Innovating with AI - Coca-Cola's AI ad ruined Christmas 🎄

Hey there,

I hope life, work and the world of AI are treating you well! We're back with 3 big things in AI.

#1 – I thought Coke's AI commercial was cool, but apparently it went viral for the wrong reasons...

A friend sent me Coca-Cola's AI-generated Christmas ad without commentary – and I thought it was awesome!

But apparently a lot of people disagree. The first thing I did was Google it to confirm it was real, after which I discovered a litany of hate about how it's creepy and/or the death of all art for all eternity.

So, I think this is a good opportunity to unpack some of the reflexive reactions.

First, this video generation is so far beyond what was possible two years ago, that there really are no numbers or charts I can show to properly explain how powerful this technology is.

Yeah, it looks weird right now. But anyone can now make nearly Hollywood-quality video with a text prompt! It's really wild. As we see more of these video models become publicly available, we'll see more artistic uses of them, like the beautiful Airhead short made with OpenAI's Sora.

Right now, the "haters" talking about the uncanny valley kind of remind me of the comedy sketch about people who complain about airplane travel: you are ignoring the fact that you are flying at 300 miles an hour through the sky in a chair... what you're doing was completely impossible for any human 100 years ago! 😂

So, my approach is: avoid the naysayers, enjoy and laugh along with the imperfections right now, but also recognize how big a change this is all computing, and how different things will be 10 years from now.

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#2 – AI 'breaks the career ladder'

I liked this Bloomberg article, "How AI Could Break the Career Ladder," because it's a topic I think about a lot in the context of my software development firm and "professional services" in general, which includes lawyers, accountants and a lot of finance companies.

Basically these companies are built on an "up or out" pyramid, where they hire a ton of associates to do grunt-work, and then the highest-performing people move up via promotions (and the rest are ushered "out" of the company).

AI taking over lots of the grunt-work has the potential to mess this up (the author calls it "white-collar apprenticeship," which is a nicer way to say it than "up or out"), and that's something I think about a lot too. If there's less grunt-work, how do you get the opportunity to shadow and learn? If there's less shadowing, do we end up with lower-skilled managers and partners in a few decades as the current ones age out of the workforce? Basically, this is a huge problem for a lot of these companies, even as they benefit in the short-term from AI efficiencies.

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#3 - Apple's next AI play

Apple Intelligence is not very good yet – our CTO, Brian, was telling me yesterday that his kids say it's actually worse than Siri, which is a pretty incredible feat.

That said, Apple is still well positioned to win in AI, with its proprietary chips (M3, etc.) and the ubiquity of its devices in our lives. Next up, they're planning an AI wall tablet, heading in the direction of the "smart home" trend.

I am personally not a big smart-home fan (we do have a thermostat that hooks up to our phones, though!) – basically my maximum use of Alexa/Siri tools is saying things like "add grapes to the grocery list" or "set a timer for 10 minutes." It's handy but really offers minimal value above any generic app or to-do list.

When we finally get good AI attached to things like shopping lists and light switches, it'll be a big deal (and very Star Trek-esque). So far we have not seen that breakthrough, and Apple actually seems pretty far behind the curve.

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🤓 By the way, have you subscribed to our YouTube channel yet? After Brian finishes his battle with Apple Intelligence we have a lot of new videos lined up.

That's all for today!

As always, if you have any questions or topic ideas for next week, just reply.

Have a great day,

– Rob Howard
Founder of Innovating with AI