Archive
Category: Business
CES 2025: Now With More AI
IN THIS ISSUE: Welcome to the final newsletter of 2024. Thank you for subscribing to and reading “The AI Economy.” Next month marks one year since I launched this publication, and I appreciate the reception it has received. In the coming year, expect more stories about AI’s impact on business, work, technology, and society. Regarding […]
Salesforce Unveils Agentforce 2.0, Bringing AI Agents to Slack and Introducing Advanced Atlas Reasoning
As AI agents take center stage in 2024, Salesforce is fully leaning into the trend. In October, the cloud computing company launched Agentforce, a platform that lets anyone quickly build advanced AI bots and connect them to enterprise data. Two months later, it’s introducing its next-generation AI agent offering, which aims to redefine “AI agents across […]
Why Flipboard Looks to the Fediverse for Its Next Big Evolution
Eight years ago, I sat down with Mike McCue to talk about Flipboard. When we spoke at the company’s Palo Alto, Calif. offices, he shared that the company had found its stride and that this would be the last startup he’d ever build. Much has changed since then, and Flipboard faces a transformative moment. After […]
Google’s NotebookLM Adds a Premium Tier, Adaptable UI, and Interactive Audio Overviews
Google is taking its popular NotebookLM app to the next level. No longer just an experiment, the company is unveiling a series of updates on Friday that position the notebook tool as a fully mature product. The first is a premium tier called NotebookLM Plus, designed with enterprise users in mind, followed by a revamped […]
Randi Zuckerberg’s HUG Social Marketplace Acquired by .ART Registry
HUG, a social art community platform that Randi Zuckerberg and Debbie Soon co-founded, has been acquired by the registry behind the .ART domain. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Soon and HUG’s lead engineer will remain with the company post-acquisition, but Zuckerberg will depart, though she tells me she’s still a “passionate member […]
Proto Hologram’s Holographic AI Avatars: ‘A Chatbot in a Fancy Dress, but With a Persona Presence’
I wanted to check out one company in particular while attending Amazon Web Services’ re:Invent conference. It came to my attention days prior while perusing LinkedIn, and I became curious about its technology. However, I ignored where exactly I could find it at the show. It turns out that the company, Proto Hologram, wasn’t hard […]
Lessons From My First AWS re:Invent
IN THIS ISSUE: My conference adventures continue as I journey to Amazon’s re:Invent conference to hear about AWS’ approach to AI. Plus, explore the company’s AI partnership with the NFL and how they use the technology to help support players’ philanthropy. And don’t miss the roundup of AI news you may have missed from the […]
Ai2 Unveils OLMo 2, Calling It The Most Advanced Fully Open Language Model Yet
In February, Ai2 released OLMo, its “truly open-source” large language model, as a suitable alternative to closed and restrictive models. Nine months later, the nonprofit research institute introduced its successor, OLMo 2, describing it as the “best fully open language model to date” comparable to Meta’s Llama 3.1. This family features two variations: a 7B […]
How AWS and the NFL Used AI to Help Josh Allen, DK Metcalf Design Custom Cleats for Their Favorite Causes
Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the National Football League (NFL) have partnered since 2016. The cloud computing giant initially powered the sports organization’s Next Gen Stats software, which tracks a player’s performance. Eventually, it went on to support other areas, such as providing EC2 compute power to help with team scheduling and also helping migrate […]
AWS Adds New Models, Caching, and Data Integration to Amazon Bedrock
If you thought Amazon Web Services (AWS) was done revealing updates to Amazon Bedrock, you’re in for a surprise. After all, it’s the centerpiece of the company’s push to bring inference to all applications. That said, the generative AI development platform is receiving another slate of features and capabilities now generally available or in preview. […]