

The Founder’s Mid-Summer Must-Do List

The Founder’s Mid-Summer Must-Do List

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Photo by Ksenia Makagonova on Unsplash

It’s roughly midsummer. Investment deals are still being closed, but they generally tend to slow down or in many cases, take a bit longer in summer, as investors unplug a bit for the season, or at least spend less time vetting deals. They like to kick back, too: travel, spend time with their friends and/or families and generally spend more time minding their SPFs than the latest pitch deck that just came to them over the proverbial transom.

We host an Investor Insights – online – roughly every two weeks, with a different investor each time and have done for years. You’d be surprised at the number of founders who have gotten funded by investors they’ve met at this event, which we always post in our free newsletter.

Andrew Ackerman spoke at a recent Online Investor Insights, and shared great information, as the investors we host often do, each one imparting different advice from a unique perspective – and all valid. In fact, Ackerman, who has sat on both sides of the table as both a founder and an investor, recently published a book entitled The Entrepreneur’s Odyssey (25% off discount code: TEO25) which spells out what every founder needs to know. Read More...

Summertime – and the Livin’ Ain’t as Easy as It Was

Summertime – and the Livin’ Ain’t as Easy as It Was

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Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay

It’s summer in our part of the world, where we were recently hit with MAJOR heat waves, and before you go all global warming, do remember that it’s summer. It’s meant to be hot.

The week of July 4th  is the biggest vacation week of the year, and just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water, Jaws is making a big-screen comeback in honor of the movie’s 50th anniversary! Since its release, we have a lot more to fear from the water than just sharks:

Many of you are or will be taking vacations right about now, hitting the beaches or points unknown, and considering the heat, let’s get into the water: you’ll no doubt be carrying a bottle of the stuff – staying hydrated is important – and may even pick up one or several more along the way. Read More...

AI and the Long Con

AI and the Long Con

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Image by Roland Steinmann from Pixabay

If you believe the hype, AIs are going to make humans obsolete in less than half a decade. Tick, tick, tick.

Or so they say.

If you scan the articles on LinkedIn these days, you might have noticed that most of them have been run through the LLM mill and are frankly crap, bereft of real-world context, for the most part, and lacking the depth and passion that only carbon-based beings can provide. Read More...

The Rabbit Hole of No Return?

The Rabbit Hole of No Return?

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Image by Leo from Pixabay

While we might personally believe that it’s a bit nuts to pour your heart and soul out to AIs, people do just that and this just in: “A small but growing number of users of artificial intelligence engines like ChatGPT are developing psychotic delusions from their conversations with the services,” former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson warned.

“People claimed a range of discoveries: A.I. spiritual awakenings, cognitive weapons, a plan by tech billionaires to end human civilization so they can have the planet to themselves. But in each case, the person had been persuaded that ChatGPT had revealed a profound and world-altering truth,” the New York Times reported.

“Eliezer Yudkowsky, a decision theorist and an author of a forthcoming book, “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman A.I. Would Kill Us All,”… said OpenAI might have primed ChatGPT to entertain the delusions of users by optimizing its chatbot for “engagement” — creating conversations that keep a user hooked. Read More...

The Deep State of Tech

The Deep State of Tech

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Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

Last week was Tech Week in New York and since AI is the fastest growing technology in human history, of course the calendar of events was all AI, all the time. We watched as audiences listened with rapt attention to speakers as they expounded upon the world of difference that various AI technologies and their applications would make to the human condition.

Once again, we will remind you that what man cannot remember he is doomed to repeat. Unfortunately, with AI in the mix, it will be repeated on steroids.

When the Age of Social dawned and Facebook, Google and the likes were establishing their beachheads, we warned back then that these were not mere platforms but rather nation-states with larger populations than any single country on the planet. Or even continent, for that matter. Those platforms are now AI-enabled – more and more so every day – and it seems that there’s no escaping that matrix. Read More...

The NYCs of Networking

The NYCs of Networking

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Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash. Note to self: when your in a group of people, put your phone on hold

Tech Week is upon us here in New York City – and coming to other cities, some possibly near you. SF, LA, Miami are in the works and other cities under discussion, including small tech hubs since, during the lockdowns, the tech sector became something of a diaspora, and many founders and investors discovered something that’s not always available in larger metropolises – a quality of life – and they’re not going back.

They’re coming in from all over the world for Tech Week, and there are some rules of thumb that apply to every large gathering like this, that all founders should know.

To give you an idea of the breadth and scope of the NYC event, here’s the full calendar and it is decentralized in terms of the location, so events are all over town and many concurrent. Choose wisely and pace yourself, and the rules that apply to NY Tech Week are the same for SXSW and any expo, sprawling or not. Read More...

Does AI Have an Agenda?

Does AI Have an Agenda?

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

It certainly seems to, although it is a technology created by humans.* But given, say, Meta’s manipulation of people’s emotions that was revealed by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen (and which we reported on), the proverbial men behind the curtain do appear to have one, and the question is, given the past behavior of the tech bros, will AI be used for good instead of evil during this next iteration of tech?

Ah, it’s that old “Those Who Cannot Remember the Past Are Condemned To Repeat It” George Santayana thing again and if there’s one thing we cannot shrink from doing, it’s connecting dots.

First up, “A lawyer representing Anthropic admitted to using an erroneous citation created by the company’s Claude AI chatbot in its ongoing legal battle with music publishers, according to a filing made in a Northern California court,” TechCrunch reported. Read More...

The Dirt on Startup Essentials

The Dirt on Startup Essentials

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Image by Richard Duijnstee from Pixabay

After a long, cold winter, it seems that suddenly it’s Spring when, as ee cummings wrote, “the world is puddle-wonderful,” although considering all the rain we had here on the East Coast last week, negotiating the puddles at every street corner was not so wonderful, unless you were wearing waders.

And there’s more on the way. Isn’t rain supposed to be an April thing?

But as those of us who’ve been circling the sun for a few years now well know, the sunshine always does return and once again, all is right with the world and as we also know, into every life a little rain must fall and that’s what helps to turn the grass green and what founder or investor doesn’t want to suddenly find an abundance of green in his or her life? Read More...

Will the Real Slim Shady Please Stand Up

Will the Real Slim Shady Please Stand Up

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Image by gt39 from Pixabay

Thank you, Eminem, and who’d have thought and how could you tell?

The multitude of falsehoods and over-promises of AI aside (Instagram’s AI Chatbots Lie About Being Licensed Therapists), Deep Fakes, that other wonderful outcome that AI hath wrought, is fast becoming a huge problem thanks to the improvements in AI. We’re currently witnessing The Rise of AI-Powered Deepfake Scams and as CNN  reported, “Finance worker pays out $25 million after video call with deepfake ‘chief financial officer.’”

Of course, AI savior, Sam Altman, has a solution: capture the digital identity of, well, every human on the planet.  He first rolled out his orb (nee World Orb) iris scanner in 2023 to create a unique digital identity as proof of being human, which it seems “More than 12 million people have already verified their identity using Orbs, which are available and free to use in more than 20 countries,” said CNN. Not a huge number considering the billions of people on the planet, what to speak of the fact that there are those who are “worried the project could centralize too much power under Altman, who already has an outsized role in what’s expected to be a revolutionary tech transformation.” Read More...