Rise of Video, Modern AI, Apple, RTO Ultimatums, and The Internet

Weekly Roundup of News in Technology, UX and AI

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Here’s the latest news, resources, and use cases from the world of product, UX, AI and technology. Let’s go:

• 🎥 Rise of Video

• 🧠 Modern AI

• 🍎 Apple

• ⏮️ Product Last

• 👨‍💻 RTO Ultimatums

• 💾 Nvidia

• 🛜 The Internet

• 🍔 High Cost of Eating

Podcast

The Rise of Video and the Future of Virtual Communication

Video has become ubiquitous in our communication. From virtual meetings and virtual doctor visits, to social media, virtual events, and live commerce, we expect video everywhere. But the technology that makes this happen isn’t easy, and needs and expectations are changing rapidly. So what does the future hold for our virtual communications? How have we solved these challenges in the past and how will we continue to solve them? How do we think about the UX of virtual communication and video? What should you do if you want to get into design and what communities should you join or create? We explore these questions and many others in this episode.

News and Useful Reads

8 Google Employees Invented Modern AI. Here’s the Inside Story

It will be interesting as we continue to flesh out the history of how we got here, which we continue to write right now. But this is a fascinating read about our modern AI history.

EIGHT NAMES ARE listed as authors on “Attention Is All You Need,” a scientific paper written in the spring of 2017. They were all Google researchers, though by then one had left the company. When the most tenured contributor, Noam Shazeer, saw an early draft, he was surprised that his name appeared first, suggesting his contribution was paramount. “I wasn’t thinking about it,” he says.

U.S. Sues Apple, Alleges Tech Giant Exploits Illegal Monopoly

The Justice Department, 15 states and the District of Columbia sued Apple on Thursday, alleging the tech giant makes it difficult for competitors to integrate with the iPhone, ultimately raising prices for consumers. The antitrust suit, filed in a federal court in New Jersey, says that Apple tries to keep users from switching to devices on outside operating systems, such as Android smartphones.

Shift From “Product First” to “Product Last”

I feel this post so much. We have way too much theatre and not enough focus on what is really important.

We claim that we want to deliver value and satisfy customers, but how do we follow through on that? How is that baked into our processes? Are we driven more by deadlines or by quality? Are we counting how many features or fixes we release, and not considering how users perceive their quality or value?

Dell gives employees the RTO ultimatum

In what can only be described as abject stupidity, Dell has given an RTO mandate to remote employees, telling them they won’t be eligible for promotion if they don’t get back into the office.

The company, which implemented a return-to-office (RTO) mandate in February, will no longer consider remote employees eligible for promotion or to change roles as of May, according to a report from Business Insider. BI found that employees aren’t so keen

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announces new AI chips: ‘We need bigger GPUs’

Nvidia on Monday announced a new generation of artificial intelligence chips and software for running artificial intelligence models. The announcement, made during Nvidia’s developer’s conference in San Jose, comes as the chipmaker seeks to solidify its position as the go-to supplier for AI companies.

How We Built the Internet

Modern history is fascinating. With that in mind, this article also explores another topic of our modern history that is so important to our lives that we don’t even think much about it now. I suspect one day AI will be like that as well, but for now…

The internet is like water—we take its existence for granted, but its birth was by no means pre-ordained. A constellation of inventors, organizations, and efforts all contributed to its creation.

Other Interesting Finds

The High Cost of Eating Out in America

Or just the high cost of eating in America. Food prices continue to increase, and anyone who has to eat, feels it every day.

According to CBSnews:

Any increase in food prices may be especially painful to American consumers, given that supermarket prices are now 25% higher than in January 2020, while inflation has increased 19% over that same time. That means even though grocery costs are now rising at a slower pace than in the depth of the pandemic's inflationary spike, the same shopping basket still costs more than a month or a year ago, a fact that has soured many consumers on the economy.