AI is Everywhere for Marketing

In a move to ensure the US grabs and maintains lead in critical CHIP manufacturing the Biden administration has finalized 6.5 billion dollar in grants to TSMC.

Gemini-Exp-1114 tops the rankings in math, image processing, and creative writing, based on 6,000+ community evaluations, while securing third place in coding tasks.

NASA and Microsoft unveiled Earth Copilot, an AI that answers simple questions about satellite data.

OpenAI has noted that Chatgpt for MacOs desktop can now read code in VSCode and Xcode.

Windsurf by Codium could be the best AI coding tool out there. At the present moment I use Vercel’s Vo as my coding copilot, but I have tested Windsurf just briefly and the workflow and the understanding of code is far advanced from Vo and Aider - which is my second choice for AI coding assistance.

Andrew Ng and DeepLearning AI have created a course on how to integrate and build AI LLMs with guardrails already built into the system. The course is free to join. This is part of the Guardrails.ai OSS platform.

I found an interesting read on how a group of devs made a Ruby method 200X faster. I was a Ruby developer early in my tech career so I always find Ruby code and related articles interesting.

A recent article on the Spectrum.ieee webiste discusses how the argument between WordPress and WPEngine are souring many OSS devs on working in the space. It is important to keep in mind also that how OSS is licensed can be important to developer satisfaction and workload. I cover that briefly in this article.

With performance plateauing OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI groups are finding it difficult to make rapid improvements in their AI system’s performance.

Last week, IBM teamed up with Sustainable Energy for All to launch two amazing AI-powered tools designed to help cities and communities worldwide become more sustainable.

Here’s the scoop: These tools are part of IBM’s pro-bono Sustainability Accelerator, and they’re specifically aimed at supporting developing regions around the globe.

The first tool, Open Building Insights (OBI), takes data like building height, size, location, electricity status, and consumption, and turns it into a visual map. This helps developers and governments understand and meet the growing energy needs of their people.

The second tool, Modeling Urban Growth (MUG), is an open-source model that uses demographic, geographical, structural, and satellite data to predict where cities will grow. This allows developers and governments to plan for future urbanization and get clean energy infrastructure ready ahead of time.

Damilola Ogunbiyi, the CEO and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All, and Co-Chair of UN-Energy, had this to say: “The Open Building Insights (OBI) Tool … will help energy planners overcome critical data gap challenges to inform energy access and energy transition interventions, and better deliver results for those most in need.”

Pretty cool, right? These tools are now available to everyone, so let’s hope they make a big difference!

Recent Notes on How far AI has come for Marketing Teams

AI is now an everyday part of life for many—if not most—of us, whether you use it to generate content ideas, to parse data, or to do… something else.

Max Bernstein recently dug deeply into how teams are using it, and what the trends mean for marketing. And his findings are… fascinating.

Let’s look at the numbers: 42% of marketers use AI weekly for writing, 40% for social media content, and 46% for marketing copy.

And 40% of higher-ups say they are very supportive of AI usage. 55% claim their teams are more productive.

Now for the big question: Is AI really a good thing?

So far, just over 34% are seeing “significant improvements” in their marketing results, so it seems the best way to use AI is to improve your human-ness, not replace it.

For example, the 68% who treat AI like an intern, not a boss, are seeing real ROI. Interesting.

To shift gears a bit: We know AI can churn out a lot of content.

But is that necessary for a successful business?

Max says no: The best teams produce 27% less content but see 41% better results.

And 88% of successful teams update old content rather than making new stuff.

Good news if you like stories: 83% of high-performing content teams are investing in original reporting and research. Storytelling - 1, clickbait - 0.

So while AI-generated content is becoming more common, human-created content is becoming more valuable. At least for now…