Boy, are you folks in for a treat! Ben Parr, Evo Heyning, and Renee Teeley are masters of AI, each in their own way. They’ll show you how it’s done and how you can do it better. We’ll wind up the hour with the world premiere of Evo’s latest work, which won’t be released publicly until May 23rd.

• Evo and her team at CHAPTR demoed Stori as part of Google's IO’s developer fest. Stori can be used to generate stories with a new ending every time.
• Ben is now an AI opinion columnist at The Information.
• Renee will walk through a day in the life of a creator using AI.

Coincidence that the WGA strike coincided with the widespread birth of generative AI? Methinks not. Yes, they are demanding better pay, higher streaming residuals, and a modicum of job security, but they’re sci-fi scale terrified that AI is going to write them out of the writer’s room. AI is just one part of the writer’s grievances, but don’t underestimate this first test of white-collar workers fighting to put some rules and regulations in place to limit the use of generative AI. It’s going to become a popular story, especially now that Congress is about to get its honorary degree.

Meanwhile, it’s starting to look as if we might spend the next few months watching reruns or watching those items on our formerly “unwatchable” list. The only other choice? Watch very bad scripts written by generative AI.

I asked ChatGPT to write a joke about the strike in the voice of Stephen Colbert. Here’s an excerpt from what could be the next monologue you hear:

Well folks, it looks like the writers guild is going on strike again. That's right, they're taking their pens and going home. Or maybe they're just taking their laptops to Starbucks, but either way, they're not writing. In fact, I heard they're already pitching a show where a group of writers have to survive without their laptops or Wi-Fi for a month. It's called "Survivor: Analog Edition.” I can't wait to see the drama unfold when they realize they can't just Google their way out of a problem.

Hey guys, you know what's not funny? The writer's guild strike. That's right, our favorite writers are going on strike again. Which means, once again, we're going to be stuck watching unscripted shows where people scream at each other, or as I like to call it, “the news."   

Microsoft was first out of the gate with its ChatGPT-infused search and bots. Despite the fact that Google processes 8.5 billion searches a day, they can’t afford any laurel-resting. While they have a ways to go, ChatGPT receives more than 65 million visits per day (compared to only 40 million for MS’s 14-year-old Bing). Need more mindblowing growth stats about ChatGPT?

And that’s why Google I/O, the company’s annual conference for developers, was an AI fest. All of Google’s product lines were reimagined with a long-drink of AI razzle dazzle. As demonstrated during the event, Gmail will now craft answers to your emails. Maps will provide high-fidelity views of places on your journey before you set out the door. Photos will use a magic editor so that your skies are always blue and your backgrounds are always beautiful. (Deep fakes or better photos?)

25 Google products, including docs and spreadsheets, will get the AI IV-drip from Google’s large language model PaLM 2. Google I/O had some well-intentioned remarks about using AI responsibly, including an announcement about AI-generated watermarks. It was meant to be reassuring, but I’m not sure the mission was accomplished.

The moment of irony? Watching the crowd of developers hooraying and huzzahing as Google announced that Bard is now trained on 20 programming languages.

Events, as we often note, are great for real-life synchronicity, but what about the other 360-some days of the year? With travel budgets being cut, coupled with a new generation that lost out to normal mentoring and community building during the pandemic, there’s a need for training that also builds community.

We’ve been playing with Kajabi, which combines elements of learning management with elements of community building. Another community we’ve signed up for is Maven, a place for course makers to build and share their knowledge. As leaner workplaces and a lack of up-to-date-skillsets become the new reality, these learning communities, while not new, are having a resurgence.

Back in March, VEG Member Lygeia Ricciardi reported from ViVE, a health conference. As an attendee, she couldn’t help but notice how events are changing. “Vivid stage lighting, colorful backdrops curved like the latest TVs, and filtered speaker images looked great.” Other health conferences, she reports, including AcademyHealth’s Datapalooza & HIMSS, have appointed social media “ambassadors” to amplify their content. “What I see as new,” she writes, “is an evolution toward a social-media-first visual design approach. It’s about making the treatment of speakers’ profiles compelling enough to share. And making the stage camera-friendly, like the set of a Broadway show, regardless of what’s on it.

New Yorker Alert
Our great friends at Remote Daily, a usually virtual podcast, are going live with an in-person gathering replete with live music, drinks, mindfulness, and a guest interview with award-winning Japanese illustrator Yuko Shimizu. Thursday, May 25th, at Carroll Hall in Brooklyn. RSVP here.

Homework Assignment
In preparation for our June meetup on “Building Community,” take a look at Amber Atherton’s new book on building virtual communities. Atherton, a partner at Patron, a Web 3 investment firm, talks to the pioneers of community building. (Though, in true pioneer spirit, Alfred Poor, our tech editor reminds me that the Whole Earth Catalog's The WELL, CompuServe, Prodigy, AOL and others were building virtual communities from the first instant a modem answered a call.)

“On artificial intelligence, trust is a must, not a nice to have,” says Margrethe Vestager, the Executive Vice President of the European Commission for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age. The commission just released a comprehensive framework for making sure AI can be trusted. Before the AI regulation, the EU took on privacy with GDPR, an imperfect but generally successful privacy framework, that’s now very much in practice. Plus the European Commission is going full guns on developing its comprehensive plan for Digital Twins to help preserve Europe’s cultural heritage.

It’s amazing how a union of such disparate members can work together to get sh**t done. Contrast this to the US and its patchwork system of different agencies at the state and federal levels trying to sort through the muck.