AT&T’s data science group has spent the past several months engaged in a type of internal reckoning that’s become common across the business world. Like venture capitalists and enterprise startups—which we explored in parts one and two of this series—legacy companies are examining how the latest advances in AI might change the way we work in the future.

As ChatGPT began to gain traction in February, AT&T’s team of around 300 data scientists and developers began talking to vendors, poring over blogs and forums, and experimenting to determine how this emerging form of conversational AI might help serve the wireless carrier’s business interests, according to AT&T Chief Data Officer Andy Markus.

Months later, the company rolled out its own office-wide version of ChatGPT, dubbed Ask AT&T, designed to draw from internal files to answer employee questions. Markus, citing internal tests, said large language models have helped the company’s programmers complete coding tasks around 20% to 50% faster than they had previously. It’s also being used for tasks like translating documentation across different languages.

AT&T is far from the only legacy company with a story like this. Businesses across almost every sector have worked with perhaps uncharacteristic speed to deploy the latest AI advances to their workforces. But hurdles like inaccuracy of generated information, data security, and disorganized internal databases have also limited these efforts.

Keep reading here.—PK

Remember when your parents said video games were a waste of time? Well, jokeʼs on them. Thatʼs because the gaming industryʼs 2.5x growth potential is creating the perfect opportunity for you to invest in Virtuix.

Virtuixʼs omnidirectional VR treadmills revolutionize gaming by letting players walk, run, crouch, and jump 360 degrees inside popular games and virtual worlds. In fact, itʼs been such a hit that they’ve already sold over $16m of products to companies like Dave & Busterʼs while building a community of 300k+ registered players.

Now Virtuix is ready to scale massively by bringing their ultimate gaming experience to millions of homes worldwide.

Invest in Virtuix by Aug. 10 to be a part of the future of gaming.

Despite some early stumbles out of the gate, technologists and media executives seem dead set on introducing large language models (LLMs) into the news business.

The New York Times reported last week that Google has been pitching media orgs like the Times, the Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal parent News Corp on an AI-based tool that would help journalists produce news stories.

Meanwhile, OpenAI inked a $5 million deal earlier last week with the American Journalism Project, which will give local news outlets more access to the startup’s GPT-4-based API. The Associated Press announced a similar partnership with OpenAI earlier this month, in which the newswire will get access to the tech company’s tools in exchange for licensing some of its archives to OpenAI, likely to be used to train its LLM.

Despite talk of the tool as an assistant, some early newsroom experiments with LLMs have not been encouraging. Tech site CNET’s forays into AI-produced journalism last year led to a glut of copy riddled with inaccuracies, as Futurism reported.

More recently, G/O Media, the publisher behind outlets like Gizmodo, Jezebel, and Quartz, published a handful of AI-generated stories that similarly contained basic factual errors, drawing an outcry from staffers. G/O editorial leadership told Vox last week that the company has no plans to stop, despite the backlash. The interview even drew pushback from a Google spokesperson on Twitter, who disputed the G/O Media exec’s contention that the search engine favors AI-generated content.

Keep reading here.—PK

Coworking is a weekly segment where we spotlight Tech Brew readers who work with emerging technologies. Click here if you’d like a chance to be featured.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in tech?

I develop and bring to market new technology solutions to help organizations deliver and secure their applications and APIs. This work ultimately brings a better digital world to life because applications and APIs are the building blocks of today’s digital experiences (e.g., the app you use to order and pay for coffee, how you connect remotely to your healthcare team, your banking app or website), and the number of them in the world is rapidly increasing.

My days are spent meeting with current and potential customers and partners to understand their challenges and opportunities, researching market trends, and working with my product management, architects, and engineering teams to design and deliver solutions to address those challenges and opportunities.

For example, most organizations today are challenged to protect their apps and APIs from cyberattacks. This objective is difficult both because threat actors are increasingly equipped with better automation and AI-based technologies, as well as the fact that the number of different app architectures and hosting locations that organizations must defend in today’s hybrid- and multi-cloud world is also increasing.

To help those organizations, we’ve developed a portfolio of solutions that secure, deliver, and optimize any app, any API, anywhere. And because our customers are navigating a significant and growing gap in available cybersecurity talent, looking ahead, we’re working on making the job of securing apps and APIs ridiculously easy.

Keep reading here.

Stat: 70%. That’s how much user engagement, measured in “daily active users,” has fallen on Meta’s Twitter competitor, Threads, since a peak on July 7, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing data from Sensor Tower.

Quote: “I was like, ‘Wow, does this thing think I should become white to become more professional?’”—Rona Wang, an MIT graduate who asked AI image generator Playground AI to turn an image of herself into a “professional LinkedIn profile photo.” The AI “made her complexion lighter and her eyes blue,” the Boston Globe reported

Read: ‘Training my replacement’: Inside a call center worker’s battle with AI (the New York Times)

Ready investor one: They’ve sold $16m in VR treadmills to venues like Dave & Buster’s. Invest in Virtuix by Aug. 10.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}