Welcome to The Upgrade

Welcome to my weekly newsletter, which focuses on the intersection of AI, media, and storytelling. A special welcome to my new readers! Drop me a note here, and let’s get acquainted. 😊 

In today’s issue:

• The Week’s Top AI Stories 📰

• 🎓 20% off the MindStudio Academy: Learn AI Today! ⚡️

• 🎧 Podcast: How To Use AI in Your Media Company with Expert Consultant David Arkin

• 🎙️The Big Interview: AI Video Insights from Stacie Chan, VP of Business & Growth at Haiper

The Week’s Top AI Stories

Top AI Headlines

• OpenAI Insiders Warn of a ‘Reckless’ Race for Dominance — The New York Times

• Adobe Promises That It Hasn’t Gone Full Big Brother — Slate

• Meta's AI chatbot says it was trained on millions of YouTube videos — Business Insider

• How Apple Fell Behind in the AI Arms Race — The Wall Street Journal

• Microsoft Lays Off 1,500 Workers, Blames "AI Wave" — Yahoo Finance

• Ex-OpenAI star Sutskever shoots for superintelligent AI with new company — Ars Technica

Ethics, Society, & Safety

• How a Chatbot Helped Me Talk to My Dead Mother — The Wall Street Journal

• We’re unprepared for the threat GenAI on Instagram, Facebook, and Whatsapp poses to kids — Fast Company

• Google's AI Overviews Will Always Be Broken. That's How AI Works — WIRED

• OpenAI insiders are demanding a “right to warn” the public — Vox

Legal, Policy & Copyright

• OpenAI Imprisons AI That Was Running for Mayor in Washington — Futurism

• Why the few big AI players worry US antitrust regulators — Reuters

• Washington is waking up to AI’s risks about three years too late — CNN

• The Senate’s failure on AI policy leaves legislation up to the states — The Hill

AI in the Workplace

• AI Is Your Coworker Now. Can You Trust It? — WIRED

• Writers accept lower pay when they use AI to help with their work — New Scientist

• No AI skills on your resume? Expect lower salaries and fewer roles in the future — The Hill

• AI is replacing human tasks faster than you think — CNN

• Generative AI Can Write Computer Code. Will We Still Need Software Developers? — Forbes

AI Tools

• Humane warns AI Pin owners to ‘immediately’ stop using its charging case — CNET

• AI agents are having a 'ChatGPT moment' as investors look for what's next after chatbots — CNBC

• Will Apple's AI Finally Make Siri Smart? — PCMag

• How to Break Out of AI-Fueled Analysis Paralysis — Entrepreneur

🎓Learn AI with MindStudio Academy! 💻

Ready to learn the fastest way to build no-code AI-powered apps and automation? The Upgrade is partnering with MindStudio to lead the MindStudio Academy! ⚡️

The next cohort takes place on Saturday, July 13th. Hope to see you there!

SAVE 20% with code: THEUPGRADE20

The Big Interview: Stacie Chain, Growth at Haiper 🎙️

Stacie Chan is the VP of Business & Growth at Haiper, an AI video generation platform. She was previously the co-founder of Vidiofy AI, which was recently acquired. Stacie's background spans journalism, media, and tech, having worked at Google and covered the technology industry as a reporter.

Peter: Tell me about building your AI product at Vidiofy. How did you achieve such fast product velocity and iterate so quickly?

Stacie Chan: When we founded the company, 1 Billion Stories, we were not in the video space at all. We started out building web stories, a format popularized by Google. But then we started hearing a ton of customer feedback asking for the MP4 file of the web stories we created for their campaigns. So we expanded our product offering. Velocity comes from focusing on being quick to identify an opportunity, validate the hypothesis with a few customers, and if people are willing to pay, you build it. With video, the opportunities were tremendous, and it unlocked so many platforms to prove value to our customers.

Peter: How does Hyper, the new AI video company you joined, stand out in this growing field of generative AI startups? What niche is it aiming to fill that others are not?

Stacie Chan: Haiper stands out because it is building its own proprietary foundation video models. Everything is generated from scratch - every prompt you type in or image you upload creates an original video that has never been seen before. We believe our output quality is the best and most impressive compared to others. Hyper's generated videos can become the bedrock for other companies to provide an application layer on top. So there's the B2B angle of partnering with other AI companies. But we also have millions of creators, SMBs, and entrepreneurs generating videos on our platform today for various use cases. Seeing that collective creativity is thrilling.

Peter: Let's zoom out to the big picture—how are you reading the AI landscape in mid-2024? Many people outside the tech industry struggle to understand the basics and feel more fear than optimism. What's your take on the common concern that AI will take jobs away?

Stacie Chan: I understand the concern, but we've seen this movie before. When I was a journalist, everyone feared that newspapers going online would take away readership and jobs. But you can't ignore the fact that the format of how people consume news has fundamentally changed. The same will happen with AI - fighting is like stomping your feet in protest rather than adjusting.

AI will change many jobs and make parts of them redundant. But it will also create entirely new opportunities we can't even imagine yet. The key is to adopt a mindset of curiosity and identify where AI can genuinely help you. Use it to automate the mundane tasks you don't enjoy so you can focus on higher-level work. Anytime I have a workflow I don't love, I search for an AI tool to assist with it. Embrace AI with an open mind, and it will work wonders.

Peter: With the explosion of generative AI models and startups, some compare it to the dot-com bubble. They predict a lot of churn and an eventual burst, especially in VC funding. Do you agree or see this AI surge as fundamentally different?

Stacie Chan: This is not a bubble or just hype because we're seeing true value created every day. When you can point to how AI is tangibly impacting people's lives, growing business revenue, and saving workforce hours, that's not a bubble; that's a powerful tool. Saying AI is a bubble is like calling the Internet a fad.

It's up to leaders to explore how AI can best be utilized to increase efficiency and maximize impact. If you're going to turn a blind eye to AI's potential for your business, you're not thinking strategically. Embracing it is the first step. Give a few tools a try in your workflows, and you'll see the benefits. Writing it off completely helps no one.

Peter: As we're still in the Wild West phase of generative AI, there aren't always clear policies or laws around acceptable use and ethics. How does Haiper think about developing an ethical framework for its AI products?

Stacie Chan: We thought deeply about this at Vidiofy but couldn't come to definitive answers because the technology is evolving so rapidly. Even at the highest court levels, cases around art ownership and copyright are extremely complex, and there is no clear consensus.

At Haiper, we adhere to current legal guidelines while consulting closely with our lawyers. Our core principle is to empower creativity without limiting imagination, but of course, with safeguards against abuse. We aim to support creators within the realms of what's legally possible.

But it's an ever-shifting landscape, so the key is to always listen, keep an open mind, admit when we're wrong, and course-correct as needed. We promise to act in good faith, put up appropriate guardrails, and protect people to the best of our abilities without stifling creativity and innovation.

Don’t be shy—hit reply if you have thoughts or feedback. I’d love to connect with you!

Until next week,

Peter

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