Category: Uncategorized

Life Changing AI Tools

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Technology doesn’t advance in straight lines. It’s choppy with flat periods of stasis, and massive vertical progress leaps. We’ve just had one such leap and it’s not too late to get ahead and benefit economically.

In the digital era we’ve had moments that changed everything. A few come to mind:

  • The PC & Laptop
  • The Web Browser
  • Social Media
  • The Smart Phone

It is that moment for AI.

The tools are now highly functional and available to everyone. Think back through your career and companies you’ve worked for. Did you or they, either got on board early? Or fall behind?

Don’t fall behind this time. When shifts like this occur, fortunes are both made and lost (you know the ones), and careers can be totally ruined or reinvented. We get to choose.

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One of the great things about the internet, is that you can only ever be 15 minutes behind. And when the next era arrives – like now with AI – you can get ahead despite what you didn’t do in the past.

So, to help you get ahead here is a list of AI tools you can use. Play around with them, get familiar and I’m sure your imagination will jump to possibility.

  • AI Creation Engine Chap GPT – Get it to create almost anything for you.
  • AI Image Generation – Dall-E-2, Mid Journey, Stable Diffussion
  • AI voice changer in real time – Celebrity voices, you name it – Voice.ai
  • Get an AI to write for you, in your style – Jasper AI
  • Create a video of a talking avatar via text – Synthesia AI (talking Avatar)
  • AI Lawyer – World’s first Robot Lawyer – Do not pay.
  • Automate Social Media – Repurpose – one post, many paltforms
  • Write Essays – Jenny AI
  • Transcribe meetings with notes & summaries – Fire Flies
  • AI Voice generator from text – even your voice – Murf
  • Write sales emails that convert – MailMentor
  • AI Assistant – Andi AI
  • Turn an idea into a Youtube Video – In Video

The crazy thing is, this is just a small sample of what’s out there. I promise you there is a tool for you and your gig. The right tool will remove hours from your week and maybe put you on a new path.

The rest is up to you.

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Keep thinking,

Steve.

Robotic Love

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Recently it was my daughter’s birthday. So I decided to write a poem about her as a gift.

Here it is:

Flora, a girl with a heart full of dreams. Turning thirteen, her future beams.

With a book in hand, she loves to read. Fantasy worlds, is where she likes to lead

Writing stories, her imagination flows. Creating characters, she knows and chose.

Drawing pictures, her talent is true. Artistic skills, she’ll always pursue.

Learning new things, her curious mind. Expanding her knowledge, she’s one of a kind.

With family by her side, laughter and cheer. Making memories, she holds dear

Playing piano, her fingers glide. Melodic notes, her heart resides.

Guitar sessions with dad, a special bond. Music brings them together, and beyond.

As she grows, her passions will bloom. A bright future, she’ll soon assume.

Happy 13th birthday Flora , keep shining bright – May your dreams take flight.

Of course, you already guessed that this was written by ChatGPT.

I’ll admit it isn’t the worlds greatest poem, I’ll call it serviceable, and better than I’d write. This is the prompt I gave ChatGPT to come up with it: “Make a poem, Make it rhyme. Let it be about a girl turning 13 whose name is Flora. Include the following topics; reading, writing, drawing, learning new things, hanging out with family, playing piano, having a guitar session with dad”.

So, I read this out to my daughter, who really likes it, and is quite emotional. She says; “It’s so beautiful! How long did it take? When did you write it?” I say; “Just now, took me about 30 seconds to generate using ChatGPT…”

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My daughter went from being moved to pretty disappointed. The poem hadn’t changed, just ‘where it came from’. She told me she liked it because I did it, not the words, and went on to say, it’s just not as good anymore. This is what we ought remember.

I knew this would happen, but I really wanted to see a real human reaction to Robot Love. (FYI – I wrote her something myself as well which I’ll keep private – I’m, not that evil).

I also told her why I did it and explained the new tech and pending impact of society. And she was totally cool with it and asked me to put the story in my new AI keynote, which I have.

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Here’s the Business Insight: When it comes to creativity, the future won’t be about whether AI can do it (it will be able) – it will be about choosing if we want it done by an AI, or human. Increasingly, we’ll need to choose between efficiency or humanity. Your customer should guide you. Depending on the context, how something was made is as important as what was created.

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Keep thinking,

Steve.

Converting Bits to Atoms

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

We’ve entered the next phase of technology and it is this:

Turning Bits into Atoms

What? Let me explain. Bits describe digital things, and software, is made up of many bits. Atoms make up physical things which we can touch and feel.

For the first 25 years of the internet we did this: We took the physical, and made it digital. We took a newspaper and put it online. We took a CD and created MP3s. We took BlockBuster and invented Netflix. We literally turned Atoms, into Bits.

Now we start to go in the opposite direction as well. We will take information and create physical things. Artificial Intelligence is becoming so powerful, we can now build a physical world from mere information. We can brew meat, we can build a mind, and even humanoid robots.

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With my new Startup – Macro3D I will be turning bits into atoms. (I practice what I preach). I will be printing houses. The image above is our first robot we’ve built – who we call ‘Arti‘. Arti will soon be printing low cost houses, and using materials (designed with AI) which are far better for the environment. Our goal is to assist with the housing crisis by providing financially and environmentally sustainable living. We are currently looking for investors for anyone who want to be help invent a better future. I firmly believe we we build a multi billion dollar company. Here’s what we can already do:

While much of the focus has been about AI (like ChatGPT) spitting out information, I’m more excited about AI helping us invent new energy systems, secure our food bowl and build our structures.

The future has already arrived, for those brave enough to embrace it.

—

Keep Thinking,

Steve.

How A.I. just changed the Internet

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Welcome to 2023 – This year I’ve promised myself to post here every Friday – starting today of course.

The impact of ChatGPT has been well documented in the media. If you haven’t played around with it yet – then I strongly suggest you give it a whirl.

There have been many articles about which industries and jobs ChatGPT might disrupt. Here’s a much simpler way to look at it from the Sammatron: If your job or industry uses ‘words’ – it will be impacted.

It’s that simple. It will impact everything. Like the internet that came before it, ChatGPT brings inordinate opportunities for those who choose to embrace the new reality.

The internet is currently:

A Giant Filing Cabinet

Everything we see on the internet is made by someone, somewhere. Words, pictures and video, all of it. Our experience on the internet is basically asking services to find and serve up what we’ve subscribed to or what we’ve searched for in this giant filing cabinet of human creation. Even when it is live, it’s still us peering in the window of what someone else is making or doing. This is why search and social are so powerful. That’s about to change.

We are about to go from Search Engines to Creation Engines.

(Read the above sentence again, it’s that important)

Let me explain. Starting now – we will shift from asking the internet to find what we want to asking it to create what we want. We’ll be expecting it to answer exact questions to queries, summarise things, write for us, create images, pictures, stories, animations, rap songs and even write software code for us by literally asking it to create an app that does XYZ. We are about to see another level of technology democratisation beyond what anyone can imagine.

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The art of the internet will rely on our ability to work with Artificial Intelligence. We’ll need to cajole the AIs to create what we are after. We’ll need to become great at prompting and teaching AIs how to build what we desire, because when used correctly, AI should be a mind expanding tool. An addendum to our biology, not a replacement. We’ll need to learn how to literally ‘train the AIs’ like we might a train a dog. It will be about the symbiosis of using tools. From a business perspective, our attention should be focused on industries that can cut costs through large language models and AI-generated imagery. The business of words and images will have production costs cut dramatically.

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Our imaginations on what to ‘make’ will become increasingly important. Here’s a prompt we might give very soon: “Create a seven minute animated movie, in manga style. Let it star a seven year old girl named Mary (base her animation on this picture) and her magic pony, who saves the world from a climate crisis. Give me versions in English, Spanish and Mandarin.”

As  I’ve previously written, the ability to determine what was made by a human or a machine will be increasingly difficult to differentiate. Likewise, an entirely new species of startups and business opportunities will emerge. It’s early, so it’s time to get started.

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Keep Thinking,

Steve.

MetaVerse – Use cases

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

The MetaVerse will definitely be a thing – a big thing in fact, just not a social thing. Here’s why:

The Metaverse has all the inconvenience of catching up in real life without any of the benefits.

Below I’ve listed ways industries can, will and already are employing Metaverse applications. So here are my best 3 use cases of the Metaverse. Hopefully it will help you understand, if and when, your company or industry should embrace the tech.

(1) Gaming & Entertainment: 

Video gaming is no small industry with an expected revenue of over $200 billion in 2022. It’s already larger than Hollywood and filled with significant competitors including Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Tencent, Electronic Arts and Epic Games, all of which used virtual and mixed reality and have large and loyal gaming populations. While many of these games have a multiplayer component, they aren’t driven by social interaction, it is more a side benefit. This sector will continue to morph into the Metaverse. We can expect movie studios to also enter this space, especially as video streaming eats into distribution networks – and they try and differentiate the cinema experience by making it more immersive.

(2) Training & Education: 

While pilots have long used simulated reality for flying training, VR is now starting to be used for surgeons and other professions which require physical dexterity and risk reduction during the training process. We could even use it to assist learning to play and instrument, or learning a language. Eventually trade schools will use Metaverse style applications.

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(3) Computer Aided Design:

 I was recently at Rio Tinto and took a virtual tour of a mine which was to be constructed. It felt incredibly real, so much so that I continued to duck my head while walking around. We can expect the metaverse to be used as a pre-production tool before anything of significant size is built. Think factories, warehouses, hotels and even our homes. Again, this space is well occupied by incumbents like AutoDesk and not particularly social in nature.

This will become an incredibly interesting and large business, just not very social in nature. But the short term use cases are actually quite clear and already filled with highly capable incumbents.

It seems Zuckerberg’s bet in this as a social application is way off. And if the $700 billion market valuation loss and 11,000 staff retrenchments this week are any indication – Meta (Facebook) as a business, is in for a bumpy ride.

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Keep Thinking,

Steve.

Metaverse – Hype of Reality?

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Why Now?

When a top 10 company by valuation like Facebook, changes its name and focus to the MetaVerse – it is going to generate a lot of attention. A google search of the term now has 141 million results, a more than 100 fold increase on a year ago. The reason that Facebook became Meta, and started its focus on the concept, is that Facebook after being one of the fastest growing companies in history, is now in decline. In terms of both revenue and profit.

Since its launch in 2004, Facebook was the clear winner of social networking. It has 3.6 billion users across its platforms which include Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. But now, it is starting to wane as TikTok encroaches and people turn away from its apps. Meta wants to own what it thinks will be the future of social interaction. Meta’s revenue is almost entirely dependent on advertising (97%). Their success in advertising is in no small part due to the information they can gather on their users. Meta knows what you like, do, believe, we’re you’ve been, where you’re going next, who you friends are, what your life history is and of course, and what you spend on. And it’s not just through their sites, rather via the likes and login ecosystem they’ve built on the web which creates such a rich data flow.

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There is no organisation in the history of the planet who nows more about individuals. They know more about you than your partner or government does. But this information gathering has become far more difficult as the owners of the hardware people access Meta apps on (namely Apple and Google) are starting to restrict Meta’s ability to track users. Likewise, governments the world over are quickly regulating against these privacy incursions, which are the fuel that powers the organisation.

This is a major problem for Meta, as don’t own any significant hardware. The Meta portal device has been discontinued and I don’t know anyone with a pair of their RayBan spy glasses. Because the Metaverse requires the use of goggles like the Meta Quest 2, it could solve this hardware problem and allow Meta to set its own privacy terms. To date they’ve made a massive investment including a $2 billion acquisition of the Oculus company and more than $70 billion in developing Metaverse hardware and applications. Zuckerberg really needs this to work.

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Hype or Reality?

So far, the share market hates it. The Meta Share price has declined more than 60% in the past year, losing investors more than $700 billion since its peak. That’s not a typo. In short, Mark Zuckerberg needs the Metaverse more than we do. But it is hard to see 3.6 billion people going from a ‘free service’ to having to invest $600 plus into a single purpose device (MetaQuest VR goggles) to log into Facebook Horizons.

In my view this is why the Metaverse is getting such attention. The only question is whether the people of the internet themselves will give it as much attention as Zuckerberg wants them to. If the meagre house hold penetration of VR goggles being at 0.03% of Facebook users is any indication – the answer is a clear no. Or at least, not for a long time.

Next Week: MetaVerse – Best use cases.

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Keep Thinking,

Steve.

The Metaverse Lowdown

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

It’s been almost a year since Facebook changed its corporate name to Meta Platforms. In that time, not unexpectedly, the ‘Metaverse’ has garnered much attention. I’m frequently asked by clients what I think about the Metaverse and whethe they should get on board. So here it is, from the Sammatron: the low-down on the Metaverse, where it’s at and where it might go next. I’ve started with a simple explanation of the Metaverse:

Metaverse 101

Firstly, the Metaverse isn’t about to ‘arrive’ like the iPhone did. It’s already here. Second Life, Minecraft, Roblox and all virtual reality applications can be considered Metaverses. In order to understand what the Metaverse is, we need to think of as a continuation of the internet. It’s an iteration, but one that forks into a different direction.

The concept of a Metaverse is built on the idea that one day we will live ‘inside’ computer systems. We can already see this trajectory looking back at the evolution of the web. At first, we had text only green screens with a limited number of connected computer systems to share information. Eventually we invented message boards, then hyperlinks and web browsers with graphical user interfaces. From here the web became an image repository with gifs, still images and high resolution video with real time livestreams. But all of it has been screen-oriented, with a 2D audio visual focus. Just like the smart phone was a fork in direction based on a new device, future Metaverse experiences are expected to become dependent on immersion devices such as virtual reality goggles.

The Metaverse aims to provides a whole body experience. First with headsets and glasses, and eventually haptic suits and gloves, so it feels real to your entire body. Virtual reality goes some of the way toward this experience, providing a 3D style reality that creates a sense of immersion. But the plan for those pushing the Metaverse is that all five humans senses will be involved with the ability to touch, feel, hold, walk and even smell and taste inside artificial environments. These more sophisticated environments will allow for interactions not currently possible on the internet. It would allow the web to cross the chasm and make many things feel real, rather be limited to on-screen replicas. The promise is that basic websites will have a Metaverse version of them, like many www sites already have app versions of them. One example is an ecommerce site becoming a virtual store you can interact inside virtually. It’s also touted that we’ll work and socialise inside the Metaverse. Just like apps and the web, there won’t be only one, but a multitude of Metaverse locations we can enter. In the long run, we won’t even need goggles. Instead we can connect to virtual worlds via brain machine interfaces (think Matrix). If this happens (I think it will – in decades’ time) the difference between the real and virtual world will be very difficult to distinguish.

Next week: The Metaverse hype versus reality.

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Keep Thinking,

Steve.