Meta Ray Bans, Fake Podcasts & Maternity Pay
5 in 5 - Brave & Heart HeartBeat #218 ❤️
This week we’re asking, is Meta cool now, telling you why you’re probably not as smart as you think you are when it comes to fake news, and meeting our podcast replacements.
Plus, do we really need Microsoft’s compassionate AI, and is maternity pay excessive?
Let’s get into it.
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#1 - Is Meta Cool Again?
Meta had their version of the Apple Keynote, Meta Connect, and for once, it seems to have beaten Apple. So much so, that people are actually suggesting that Meta might be, god forbid, cool again…
Mark Z has clearly had help with his image overhaul, maybe from a personal stylist, maybe media training, maybe a life coach, who knows, but people said that up there on stage at Meta Connect he was charismatic. Yes, really.
And if this year’s Apple Keynote focused on software over hardware, showing us yet another slightly different version of the same old stuff, Zuckerberg blew us out of the water by announcing a version of smart specs that might actually work, because this time it has AI in it.
Meta’s Orion AR glasses showed a much cheaper version of Apple’s headset with more interesting capabilities, while their announcement that they’d be adding AI to their Meta Ray Bans smart glasses had sales of the already-existing product going through the roof in the wake of the conference.
Apparently you’ll be able to use the glasses to translate in real time, point at an object and search for more information on it or even buy it, plus the more basic stuff like taking pictures, calls and reading messages out.
All that plus technology that means you hear through the stems of the glasses directly into your brain via vibrations in your eardrums, no headphones needed, and this time they HAVE actually piqued our interest.
Mark Zuckerberg may have finally snapped out of his Metaverse dream and joined us all in the “real” world, with useable tech that actually gets people excited.
#2 - How Likely Are You To Fall For Fake News?
Well, more likely than you think you are, and therein lies the issue.
A recent study showed that most people think they’re smart enough to spot fake news without too much effort, and that’s exactly why we’re all vulnerable to it.
Apparently while almost 60% of people think THEY can spot fake news online, they think that only about 35% of others could spot it. Basically, I’m smart, everyone else is dumb, I could never be fooled by fake news, right?.
Wrong.
And that was proven by the recent instagram story about Meta AI that went viral, with people reposting a story with the text “I do not consent to allow Meta to train AI on my data, no to Meta AI, blah blah blah”.
We’re paraphasing of course, and, of course, reposting some random instagram story is not how you opt out of allowing Meta to train AI on your data.
That didn’t stop literally thousands of people from taking it as gospel, reposting it, and not only not opting out of Meta AI in the process… but also looking dumb.
Basically, If you think you’re too smart to get fooled by fake news, think again.
#3 – Your New (Least) Favourite Podcast
How many people does it take to make a podcast? Well, nowadays, none.
Google’s NotebookLM, an online research assistant with that uses classic AI features like document summarisation, has gone viral for creating podcasts out of thin air.
The tech has been around for a while, but people online have just discovered that the audio version of the document summarisation will take whatever information you give it and turn it into a podcast hosted by two fake podcast hosts, banter and all.
Some of those funny guys over at Reddit fed the AI software a podcast script in which it mentioned that the two hosts were AI, and sat back as those friendly little bots had an existential crisis. It’s cute, but not proof that the machines are sentient, alas.
We fed it this newsletter and it came up with a podcast much like our own (which you can check out here). The most interesting thing about it was that while much of it came directly from the newsletter, our lovely bot hosts added in their own opinion and extra facts, obviously scraped from the wider web.
What’s the point?
Originally the idea would have been to summarise a lenghty document and make a certain topic more engaging and easier to digest.
Now, people are just messing around.
#4 - Microsoft’s Emotional AI
The new CEO of Microsoft AI is a touchy feely guy, and he wants Microsoft’s AI to be touchy feely as well.
Mustafa Suleyman wants people to “fall back in love with the PC” and he thinks the new and improved Copilot is going to help them do that.
Suleyman envisages a future where we “trust” our AI companions and work together with them, rather than just asking them to do what he refers to as the “pure maths” stuff that OpenAI is doing.
He’s not there yet, but their newest Copilot feature, Vision, is already bringing the companion feature to life in a way. In Copilot Vision, your AI assistant can see what you’re seeing, meaning you no longer have to type to ask for their help.
Pretty cool, but we don’t know if we need the rest of the stuff he’s trying to offer us. Talking about his background in telephone counseling – a service he started at only 19 – he says that he’s long believed in AI’s potential to “provide support”, describing his vision of an AI companion who “gets to know you”, coaches, supports, encourages and teaches you. So much so, that it “doesn’t feel like a computer anymore”.
We already had emotional support for Microsoft. He was called Clippy, and we miss him.
#5 - Maternity Pay Is Overrated?
According to a UK politician who will remain nameless, maternity pay in the UK is “excessive” and too much of a burden on businesses. If you want to have a kid, pay for it yourself pal!
Here’s why that’s not helpful advice to businesses:
1 – First of all, statutory maternity pay is paid for by the government and can be claimed back from HMRC, so as a business you’re not losing out by paying maternity pay.
2 – Enhanced maternity pay is a benefit that allows you to show your employees that you value them even when they’re not contributing to your bottom line. When you value your people, your people bring value to you.
3 – Many people choose their jobs based on an attractive maternity package, because like it or not, people have kids.
Sure, it can be a risk to offer enhanced maternity pay to an employee who may not come back after their leave is over. 50% of women don’t come back to work, and of those who do, 48% leave in the coming months.
But, what isn’t mentioned in those stats is the mothers who are excited to return to work to find that their first day back is a non-event, or their projects have all been given to someone else, or their boss asks how their “vacation” was.
Value your employees before, during, and after their maternity leave if you want to keep them.
Brave & Heart over and out.
Bonus
A Day In The Life Of…
The maddest madman on the internet, Elon Musk.
The Guardian did a deep dive on a day’s tweets from the man who ruined the platform himself, and it was honestly terrifying reading.
He posts hundreds of times a day, takes a break for only a few hours at a time, and each one is more unhinged than the last.
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