Character, Knowledge Work, Google Breakup, Cozy Tech, and Terrible Gifts
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:
🤹 Character over Skills
🎧 Knowledge Work
🔍 Chrome
🛂 AI Wall
🤖 Anthropic
🛋️ Cozy Tech
🧅 Terrible Gifts
Podcast
Character Over Skills: A New Framework for Growth and Leadership with David CM Carter
In this episode of Prodity: Product by Design, Kyle sits down with David CM Carter, a serial entrepreneur and mentor. With over 40 years of experience mentoring top leaders and building innovative businesses, David shares his insights on what separates high-performing organizations and individuals from the rest: character development.
News and Useful Reads
The Once and Future History of Knowledge Work
For many of us in the “knowledge work” industries, AI will have some sort of impact. We’re all waiting to see how big or small that will be as we incorporate it more and more into our daily work.
In 1999, management consultant Peter Drucker made a prediction that was either prophecy or hubris: Knowledge workers, he wrote in California Management Review, would be “the most valuable asset of a 21st-century institution.” A quarter of the way through the century, however, the future of knowledge work has never been more uncertain—thanks in no small part to generative AI.
DOJ calls for breakup of Google and sale of Chrome
This is one of the biggest attempts to break up a company since Microsoft in the early 2000s. We’ll see how it plays out.
The Justice Department is calling for Google to divest its Chrome browser, following a ruling in August that the company holds a monopoly in the search market.
Is AI hitting a wall?
Until now, AI has been about training models on more data. But what happens when the data run out? We’re nearing the point when we can’t train models on more and more data, so companies are turning to better reasoning.
While the next AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and others may not be significantly smarter than what exists today, the people building with AI think there is plenty of room to create better experiences with what exists today. And while the “reasoning” capability OpenAI showed with its most recent o1 model is prohibitively expensive and slow to use right now, it signals a shift everyone seemed to agree on: the next breakthrough will be making the LLMs of today smarter.
Amazon Invests an Additional $4 Billion in AI Firm Anthropic
Amazon is deeply invested in Anthropic, and Anthropic is building out big time on AWS. So they both win, it seems.
The latest investment “establishes AWS as our primary cloud and training partner,” Anthropic said in a blog post, adding that the startup plans to use Amazon’s AI chips to develop its most advanced models. The deal maintains Amazon’s minority stake in the company, Anthropic said.
The Fantasy of Cozy Tech
Social media in its original form reflected an urge to connect with other people living their lives somewhere else in the real world. The coziness trend suggests that the Internet and artificial intelligence can lead us ever inward. In the cozy era, our screens and the related accoutrements of digital life fulfill all of our emotional and sensory needs.
Other Interesting Finds
The surprisingly selfish reason people give terrible gifts
‘Tis the season for gift-giving. So as you think about what to give, you may also want to think about how to avoid giving bad gifts.
“Whenever we’re gift-givers, we really focus on making people happy the moment that they’re opening the gift.” In order words, we prioritize the drama of a big reveal, as opposed to whether the gift is useful and valuable years down the road.