Charlie Muirhead (CogX)

Everything you wanted to know about Quantum Computing and investing but were too afraid to ask. Can't make it to Viva Technology next week? I'll be covering the startups, events, talks and insight right here. Click follow.

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Today on the Hacking Self Storage podcast I'm excited to share a powerful insight from Mark Helm: how population growth can address many challenges in self-storage. Speaking of growth, our course reopens tomorrow. And it's packed with insights and tools from top experts like Gavin Shields and Laura Moxham. Give it a listen.

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I’m going to give you guys the blueprint of how I believe the music industry is going to go: First was Fan Interaction: Where fans were able to buy music through vinyl, cassettes, and CDS. Fans were able to discover new music through traditional radio and cable TV which increased opportunities to interact with new music from breaking artists. With the advent of social media and music streaming came the next wave which is Fan Engagement: Now fans can actually engage with music through home videos which became a viral engine through platforms like YouTube and TikTok. Music streaming platforms like Spotify were able to simplify Fan Interaction through user generated fan-made albums (playlists) and discovery through algorithmic recommendations. Now, with generative AI comes a unique opportunity I call Fan Participation: For the first time in the history of the music business, fans can become part of the creative process and work with artists on a much more deeper level. Artists can earn royalties through the creative imagination of the fans. I look at Grimes AI as a perfect example of this. There are so many applications and possibilities that is untapped and riped for innovation. Instead of looking at it like Napster 4.0, majors need to take a double look at new AI technologies that can enhance the fan participation experience. Music used to be an art form where certain creators can benefit. Now with AI, the art can be shared and collaborated with the fans. This not only increases fan engagement but also fan interaction as well. It’s a triple-win for major record companies and large indies.

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https://lnkd.in/e7aaV_cS AI2030 pushes responsible and ethical use of AI. How? Founder Xiaochen Zhang chats with Techstination's Fred Fishkin about the dangers, benefits and challenges.

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Really good piece this on the lurking challenges for the technology that everyone’s talking about but many people don’t know what to do with. There’s about to be a huge bloodbath for VC-backed lightweight LLM wrappers. But also big questions for OpenAI’s business models. An Enterprise model for ChatGPT might be a thing, but that interface isn’t great for everyone and a lot of the value already freely exists in Bing.

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AI versions of commentators.., personalised recaps.. anchors using AI to comment & answer questions related to comps.. & these are just a few examples of #AI in broadcasting.. Can’t wait to see more #GenAI in action at #Paris #Olympics2024

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The pace of developments in Generative AI is relentless but so are the opportunities cropping up. NVIDIA’s NIMS (NVIDIA Inference Microservices) announcement has democratized and simplified deployment of sophisticated generative AI models to a 'plug and experiment' mode for developers across enterprises. We now have the ability to speedily integrate AI-driven recommendations, customer support, chatbots, and advanced data analysis. AI is being made more accessible than ever before. Time to upskill, spruce up the structure and quality of data, get clear on the problem you are solving and play. #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #NVIDIA #Innovation #TechTrends #BusinessGrowth #PlugAndPlayAI #DigitalTransformation #AccessibleAI #Digitalhumans https://lnkd.in/dmRMXbFe

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Several take aways from this report. 1. As streaming subscriptions necessarily raise prices, that is causing impact to consumers subscription habits - quite rightly. Getting the balance right is important, both on the cost (how much content) and price (how much revenue) so that revenue exceeds cost ultimately, because companies need to make money otherwise they are not businesses. One area where this is being felt is in the aggregator pricing - how much it costs to have the aggregator, and this is where traditional pay TV businesses are failing by still charging too much for what they contribute. 2. Cost of broadband is keenly felt, and you can see that in the markets as broadband operators increase prices as they need to maximise their revenue in the face of little or no opportunity for incremental revenues, both from their premium (faster) packages that most customers don't need, and the bad management of their key incremental revenue source - TV / Entertainment services. 3. Attributing customers using 5G instead of wireline for broadband to being their 'choice' or 'desire' is a misnomer. These are customers who are cutting into bone to reduce costs, because broadband costs in most countries less than equivalent 5G services, unless that product is a Fixed Wireless option - and that is still only competitive, with poorer speed. Speed is about 'fast enough' and sorry, 5G is not 'fast enough' in most instances as it barely gets fast enough to be classified as high speed broadband in most locales in real life. 4. Unreliable home internet is something that needs to be addressed. I see some have problems with older FTTC or HFC connectivity, rather than FTTH and that deployment progress will help remove the older more unreliable setups, but the issue is also with WiFi. Operator WiFi solutions are the issue here. Ask a professional in the industry about what they use, and more often than not you will hear the refrain 'Not what the operator provides', or higher cost, more performant Mesh solutions. There is a view that some of the success of Alt-nets in the UK is for those who provide retail based products like Eero by default, because they offer much better performance. There needs to be a step change in Operator solutions that are NOT engineered to a price. What are your thoughts on this?

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The internet can be better, but it’s not scalable, and kinda nasty. We need infrastructure that’s optimised to be built upon. Thankfully, new progress in advanced disintermediating technologies means that the future internet will, indeed, be better. It’s been a while since our last networking revolution, and it’s understandable that we forget how to think about new worlds and get mired down in the cynicism of the present - but another future is possible. We must remember the key role of imagination for those who created the early internet, or the first personal computers. The alternative is a future not worth countenancing. Decades have passed, and I'm still optimistic about startups as a vessel from which one can hijack the course of human history. Startups need to change, but I'm confident in a very particular kind of startup over the next decade - their time has not yet passed as an effective organisational entity. After all, we are but surfers on grand techno-social waves initiated by hearts and minds far greater than mine. So get in the car, loser. It's going to be so fun! --- Extended version at https://lnkd.in/etbpgrrC ❤️

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Together with Dr Jussi Westergren, Emmy Network Fellow in Computer Science at Keble College, Oxford, I’ve written for Sifted on the importance of the budget tomorrow for the future of UK tech. It’s absolutely vital that the Government invests in developing the country’s next-generation compute capacity - or ‘supercomputers.’ Next-generation compute is set to drive breakthroughs in everything from drug discovery to financial modelling via supply chain and how we understand language in the near future. And will also create value for businesses and enable startups to accelerate their development exponentially. If the government does not adequately support home-grown supercomputing, the UK risks losing its status as a leading tech hub as its startups struggle to compete with rivals in Europe and the US. But by delivering funding and fostering a conducive wider investment environment, Britain could thrive in the supercomputing era. The depth of tech, research and business talent in this country is second to none, and the appetite from start-ups, corporations and researchers is there. A great deal of work has already been undertaken in Edinburgh in preparation for this investment. Additional schemes can be balanced around the country, and indeed there are a number of sites which would be suitable to host a supercomputer system. Bletchley Park is such a site: with obvious historical symbolism, geographic advantages and the recent host of the global AI safety summit. Alan Turing brought enormous benefits to humankind, and it would be a fitting tribute to him. Turing Machines still influence current computer science and the Turing Test is more relevant than ever. Close to Oxford, Cambridge and London - home to many of the finest brains in the world - the Bletchley Park SuperCompute is a project that must happen. Full piece here:

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Writer has released its proprietary large language models (LLMs) - Palmyra Small, Base, and Large. This move makes Writer the first company to offer both an application layer and a foundation model layer in a single platform, addressing barriers to enterprise AI adoption. The Palmyra LLMs, with sizes ranging from 128M to 20B parameters, are designed for business organizations. They are trained on business writing and marketing data, including formats such as emails, memos, reports, and marketing copy. This specialized training aims to make the models more effective for tasks like drafting professional communications, creating marketing content, and generating business reports. This new frontier model excels in function calling and workflow execution, key capabilities for building practical AI agents and assistants for businesses. Writer's new API, powered by the Palmyra LLMs, allows companies to scale their usage and integrate generative AI into their products. Businesses can fine-tune the models with their own data, brand guidelines, and style Writer has made Palmyra Small (128M parameters) and Base (5B parameters) freely available on Hugging Face. Hugging Face, a platform for sharing machine learning models and datasets, allows developers and researchers to access, experiment with, and build upon these models.

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Was the slick "Apple Intelligence" recorded pre-address to this years' WWDC developer's conference persuasive enough? A quick YES, from a person who has avoided Apple products for decades; solely, on the principle that it was a closed commercial ecosystem -- now the closed ecosystem finally makes sense! End-to-end AI productivity and security of personal data are the key selling points! > Forget that Apple branded AI to mean "Apple Intelligence" -- a genius move! > Forget that the Apple stock price dropped during the live stream of the event. > Forget that I was in the #NeverAPPLE crowd and have absolutely refused to buy into the Apple vision for over 20 years -- preferring Microsoft and android devices for the choice and openness of their platforms and being satisfied with the security capabilities they provided. End-to-end #AI productivity and the fact that Apple promises that all of my personal data resides securely on my devices when leveraging AI platforms, unless I want to divulge that information to those platforms, is enough for me to want to spend ~$10k+ to buy into the ecosystem (MacBook Pro, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Airpods... the whole product suite and related interoperability subscriptions that are likely necessary). I'm finally seriously considering taking a bite of that forbidden fruit! ... but not until this time next year, when the systems are fully inter-operational and the bugs are worked out -- I suspect that there may be some phone processor, interoperability, and/or battery overheating issues that may initially arise. These are exciting times in computing productivity, and I am open-minded enough to totally change my work habits and swap out my current communication tools to become more productive and to live emersed in a world of AI... safely. Others may get there, but I'm not sure that open interoperability is a safe strategy to follow anymore. With AI, the hackers and other malicious players are simply going to become too intelligent themselves. Unfortunately, I need to start building walls to protect myself and my personal data! Not doing so will likely mean a more expensive and personally disruptive path. What are your thoughts? #ArtificialIntelligence #AppleIntelligence #AppleProducts #Technology #Innovation #Interoperability #Computing

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🚨The 🇫🇷 French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, blocked Tiktok 🤯 Telcos have been asked to make their DNS lie Why did he Block it? Because the app “ hosts messages of hate and calls for violence ” On what legal grounds is the government acting? This ban 🛑 is made possible by implementing state of emergency, enacted Wednesday 15 night (Paris time). This temporary measure grants the State the power to take exceptional actions and restrict certain public freedoms to confront a situation of extreme gravity. It notably allows the Prime Minister to request the blocking of any online public communication service that "incites the commission of terrorist acts or glorifies them. There would have been other means to do it but this was the quickest one ( If you want to learn about the other means please comment below) How did they technically do it ? They just asked the telcos DNS to lie. Basically changed TikToks address in the phonebook. Even if you already have the app refreshing any content on it becomes impossible. Are there workarounds? Sure, and they are not that complicated changing your DNS and not use the one from your ISP. Why is none of the ISPs refusing to do it ? The ban is on “Nouvelle Calédonie” there is only one ISP there: Mobilis owned by the telco office of Nouvelle Calédonie Was Tiktok refusing to take down content? No request has been made by the French government to takedown any content. It looks like they just wanted to act fast. It’s a huge precedent I bet Tiktok content ops has more people looking at the content over there now 😊 Tiktok was banned in Nouvelle Calédonie ( French territory) from the 15th to the 31 of May 2024 #socialmedia #tiktokban #content #startup #ops #coo #trump #

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