Elon Musk tweeted out my statistics cartoon yesterday. 37 Million views and counting—this is presumably the closest I will ever get to fame! (Credit where credit is due: I used ChatGPT to create a base graphic, then did some editing and fixing and added the words in Photoshop. And the phrase is not mine: variations have been around at least since I studied statistics at university a long time ago, and I think Hannah Fry coined this excellent version). Looking for more cartoons about data and statistics? Try here [And finally, I’m still waiting for somebody to ask “but what about the married pe ..read more

This has been on my mind recently. Marketers are being tempted to use the latest generative AI tools to create a tsunami of spam content—flooding the zone with automated social and blog posts. But the right answer is to take a step back and remember what marketing is for: to help buyers buy. Organizations have an opportunity to use the power of AI to rethink the entire customer journey, making sure they optimize every touchpoint from the point of view of the customer. And to do that, you need to be able to get a view of their activities across every aspect of your interactions: not just they ..read more

I got a chance to try out the Apple Vision Pro at the SAP Paris office yesterday (a real honor, since it’s not going to be commercially available in France until much later this year). Many thanks to Jerome Conin, part of the SAP Mobile Experience team which is working to get the most out of this technology in work environments. SAP and Apple are close partners (we use a lot of Apple products and Apple uses SAP Business Technology Platform for innovation among other things) and so our developers had early access to the platform and two SAP applications were already available at the launc ..read more

Just a quick reminder that a hostile culture can kill any technology project — and often does! Researchers say that AI projects tend to be “technosocial” — where technical aspects dominate the social side of work. But investments in “sociotechnical” approaches (putting people first) can pay big dividends, because ultimately the biggest benefits of AI are in Augmented Intelligence, empowering people and teams to do more than they could in the past. Taking care to structure the new ways of working after a technology implementation can save a world of hurt and frustration for everybody involved ..read more

We’ve all heard the expression “garbage in, garbage out” when it comes to data systems. But Generative AI brings a big caveat, and a big new opportunity. Generative AI can help turn data garbage into business gold. Data remains the biggest and most important factor in the usefulness of AI systems. Algorithms are becoming a commodity, so the biggest differentiator is the quantity, quality, and relevance of the underlying data set. And the better the data, the easier it is to create quality outputs.  But there’s an important distinction between the underlying data and the way it’s actually ..read more

At dinner the other day, my daughter was explaining a complex probability question in a recent mathematics test. My wife asked if she had the test paper, and suggested she put into ChatGPT to get help. I’m sure everybody can relate with that idea. After all, the entire history of computing has told us that computers are good at maths and logic. So when we hear that artificial intelligence has had a considerable breakthrough we all automatically assume that it’s in the same direction. But that’s what’s so confounding about the latest large language models. They’re generally terrible at mathema ..read more

Google has unveiled the latest Gemini AI model. But it apparently runs on new WYSINWYG technology (What You See Is Not What You Get)… One of my maxims has always been “if the reality is better than the marketing, you’re doing marketing wrong”—but there are limits, and the apparently-somewhat-faked launch video of the new Gemini Ultra model seems to have gone beyond them, generating significant backlash: “Google admits Gemini AI Demo was at Least Partially Faked: This is just embarrassing” https://lnkd.in/euamvWyS To be clear, this does seems to be a very capable model, the first to really c ..read more

It was one of my favorite events of the year last week — the annual conference for the members of the UK and Ireland SAP user’s group, UKISUG Connect 2023, in the ICC in Birmingham. As is customary, Paul Cooper, UKISUG Chairman kicking things off with the results of a member survey highlighting current concerns: ….Take the issue of indirect licensing […] after a bumpy ride, we, along with the other global user groups, managed to get SAP to recognize that the customers needed a more transparent and fairer approach to licensing.  The point is that the road has always been bumpy. But when w ..read more

“I never learned about survivorship bias and I turned out okay!”. This is a concept that is incredibly relevant to digital innovation—because when the people on stage tell you how to be successful, you’re not seeing all the other people that followed that same advice but failed miserably. Here, for example, is professor Scott Galloway explaining why the “worst advice you will ever hear in business school” is “follow your passion” Scott Galloway explains why following your passion is terrible advice ..read more

Did you know that every single person who confuses correlation and causation ends up dying ..read more