AI Agents, NEO, Canva, AI Bubbles, and Lord of the Rings
Weekly Review of News in Technology, UX and AI
Here’s the latest news, resources, and use cases from the world of product, UX, AI and technology. Let’s go:
📊 AI Entrepreneurship
👩💻 AI Agents
🤖 NEO
🖌️ Canva
🫧 AI Bubble
🧙♂️ Lord of the Rings
Podcast
Unlocking the Secrets of AI Entrepreneurship with Founder Andrew Amann
In this episode of Prodity: Product by Design, Kyle Evans interviews Andrew Amann, CEO and co-founder of NineTwoThree AI Studio. Andrew shares his extensive experience in entrepreneurship, product development, and the challenges of building AI products. We discuss the importance of understanding product-market fit, the patent process, and the journey of founding multiple companies. Andrew emphasizes the significance of focusing on a specific audience and the value of holistic entrepreneurship, where success is measured not just by financial gain but also by personal fulfillment and work-life balance. We also explore the future of AI, its applications across various industries, and the evolving landscape of technology.
News and Useful Reads
AI Agents Are Terrible Freelance Workers
Agentic AI is all the rage right now. But will it be taking the place of people? Not yet.
Even the best artificial intelligence agents are fairly hopeless at online freelance work, according to an experiment that challenges the idea of AI replacing office workers en masse.
$20,000 Robot Servant Comes With a Major Catch
Tired of turning off your lights or loading your dishwasher? NEO may be the answer if you’ve got lots of extra money and don’t mind that it is powered by a human operator.
NEO will primarily be operated via remote workers. To start, owners will have to register for an app on their phones, from which they can schedule tasks they want the bot to complete. In other words, anyone who wants a NEO in their house is going to have to get comfortable with a stranger peeping around every nook and cranny.
Canva Is Making Affinity Free and Launching a ‘Creative Operating System’
I’ve been a long-time user of Adobe products, though I’ve thought about quitting many times given the cost. And Canva is making the case that it might be time to switch forever.
While Adobe’s done its best to keep up with Canva by adding its own free, web-based tools to its lineup, the simple browser-based editor has become a key part of my creative routine. Now, it’s coming for more of Adobe’s lunch by launching a “creative operating system,” which while largely a rebrand of existing (but expanding) tools, smacks of the Photoshop makers’ “creative cloud” branding. As part of the update, Canva’s introducing a bunch of—say it with me—AI to its products, but is also taking a big swing by making popular Photoshop alternative Affinity free for everyone.
When the AI bubble pops
Are we in an AI bubble? It seems like we might be. A huge portion of the US economy is now centered around AI. But how sustainable, and profitable, will that be?
“We’re spending this prodigious amount of money on the underlying infrastructure for AI with probably no likelihood of recovering most of that cost, and a significant likelihood that most of those assets become worthless because of the speed at which they depreciate.”
Other Interesting Finds
Elon Musk Really Doesn’t Get The Lord of the Rings
Personally, I’m tired of tech oligarchs using the names from Tolkien’s works for their companies. Or using the ideas of Tolkien to try to justify war or anti-immigration policies. These people don’t understand or appreciate anything that Tolkien was trying to say.
“Those of us who love what Tolkien really stood for despair at the misuse and misunderstanding of his works by folks who only seem to have given them a surface reading,”