TAP Ep 3

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Mia: Hello! Welcome back to Technically, a podcast.

I’m Mia, a professional web developer, software engineer, and your host for this episode.

I am super excited about today’s episode. We are going to be talking about the AI revolution and Chat GPT .

Last week, I said there would be no coding knowledge required to enjoy this episode. So first things first, let’s go over some basic definitions and the history of how artificial intelligence came to be.

Disclaimer, this episode has a lot of sound bytes and references to the TV show The Office, so if you haven’t seen it. please pause this episode and watch all 9 seasons.

Okay, let’s dive in.

While we might think of Artificial Intelligence as a flashy, modern concept, the idea’s been floating around for quite a bit longer than you might imagine.

The 1950s might be known for rock and roll, poodle skirts, and jukeboxes, but it was also the era where the seeds of AI were planted.

The term “Artificial Intelligence” itself was coined during a summer workshop at Dartmouth College in 1956. But even before that iconic event, some brilliant minds were already toying with the theoretical possibilities of machines that could think.

Enter Alan Turing, the computer genius who’s sometimes more famous for decoding German messages during World War II, than for his theoretical computer science contributions.

We talked about Alan Turing, the Turing Test, and the movie The Imitation Game in Episode 1, but if you missed it, here’s a recap.

Turing posed a simple yet groundbreaking question: ” Can machines think?” This led to his famous Turing Test, which essentially tried to determine if a machine’s behavior could be indistinguishable from a human’s.

In those early days, AI was more of a philosophical pondering than the tech-driven powerhouse we know today. People like Turing weren’t so much building human-like chatbots as they were exploring the very boundaries of what constitutes thought, intelligence, and the interplay between humans and machines. It was a time of dreaming big, of imagining a future where machines could maybe, just maybe, mimic the complexities of the human mind.

If Turing was such a visionary, why didn’t we see something like CHAT GPT during his era?

Well, a dream and vision are one thing, but realizing them in practice? That’s a whole different ball game, especially back in Turing’s day.

You see, as much as Turing might have liked to, he couldn’t just whip out a laptop and get coding.

The computers of his era were, well, a bit more primitive compared to our current tech.

Until 1949, computers were like those kinds of people who are great at tasks but have a memory worse than a goldfish. No offense to the goldfish community.

They could execute commands splendidly but had no way to store them. Imagine asking someone to make you a sandwich, and each time they’d forget the recipe right after.

And then there’s the price aspect. If you think buying a MacBook is expensive now,

Well, in the 1950s, just leasing a computer could set you back 200, 000 a month. We’re talking enough money to buy a house in exchange for a clunky machine that could do far less than your iPhone.

This meant that diving into the AI pool was a luxury reserved for the elite, primarily prestigious universities and mammoth tech companies who could afford such extravagances.

For AI to take a front seat, we needed two things. A tangible proof of concept that machines could inch towards intelligence, and big shots to champion the cause. Convincing funders that this wasn’t just some pie in the sky dream, but a venture worth every penny.

In simple terms, you needed both the tech to show potential, and investors with deep pockets to believe in it.

And well, that took a bit longer than Turing might have hoped.

When I think of the 1970s, I think of bell-bottoms, disco balls, and obviously Marvin Minsky confidently declaring to Life Magazine, that within three to eight years, machines would match an average human’s intelligence.

Minsky made quite a statement. Though we had evidence of the basic idea of AI, goals like making computers understand human speech, also known as Natural Language Processing, and allowing machines to recognize themselves, were still distant dreams on the horizon.

One of the most significant hurdles at this time, was computational power. Simply put, the computers didn’t have the muscle to store loads of information, or process it at lightning speeds. Hans Moravec was a student of John McCarthy’s, who is sometimes considered to be one of the founding fathers of AI. Moravec likened computers to weaklings, stating they were “still millions of times too weak to exhibit intelligence.” Funding started to wane, and AI research hit what felt like a decade-long traffic jam.

The eighties brought new life into the AI realm . John Hopfield and David Rumelhart, pioneering researchers in the AI field, introduced the concept of “deep learning” to the community, which essentially taught computers to learn from experience. Meanwhile, Edward Feigenbaum came up with expert systems, a cool way to mimic human decision-making.

Imagine a program that’s been trained by experts on how to handle almost any situation. Non experts could then get advice from this sort of Yoda robot teacher

and be able to learn almost anything themselves.

The Japanese government poured a staggering $400 million into AI projects from 1982 to 1990, not all their goals bore fruit. Though the direct results were somewhat underwhelming, the impact on young bright minds was palpable.

The 1990s and two thousands marked a significant era of advancements and milestones in AI research and development. In 1997, Gary Kasparov, the world chess champion, lost to IBM’s Deep Blue.

This monumental victory for Team Machine was a testament to AI’s growing capabilities. The same year also saw the rise of speech recognition software on Windows, a massive stride to mastering spoken language.

And just when people started thinking machines couldn’t be empathetic, we meet Kismet, a robot with feelings! Created by Cynthia Breazeal in the 1990s, Kismet could read and display emotions, proving that AI wasn’t just about cold calculations but could mimic human feelings.

COMPUTRON EXPERIENCING EMOTION Computron, I’m gonna pull your plug, okay, buddy?

Mia: Diving deeper into the late 1990s and early 2000s, one might ask, did our approach to programming artificial intelligence undergo a revolutionary transformation? Not particularly.

The true game-changer was the significant leaps in computer storage capacities. A bottleneck that had stymied progress 30 years earlier, was suddenly no longer an issue. This transformation is credited to Moore’s Law, a prediction which suggests that the computing power and storage of computers double annually. By the late nineties , this law wasn’t just meeting our demands; it was surpassing them.

That’s what gave Deep Blue the edge over Kasparov and Google’s AlphaGo the edge over Go prodigy Ke Jie in 2017.

this progression paints a broader picture of the cyclical nature of AI advancements. We push AI’s limits to the boundary of our existing computational power, then pause, allowing the advancements as predicted by Moore’s law to provide the next leap forward.

Fast forward to now, AI has made headlines for its impressive leaps forward, with platforms like Chat GPT paving the way for discussions about Artificial General Intelligence, known as AGI.

AGI is the grand vision of AI. It’s AI on, let’s say, an extra caffeinated cup of coffee.

AGI aims to reach a human level of cognitive function, which means it could potentially understand, learn, and even teach itself new things just like we do. So if AI is your computer learning to play chess, AGI would be it beating you at chess, then writing a boastful poem about it, and finally deciding it wants to learn the guitar to accompany that gloating poem. AGI really needs a lesson on being humble.

But not everyone’s on board with this whole AGI idea. The world of AI researchers is split. Some believe we can get there, while others are a bit more skeptical about creating an AGI system.

The big debate? Well, what exactly counts as intelligence, and how do we measure it? It’s like trying to figure out if Tim Robinson’s sketches are genius, or just plain absurd. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.

While AGI aims to match human cognitive abilities, such as reasoning, planning, and learning across a range of subjects, its definition and current existence remain subjects of debate within the AI community.

One particular incident capturing the AI community’s attention was an experiment conducted by Microsoft researchers. They asked Chat GPT-4 to draft a unicorn using a programming language tailored for creating scientific diagrams. Against expectations, Chat GPT-4 responded with code, which, when rendered through software, yielded a rudimentary, yet undeniably unicorn-esque image. This ability to abstractly conceptualize a unicorn through coding hinted at Chat GPT-4’s budding grasp of general intelligence components, making many realize, “hey, something new is happening here!”

The buzz didn’t end there. The very mention of GPT-4 demonstrating “sparks of artificial general intelligence” stirred conversations in academic and tech circles. GPT-4’s capabilities, ranging from reasoning to transferring concepts between text and imagery, suggested it was venturing into the realm of general intelligence, a space previously untouched by its predecessors.

Yet, with innovation comes skepticism. Some AI aficionados cautioned against prematurely tagging GPT-4 as an AGI prototype, fearing the potential for hyperbole and misunderstanding.

Distinguishing between ‘strong’ AI -or AGI -and ‘weak’ or ‘narrow’ AI is pivotal. While narrow AI excels at specific tasks, be it driving autonomously, or activating voice assistants, AGI’s goal is broader, aspiring to replicate the human brain’s holistic functionality.

There’s no doubt that Chat GPT-4 is on the cusp of something transformative. Its linguistic abilities and problem-solving acumen spanning diverse fields, from mathematics to psychology, are genuinely laudable. Yet, even Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI , echoes the sentiments of cautious optimism, emphasizing that Chat GPT remains a distance away from being a full-fledged AGI model.

Open the pod bay doors, Hal. I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do

Mia: Gazing ahead, as AGI continues to evolve and redefine its boundaries, the promises of its applications are limitless. Envision advanced chatbots that can debate philosophy or autonomous vehicles that can make moral decisions in real-time. With pioneers like Chat GPT at the forefront, the path to AGI seems less of a distant dream and a fast-approaching reality.

Now that we’ve gotten the history out of the way, let’s talk a bit about how you can use Chat GPT , and other AI tools to increase your productivity.

First, what does Chat GPT stand for? Well, Chat GPT is short for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer. If that sounds like a mouthful, it’s because it is. It was developed by the company Open AI and released to the public on November 30, 2022.

The beauty of Chat GPT is that you, as the user, have the power to refine and steer your conversation towards exactly what you need. Whether you’re aiming for a short, snappy answer or a detailed explanation, through a technique known as prompt engineering, every part of your chat, from your initial question to successive replies, becomes the context for your conversation.

Let’s dive a little deeper. Chat GPT is the brainchild of either GPT 3. 5 or GPT 4, both of which are part of OpenAI’s special lineup of generative pre trained transformer models, or GPT. And in case you’re wondering where the magic happens, it’s built on the transformer architecture pioneered by none other than Google.

Here’s a fun fact. OpenAI was pretty generous when they first launched ChatGPT, offering it for free as a research preview. Given its wild popularity, OpenAI decided to introduce a freemium model.

So now, if you’re on the free tier, you get to play with the GPT 3.5 version . But, if you’re looking for something better, there’s the GPT 4 version, and priority access to the latest features with the ultra exclusive sounding ChatGPT Plus for those who are willing to pay the 20 a month.

By January 2023, this nifty tool became the fastest-growing consumer software application in history! It amassed over a whopping 100 million users.

This huge success led to OpenAI’s valuation skyrocketing to a jaw dropping 29 billion.

As a result, tech giants like Google and Baidu , hustled to get in on the action, introducing their own versions named Bard and Ernie Bot.

Think Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie, but powered by a machine instead of by a human hand. Okay, that’s probably not the best metaphor.

Meta launched their AI, Llama, in February of 2023, and Microsoft teamed up with OpenAI’s GPT 4 to present BingChat.

However, with great power comes great responsibility. Some people raise their eyebrows at the potential of chat GPT to, well, make humans lazy, or worse, replace our great intellectual prowess.

I’m like really smart now. You don’t even know. You could ask me, Kelly, what’s the biggest company in the world? And I’d be like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Giving you the exact right answer.

Mia: While most concerns about AI dangers were speculative or theoretical, there came a real-world incident that put these worries into sharp focus.

Imagine you’re in a courtroom, waiting for a lawyer to present their case. You’d expect them to have done their homework, right?

Well, in one particular personal injury suit against an airline, the lawyer did indeed get some help. But, from ChatGPT. And things went south. Big time.

The AI confidently made up some fake cases. The attorney, perhaps trusting the tool too much, presented these fictitious cases to the court. Now, as you can imagine, this didn’t sit well with the judge.

Trusting Chat GPT or AI tools blindly is never a good idea. They could lead you into some bad situations like with fake info in a court case or with your car in a lake.

Make a right turn. Maybe it’s a shortcut, Dwight. It said go to the right.

It can’t mean that. There’s a lake there. I think it knows where it is going. This This is the lake. Stop yelling at me. No, it’s up here. There’s no road here. Michael! Are you okay? Swim for it!

Mia: The Judge in the infamous case, P. Kevin Castel made a point that’s worth noting: quote, ” Technological advances are commonplace and there is nothing inherently improper about using a reliable artificial intelligence tool for assistance. But existing rules impose a gatekeeping role on attorneys to ensure the accuracy of their filings.” endquote.

In other words, technology is cool, but double check your work and don’t drive into a lake just because a machine tells you to.

The world is changing and many things we have done by hand will likely be done by AI in the future. It is too soon to see if that will ultimately be good or bad.

For now let’s focus on the positive, like how Chat GPT can help you and your business. Like any tool, it’s all about how you use it. Whether you’re an artist, a business mogul, or just someone curious about the world, Chat GPT can be your trusty sidekick, ready to help.

Without further ado I’m going to dive right into the most effective ways to utilize Chat GPT .

The most important thing to note is Chat GPT is NOT a search engine. The Lawyer Steven A. Schwartz, found out the hard way, that Chat GPT will confidently make things up. While it is not a good search engine, it is a very good language model.

But what exactly does that mean? You can think of it as a digital wordsmith. It is very good at correcting grammar, writing in specific tones like professional or casual, or even making some lighthearted jokes.

Although comedy is definitely not its strong suit.

It’s trained on vast amounts of text so it can generate or understand new text based on what it has seen before. When fed information that is correct, Chat GPT is extremely good at translating it into different mediums and styles. So one very helpful way to use it is for generating social media content. Say you have just written an article for your company. You can stretch that article into content for many different platforms. Here is an example of what to do, to turn that article into a bunch of Instagram reels.

Type into ChatGPT, based on the following article, give me 5 Instagram Reels that have a hook within the first 5 seconds, and then paste in the text from your article. This approach ensures that all the facts in your suggested Instagram Reel will be from your article, and not made up. Of course, assuming that you didn’t make up the stuff for your article.

Replace Instagram with anything else, like write me 10 tweets, or translate this article into curriculum for parents to teach their kids, or make this article into an e book, or an online course. The possibilities are endless.

Remember that your conversations with ChatGPT are iterative, so if it gives you an answer you don’t like because it’s too serious or not professional or too professional, whatever the issue is you can tell ChatGPT, try that again, but write something less serious, and it’ll tweak its results. So if you get an answer that isn’t quite there yet, don’t give up.

Pretend ChatGPT is a new intern or assistant that you’re training, and give it instructions on how to improve. It will learn from you and try again.

For ChatGPT Plus users, there is a new feature that was just added that makes it even easier to train ChatGPT to give you answers tailored to your needs. Click the three dots in the bottom left of your ChatGPT window, and then click Custom Instructions. This will give you two text boxes with the option to tell ChatGPT about yourself and how you would like it to respond.

A good way to use this is to put information about your company and brand in the first box.

Things to put in this box would be like mission statements, company values, audience, anything that describes you and your brand.

In the second box, put information about the tone of writing you’d like the answers to be in. Does your brand have a very professional tone? Is it more playful? Is it casual? If you have a writing sample that you think is representative of your brand, you can stick that in the box and say match the tone of this excerpt of writing.

Refresh your ChatGPT window and all further conversations will be influenced by the information you gave it. A good way to double check if ChatGPT really understands your brand voice is to ask it Give me 10 mission statements that fit my brand.

If it spits out 10 things you agree with, then you’re ready to go. If the mission statements seem off, try tweaking the description of your company.

Here’s another trick to speed up productivity. Has this ever happened to you? You get an answer from chat GPT and it’s formatted really nicely with bullet points, bolded text, different size headers and titles. But when you copy paste it into another email or a Google doc, it pastes it in there with a bunch of pound symbols.

So then you have to scrounge around through the document and delete all the pound symbols to reformat it and make it look nice again.

This happens because the text you copy from ChatGPT is in a format called Markdown. If you click the extensions menu option in Google Docs and then click add ons, , then click get add ons and search the extension store for a Markdown to Google Doc formatter.

If you install that extension and refresh your doc, Activate the extension, paste your text from ChatGPT there. It will convert the markdown to a format that looks good in Google Docs, and you won’t have to waste time deleting those pound symbols. Similarly, if you got an answer from ChatGPT but it isn’t formatted the way you’d like it, and you want a heading, subheaders, table of contents, etc.,

you can tell ChatGPT to rewrite the above answer but format it in markdown.

That will make all of your documents look very professionally formatted and save you a lot of time.

I know this episode has been mainly about Chat GPT, but it’s not the only AI chat tool out there. I want to briefly talk about Pi, the new tool that came out in May 2023, released by the start-up Inflection AI.

Pi is designed to be the buddy who’s always there for you for heart to heart. More touchy feely, if you will, especially when compared to chat GPT. .

While Chat GPT is designed to be more of a general purpose AI and explain things factually, Pi brings a dash of personality to the table. It’s like comparing Dwight to Jim, or Spock to Captain Kirk. Chat GPT will give you answers matter of factly,

whereas Pi with its charm will make you feel like you’re having a meaningful conversation over a cup of coffee.

So, which AI chatbot should your business use?

Well, if you’re looking to create content that engages your clients on a more personal level, letting them feel heard and understood, Pi might just be your cup of tea. But if you need a broad spectrum of tasks done, from generating content to answering technical queries and more, Chat GPT is like that multi tool you keep in your pocket, always ready to assist.

If you haven’t played much with AI tools, I’d recommend starting out with Chat GPT . But if you’ve already explored it quite a bit and are ready to branch out – it could be time to make a Pi account.

Another interesting thing to note, about Pi and Chat GPT .Is that Pi has access to current news. Whereas, Chat GPT only has access to info up to a certain date. Chat GPT will likely change this in the future, but as of now, only Pi has access to up to date information. So if you’re looking for an AI that knows about today’s breaking news – you should use Pi.

Ultimately, the right tool depends on what your business needs are. And no one says you have to use one or the other. You can always use both.

Chat GPT and Pi are both trained on data that will allow them to function as a career coach, business strategist, or social media advisor. Now, while they’re not going to nail it 100% of the time, here are some good prompts to play around with.

Got a business goal? Shoot it their way and see what strategies they come up with. Hit a roadblock? Ask them to wear the career coach hat and list out 5 possible solutions to navigate through. And if you’re looking for a new hire, feed Chat GPT or pi the job description to get a list of good interview questions to ask your potential hires. On the flip side of that scenario, if you’re the one prepping for an interview, get Chat GPT on your prep team. Turn it into your mock interviewer. You can ask it to tailor interview questions for you with easy or hard difficulty, and have it run a role play practice run. Give it a try, and let us know how it goes!

Here is another great trick I want to share with you all, especially for those moments when you’re staring at a dense article and a ticking clock. Chat GPT Can be your personal translator for complex topics!

We all have that one lengthy article we’ve been meaning to dive into but just don’t have the time for it. Or maybe it is so complicated, it feels like it’s written in another language. With Chat GPT , you can ask things like, “Hey, can you break down this article as if I’m a 5th grader?.” No judgment here, we all need that sometimes! Or if you’re in a real time-crunch, just say, “I need a summary of this article in just 3 paragraphs,” or even, “Turn this piece into 10 quick bullet points for me.”

It’s like having a pocket-sized editor and translator ready to simplify things for you. Think of it as a shortcut through the dense forest of information out there. Happy reading… or should I say, summarizing!

If you need help with your grammar. You can use Chat GPT as an editor. It will even edit for things like smoothness or clarity. Feed it your writing and ask it to edit it for you. Make sure you’re specific, so your writing ends up in the tone you are looking for.

Try out these tips for a boost in your productivity. AI is a fantastic tool to play around with, and sometimes just bouncing thoughts off of it, can lead to more captivating content. But here’s a little word of caution: when you’re crafting content for your business, don’t lean entirely on Chat GPT, or any AI tool to create content you’re not informed about. It can come off as insincere, and you might end up with content that’s a little off the mark, or just plain made up. Instead, think of Chat GPT as your digital assistant. Feed it a word dump about a topic you’re an expert at, and let it help you repurpose your brilliant ideas into various mediums – be it a blog post, social media snippet, long-read, or whatever is right for your audience. Think smart, work smarter!

If there’s an email or something like that, that you’ve been writing a response to, have ChatGPT take a crack at it. It might not get it right on the first try, but you can say things like, try again but more professional,

or try again but more casual, to tune the response to something that works. This is an example of iteratively tuning ChatGPT’s response by asking it to produce further iterations of its answers.

This strategy can work wonders for people who suffer from task paralysis. Task paralysis is when you find it hard to complete tasks that you don’t immediately know how to begin. Let Chat GPT take the first steps for you, and bring you out of the task paralysis fog.

You may notice that sometimes you can spot an article that was generated with AI. It can have a dry depersonalized feel. This is usually because it was created without enough prompt engineering. Make sure a human reads through the text and tunes the writing through iterative conversation with Chat GPT, untill it is right for your audience. If you use Chat GPT correctly, people will enjoy your content and it won’t have that dry machine-made feel.

I’m going to quickly talk about custom made tools powered by the Chat GPT API. Ever felt a bit restricted with the character limit on Chat GPT? Or wished you could just upload a PDF straight into it? Well, it’s totally possible to get a tailor-made version of Chat GPT that is made for your exact needs. Whether you’re aiming for that unique content style or dreaming of an AI chatbot that already knows all about your product catalog, the sky’s the limit!

The magic wand behind this customization is the Chat GPT API. To get access, log into your Open AI account, tinker with the developer settings, and like magic, you can generate your very own API key. This key’s your ticket to weave Chat GPT into your custom software tools.

But a little heads-up: this is not a project for beginners. If you don’t have a coding background, I’d recommend hiring a developer. If tailor-made software tools sound like something that is right for your business, contact us at curie and co dot com and we can give you a quote.

Now I’m going to turn it over to Ethan, to give us the tech news from the week.

Ethan2: Okay, time to talk about this week’s tech tool recommendation. For all you tech enthusiasts, freelancers, and small business owners, this one’s a gem. I often find myself buried in tasks, wondering, “Hey, is there an AI that could make this a bit easier?” And, guess what? There’s a website for that!

The tool in the spotlight today is the brilliantly named “theres an AI for that dot com”. Used over at Curie & Co, this website is essentially a search engine, but exclusively for AI tools. So, next time you’re pulling your hair out over S E O keyword generation or maybe you’re trying to condense a lengthy YouTube video into a neat summary, and you think, “I wonder if there is an AI tool that would do this for me”… just head over to this site and type in your query.

What’s great about this platform is not only does it pull up a list of AI tools tailored to your needs, but it also offers reviews, and for all you budget-conscious folks out there, information on pricing where applicable. It’s like having a techy fairy godmother, making sure you’ve got the right tools to sprinkle some digital magic onto your projects.

So, the next time you catch yourself wondering if there might be an AI to streamline your task, remember: “there’s an AI for that.com”! And give it a try. You might just stumble upon your next favorite digital assistant.

Next, it’s Monday, September 18th. Here’s the tech news you should know going into this week.

First up, on Tuesday, millions of people around the world tuned in to Apple’s annual fall showcase. If you weren’t one of them, here’s what you missed.

Say goodbye to your lightning cord, and hello to U S B C. Thanks to the EU’s 2022 tech waste reduction act, Apple had no choice but to ditch its proprietary lightning charger in favor of the more universally accepted USB-C model. While Apple’s executives might not be thrilled about this change, it’s definitely good news for us iPhone users. With this shift, you can expect faster data transfers, speedier charging, and the added perk of plugging your phone into a computer monitor or TV with ease. However, there is a catch. Apple has decided to not ship its new phones with modern U S B C 3 cables, but rather U S B C 2 cables.This lower model transfers data at a rate of 480 Megabits per second. On the other hand, The 3 point O version of the cable can transfer up to 10 gigabits per second. For those not as math oriented, that’s almost 20 times faster. Why Apple would choose to include the slower cable is anyone’s guess, but just know, if you want to get the most out of the new iPhone, you’re going to have to buy a new cable.

The other iPhone 15 features talked about were mostly run of the mill: new chip, new camera, and new colors. However, one interesting change is the replacement of the ‘silence mode switch.’ Taking it’s place is a new button that Apple says will be programmable by the user. Time to brush up on your Apple Shortcuts app skills!

Apple didn’t stop there; they unveiled their latest lineup of Apple Watches and introduced the Watch Ultra, now suitable for deep-sea dives. Plus, iOS 17 launched today, sporting subtle visual tweaks but loaded with quality-of-life enhancements. Highlights include improved search, offline maps, an enhanced audio mode for AirPods, and live transcriptions of voicemails and audio

messages. For the full scoop on the Apple event, head over to apple dot com.

Shifting gears to the tech legal world, the Department of Justice has begun its major antitrust lawsuit against Google. Accusations echo the EU regulators’ recent complaints, alleging that Google’s conducted in anti-competitive behavior through their exclusivity deals, as well as promoting Google as the default search engine, notably in Google Chrome. Google, commanding a whopping 90% of global search engine traffic, argues that their dominance comes from offering a superior product, not unfair practices. This case, unfolding over the next 10 weeks, is closely watched as a potential harbinger of more antitrust lawsuits against big tech.

In other legal news, automated trucking may soon be dealt a killing blow. Last week the California State senate passed bill eigh B 316 in a resounding 36 to 2 vote. If signed by Governor New-some, it will require a trained human safety operator to accompany automated, heavy-duty vehicles in California. The outcome is uncertain, given Governor New-some’s past support for tech firms. The outcome is being closely watched as it signals not just the legal viability of automated trucking, but potentially the automated vehicle industry overall.

Next up, news from the world of business. Unity, one of the gaming industry’s powerhouses, shook things up with a major pricing change. Unity announced that games raking in over $200,000 in total revenue will incur a $0.20 fee per install. While the policy may not sound terrible on its own, it triggered a social media storm. Concerns arose over potential abuse, with gamers reinstalling games or setting up bot farms to spam installs. Unity has responded to the backlash, promising adjustments but not a complete rollback of the policy. Now the question becomes, will the new changes be enough to reunite gamers with Unity.

Finally, this week, TikTok expanded into an unlikely market: digital marketplaces. On Tuesday ByteDance rolled out its TikTok shop platform in the united states. The new service is designed to make it easier for creators and brands to sell products with links embedded within their videos. Furthermore, like traditional ecommerce shops, their appears to be plans for TikTok fulfillment centers and large discounts on goods for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Will you be doing your holiday shopping on TikTok this year?

Thanks for listening, this has been Ethan with your tech wrap-up.

Mia: Thanks for listening to Technically a podcast. I hope this episode gave you a good background on the history of AI and some tips on how to use it in your daily life. We just scratched the surface of AI tools and we didn’t even talk about any AI image generators like Mid Journey or DALLE.

We will have to save that for a future episode. There’s more to come. So stay tuned for new episodes of Technically a podcast every Monday.