Aigiarism & EVs. A Rough Guide To 2023.

™s all you need to know about: 2023

Matt Armitage:

It’s weird to think this is: 2023

• I think we should have stopped counting years in 2019.

• They’ve all been pretty terrible since then.

we’ve got a rough guide to: 2023

• Does anyone remember the rough guides? Or the Lonely Planets?

• Guidebooks that were a pre-Internet kind of travel crowdsourcing.

• Books that were put together by backpackers and travellers and frequently updated.

• So that you could be reasonably sure that the hostels and bars and homestays were still there.

• That the reviews were accurate.

• I say bars – half the time the main place to hang out would be listed as whatever tourist reggae bar existed in that city.

• Which tells you more about the writers than the cultures they visited.

• But yeah, are rough guides still a thing?

Richard Bradbury: replies

Matt Armitage:

• It’s probably not interesting but in London I worked for a record company that made companion music CDs for the Rough Guide travel books.

• So there are two or three of them where I’m thanked for my largely non-existent contribution to those CDs.

• A couple of years ago I’d have said that was irrelevant, but books and CDs are making a comeback.

• Does that make me a relevant relic?

• Anyway, a lot of those CDs are on Spotify etc. They still make great introductions to music from different genres or places in the world.

• I recommend the psychedelic Cambodia CD, which has nothing to do with me.

• I think it was put together years after I left.

• It’s just a great collection of music.

what does our Rough Guide to: 2023

• Not exactly predictions, because we don’t make those anymore.

• It’s just too dangerous.

• For all we know, someone will type lethal COVID variant into ChatGPT or one of the image generating Ais.

• And the magic of technology will make it real and lay the world to waste.

• So, we’ll have a look at some of the things we’re likely to see over the next 12 months.

• But we’ll keep the conjecture about how they pan out to ourselves.

Richard Bradbury: Is that your way of saying we’re not talking about Twitter?

Matt Armitage:

• No. But we will touch on electric cars, though not specifically Tesla.

• We’re still seeing the valuation of the company slipping, even as it ships more cars.

• Weirdly, I was chatting about classical definitions of GDP with some friends a couple of days ago,

• That’s a warning to never accept an invitation to coffee from me. You’ll be bored.

• With a lot of tech companies we’re kind of seeing an anti-GDP happening.

• Their market value slipping as their output, and in some cases revenue, increases.

• But that’s not where we’re heading today.

• First off, I went to talk about aigiarism.

Richard Bradbury: You mean plagiarism?

Matt Armitage:

• Yes and no. Aigiarism is a form of plagiarism but it’s specific to AI.

• One of the stories we mentioned last December if I remember right,

• was that Stack, a kind of how-to site for coders,

• Was stopping people from posting code and answers to questions created by ChatGPT.

• There are a few reasons for this. Partly, because it’s incredibly easy.

• So one person could start contributing hundreds or thousands of answers.

• None of which they necessarily have any real idea about.

• Nobody likes gaming the system – especially in open communities.

• But the larger reason is accuracy – Stack’s moderators found that the answers generated by ChatGPT

• In the AI community, some people are calling them hallucinations.

• Which, as we’ve mentioned before, others in the community are objecting to.

• Because hallucinating is a form of anthropomorphising.

• It suggests the machines are sentient or conscious.

• Which, obviously, they aren’t.

• But that brings us back around to that idea of plagiarism…

Richard Bradbury: Yes, how would you tell that the Q&A came from ChatGPT?

Matt Armitage:

• Exactly. And this isn’t just an issue for Stack Overflow.

• This is about school and college papers.

• Or disinformation - people using the machine to flood social media platforms with bot content to hide, disguise or fabricate information.

• People getting the machine to do work they’re being paid to do.

• That last one is just smart as far as I’m concerned.

• So we have this issue of aigiarism.

• I guess it’s a new word for deep fake in a sense.

• The machine tricking us into thinking that a product, or an image, or a piece of content.

• Was created by a person.

• On the subject of Deep fakes – and I add a disclaimer here because my sister in law is involved in the show.

• A new british comedy series called Deep Fake Neighbour Wars starts streaming at the end of the month.

• It pretends to be a reality show starring a host of celebs who all live near one another and hate each other.

• I think you get the reality show premise. But the celebs are all deep fake video AI creations with impressionists doing the voices.

• So, check that out.

Richard Bradbury: But that’s not aigiarism…

Matt Armitage:

• No, it isn’t because it’s being labelled and promoted as a spoof and satire.

• You aren’t supposed to believe that it’s Matthew Mc or Idris Elba.

• So back to aigiarism – I mentioned briefly that OpenAI is coming up with a method – a kind of reverse watermarking –

• To detect whether text has been created by their system.

• Now, I may have misunderstood this. But it essentially works by building patterns into the original text.

• Linguistically, they would be undetectable or unnoticed by the average reader.

• But for anyone who was looking for evidence that it was machine-generated, the patterns would be there.

• At a lecture at University of Texas, Scott Aaronson, a guest researcher at OpenAI,

• said that the new tweaks should be able to predict from just a few hundred words if something was generated by the machine.

• Whether or not someone can game that recipe, change it sufficiently that the pattern recognition doesn’t register.

• I don’t know. But maybe that defeats the point of ChatGPT for most people.

• That the effort of making the cheat look real is too much work for cheaters.

d as this is a rough guide to: 2023

Matt Armitage:

• Aigiarism is a cute word, true.

• I think: 2023

• Now, I know people will be shouting at their screens saying it already is you idiot.

• We currently have lots of sort of, slightly useful AI.

• The really mainstream stuff is mostly invisible to us. We see its results rather than its actions.

• So, the algorithms in financial systems.

• In retail platforms. In aggregating information.

• Or controlling what we see on our newsfeeds.

• The consumer facing stuff like Siri and Alexa is sometimes helpful but mostly still very limited in scope or usefulness.

• I think this year is where we see that change.

• Where the machines we command with our voices start to parse our commands more accurately.

• But also, linking those abilities to machine voices.

• Machines that can research subjects for you, summarise the results and read them to you.

• Don’t forget, one of the more underrated things ChatGPT can do for you is sub-edit.

• To help you write more clearly and accurately.

Richard Bradbury: It’s formulaic but it doesn’t really matter?

Matt Armitage:

• In most instances that’s fine.

• Need to create signage for use around the office or factory.

• ChatGPT. Boom. Done. Print.

• I needed something put quickly into a video storyboard format – I put the notes and script into the machine and it spat it out.

• It wasn’t ready for use – I spent maybe half an hour or an hour tidying it up.

• But that saved me hours.

• So think how it will change the quality of conversations with chatbots.

• I fully realise how weird that is to say. Most people don’t want to talk to chatbots.

• Customer service, that kind of thing.

• They want a human. Realistically, that’s like hoping for a return to the good old days of 3 channels on TV and kids playing with sticks in the street.

• It was never that good and, barring the collapse of society, it isn’t coming back.

• Employers just aren’t likely to spend that money when they can have an artificial customer service department that never stops working.

• And costs way less. So machines that aren’t frustrating and have a better idea of what you’re trying to tell them are essential.

• Another interesting question is whether we see those services being deployed more widely for speech rather than text.

• This week, Apple announced the delayed release of a tranche of AI-narrated audiobooks through its Books app.

• A lot of ebook services have had AI narrator options for a while – but those are essentially on-demand text to voice,

• The AI voice approaches it for the first time everytime, so you get a lot of weird vocalisations, the stress is in the wrong place.

• And the listening experience is very unsatisfying.

Richard Bradbury: I’d like to point out that you have asked me to ask this question: who cares about audiobooks?

Matt Armitage:

• The audiobook industry was worth $1.5bn last year.

• And grew by 25%. It’s thought it could be worth $30bn by the end of the decade.

• So, Apple wants a big slice of that.

• Yes, I made an Apple’s pie joke. That’s not a dad joke, or even a granddad joke.

• That could be pre-history.

• Apple’s service is different in that the Ai audiobooks are produced.

• So hopefully what you get sounds more like a professionally narrated by a human audiobook.

• Apple has been working with independent publishers for months but I haven’t been able to try any of them out yet.

• I don’t think it’s in Malaysia.

• A lot of publishers don’t like the idea – and there are a lot of voice actors making a living from audiobooks.

• I don’t really see this as a full replacement. Making an audiobook is expensive and can take weeks or recording and production.

• Which limits the number of titles available – there are a lot of books I want to read that I simply can’t because there is no audio version.

• So I see this more as a complementary service that allows more niche authors to make their work available as audiobooks.

•

Richard Bradbury: How does this dovetail or intersect with chatbots?

Matt Armitage:

• Machines that can have realistic feeling conversations with you.

• That can produce the words they need to say and actually say them in a way that doesn’t make you feel like a robot is on its way to kill you.

• This is happening across the board:

• And the speed with which all those other text-to AI generators are evolving is rapidly turning them into useful tools.

• A lot of us use templates for social media posts – it might be canva, whatever.

• I’m thinking that well before the end of this year, a lot of those image generators will be able to do that in the same way a chatbot

• So you upload you photo and type in the text, the border, the filter controls and the machine applies it live.

• Giving you what seems to be a more unique-looking post.

• I think this week I sent you a link to an AI music generator.

• What did you think?

Richard Bradbury: replies

Matt Armitage:

• It’s called riffusion. It creates simple loops from text.

• So you can ask it to sound like your favourite artist.

• Or do something improbable like a free jazz death metal band.

• Those exist actually – I didn’t make it up.

• You can create all these fusion styles: Sinatra style swing with punk guitar, for example.

• So, think about it, we can create text on demand, images on-demand, and video and music are coming soon.

• So that’s a 15-minute answer to the simple question: why do I think AI is becoming more mainstream this year.

• But – as we head for the messages – I have to reiterate.

• This doesn’t change what AI is. It’s a tool, not a solution.

• So don’t confuse its ability to enhance your creativity with it having ability to create.

• A lot of people will be telling you all kinds of things about what AI can do this year.

• It’s a tool. Don’t confuse the hype with its actual ability.

Richard Bradbury: When we come back, electric cars. And some other stuff Matt is interested in more than you are.

BREAK

Richard Bradbury: We mentioned Tesla at the top of the show. Is that where we’re heading now?

Matt Armitage:

• Sort of. So, will it, won’t it is a bit of a plaguing feature of the EV scene.

• Beyond metropolitan hotspots, most countries just don’t have enough charging infrastructure to make EVs viable.

• And for every Rivian, there’s an EV from a major manufacturer that performs below expectations.

• I’m not going to name names, you can google it. Youtube is full of EVs not doing what they say on the tin.

• But that said – until we find better alternative energy sources for cars, or make public transport truly usable.

• Electricity is going to replace carbon combustion as a means of powering passenger vehicles.

• I’m not telling anyone what they don’t already know.

• Tesla has dominated the conversations – at least outside China – about EVs.

• Partly because EVs are still a small offering within most of the noted automaking brands.

• And Tesla was one of the first – and definitely the most successful in terms of marketing – to reach scale as an EV only automaker.

• So this is the year, I think that Chinese EV makers go global.

• I know there are some listeners probably laughing at me right now.

Korean auto companies in the: 1970

• They don’t laugh now.

• China

Richard Bradbury: And this is the year that other EV makers achieve scale or go global?

Matt Armitage:

• I mentioned Rivian – which seems to have cracked the concept of delivering functional electric trucks.

• But that’s still niche. There are lots of niche EV companies.

• In China, EV makers like BYD are enormous. And their cars are good.

• Don’t forget that China is the world’s largest market for EVs.

• Partly because car adoption there is relatively new.

• And the local automotive industry doesn’t have decades of entrenched development in producing fossil-burning cars.

• Its car companies are mostly relatively young. So their plant, their designs, their outlook are all new, too.

• It’s also where batteries are made.

• So it makes sense to be EV focused in China, where the government can essentially mandate that the necessary infrastructure be created.

• A lot of companies like BYD were focused on domestic demand.

• Why supply outside the country if you can’t keep up with domestic demand?

• China’s economy is slowing, demand for cars is softening, while over in Europe, countries are tightening air quality restrictions.

• No go zones for petrol and diesel engines. And are preparing to phase out petrol cars.

• Couple that with still slightly lukewarm cars from traditional makers and you have the perfect conditions for the Chinese carmakers to jump to European markets and beyond.

• And let’s not forget – a lot of these cars are genuinely good. They’re not derivative copies of things from somewhere else.

• So I think this is where the world will start to see the Chinese car industry in a new light.

Richard Bradbury: There is a further question – and one that is plaguing the whole EV sector – those supply chain issues that are throttling supply.

Matt Armitage:

gested it would continue into: 2023

• Possibly beyond. But it’s more of a branding and a presence issue.

• We have to think of companies like BYD in the same way we think of Tesla.

• Supply chain issues may limit the number of cars you can buy, and how many you see on the streets.

• But it’s the focus that’s important. EVs are still a new sector.

• When you think of EVs, you think Tesla. Nissan, Ford, BMW, Toyota etc etc.

• They all have EVs, but we don’t think of them as EV brands.

• Which creates this opportunity for other at scale EV makers to come into the space and establish themselves as brands to know and trust.

• Which is what those Chinese brands, freed from domestic demand, can now focus on.

• Which enables them to rocket out of the gate as those supply chain issues abate.

Richard Bradbury: It’s always disconcerting when start talking about things that don’t sound like fantasy…

Matt Armitage:

• Don’t worry I’m going to wrap up today back in fantasy land.

• The metaverse, of course. Which is really the Internet.

• I don’t think the outlook for VR and AR is going to change profoundly this year.

• Apple is planning some kind of headset. It might be this year, Tim Cook has been laying hints.

• Although, if they do, it might be with a different focus to Meta or whoever else.

• He hinted at more an AR approach, with ways to manipulate digital data in the physical world according to a talk he gave in Naples last year.

• But VR as an experience will continue to be a bit rubbish because the hardware is a bit rubbish.

• Not in terms of quality or what it can do – but because it has to block you out of the real world to enter the virtual one.

• But let’s not forget that all of that stuff we talked about in the first half of the show is metaverse, too.

• The Internet is a machine of a sort – and all those machine-generated tools –

• Again, tools, not solutions – are going to change the way we interact with the Internet.

• Maybe the metaverse will gain more definition this year.

• Not so much in terms of structure, but in terms of what we see it as.

• What is definitely for sure is that investment in the sector will continue.

• Yes, Meta and some of the software/hardware companies may be scaling back their investments.

• But the games companies aren’t. Because they see this as both the future of and a way to expand their businesses.

• In ways that companies like Meta don’t need to do yet.

Richard Bradbury: Does this link to Microsoft’s bid to takeover Activision Blizzard?

Matt Armitage:

• Yes, so Microsoft often wanders under the radar these days.

• It supports calls for regulation of what it sees as anti-competitive practises by rivals, even when that results in a financial hit for itself.

• And a lot of the conversation about the company centers on it being a bit of an old uncle in tech.

• Focused on desktop computing in a mobile world.

• Which kind of ignores the fact that Microsoft is really about a lot of things: including cloud computing and games.

• The Microsoft-Blizzard merger would create a huge range of titles for the company to give away free with its game pass Xbox subscription.

• And that would include Call of Duty. Microsoft doesn’t even have to make it exclusive to Xbox.

• Just by making it inclusive to Game Pass and expensive to buy on Playstation or other platforms creates a huge incentive.

• Not to mention the AB subsidiaries with a strong presence in mobile gaming, which is where the industry, a

• And those first touchpoints with the gaming metaverse.

• Are increasingly located.

• Which brings me to a quick further metaverse point. Crypto and blockchain. Web3.

• Whatever you want to call it.

• With the ongoing financial turmoil and the scandals like FTX, I think the sector is still going to see a lot of negative press this year.

• But mobile gaming is one sector that is changing people’s opinion of what web3 is.

• That it’s just a part of that metaverse or that future Internet.

• And the other aspect is actually Twitter.

• Dissastisfaction with Twitter – and other social platforms – has led to a lot of people looking for other options.

• And they’ve landed on Mastodon, as well as some pure Web3 social sites.

• And as we’ve discussed before twitter users are journalists, business people, politicians etc.

• Supposed tastemakers. And for a lot of them, these new social sites are their first real taste of that web3 component beyond currencies, tokens and NFTs.

• So they’re seeing the blockchain in action, because they’re participating in communities.

• And even though sites like Mastodon – a twitter alternative – aren’t on a blockchain.

• They are decentralised.

• So it’s an introduction – if you like almost a grooming mechanism – for how decentralised operations function.

• Which creates a better awareness of what blockchains can do and how they are likely to underpin the metaverse.

• That future Internet.

that’s it. A Rough Guide to: 2023