OpenAI, Amazon Strikes & Screen Sharing
5 in 5 - Brave & Heart HeartBeat #181 ❤️
This week, we’re discussing why the reinstating of Sam Altman at OpenAI may lead to the changing of their whole business model, and how “Make Amazon Pay Day” tried to steal Black Friday’s thunder.
Plus, Shein brings its wares to the real world, returns become a booming business in their own right, and a screen sharing mishap brings two tech firms to blows.
Let's get into it.
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#1 - OpenAI – Now What?
We’ve all been following the drama at OpenAI with bated breath and an array of shocked facial expressions.
In the unlikely event that you haven’t, a quick summary:
Sam Altman got kicked out of OpenAI by the board of directors, pretty much the entire company then created a petition to get him back (including some of the members of the board who got him booted). Then, Microsoft offered to hire them all including Altman. The finale so far has been that Altman is back, baby.
Now what?
What we actually find most fascinating about this isn’t the kicking out and reinstating of the CEO – been there done that, Apple and Twitter also got rid of and then reinstated their charismatic/problematic CEOs back in the day.
No, what’s interesting here is the change this move signals for what OpenAI is as an organisation.
The company was founded in 2015 as a “non-profit” organisation “with the goal of building safe and beneficial artificial general intelligence for the benefit of humanity.”
In 2019 they then changed to a “capped profit” structure, noting that the technology was so important that companies needed to benefit from it, but that it brings “risks that must be safely addressed” – hence a board of directors with control over the company.
That board “addressed” what they considered to be “risks” last week – albeit risks that they haven’t clearly stated to the public – and were swiftly removed from their roles, and OpenAI are now in the process of setting up a governance structure that will guide them in a more commercial direction.
Have they scrapped their original 2015 goals, which were already seemingly being watered down in favour of profit in 2019?
We HATE to agree with Elon Musk, truly, we do, but he recently tweeted (we still won’t say xed) that OpenAI’s new board needed directors “who deeply understand AI and will stand up to Sam.” Considering they managed to get rid of the last two people who did, what do you think the chances of that are?
#2 - A Very Black Friday For Amazon
This past Black Friday was the perfect day for Amazon workers to stage what unions are calling the largest day of industrial disruption in Amazon’s 30 year history, with strikes taking place in dozens of countries as part of “Make Amazon Pay” day.
Amazon have managed to make themselves synonymous with Black Friday and Cyber Monday events, and picketing workers chose this moment to make a point about their wages and treatment.
GMB union’s national secretary stated that although Amazon has tuned Jeff Bezos into the world’s richest man, to the point that he can literally go to space, there are union members working for Amazon who are not only struggling to put food on the table, they’re doing so under terrible working conditions.
What comes through most strongly from the protests is not only the demand for better wages, but a denouncing of conditions at Amazon, and a sense of unfairness in comparison to Bezos lavish lifestyle - gallivanting around Miami, plotting his escape to space and doing what turned out to be a very ill-timed vogue cover story posing in cowboy hats with Lauren Sanchez and waxing lyrical about their fairy-tale existence together.
One protestor wore a (frankly terrifying) paper mache Jeff Bezos head while holding a sign that read “we are not robots”, and unreasonable quotas are brought up time and time again. The union secretary drove the point home, saying that no matter how fast employees worked, it was never enough for the company.
Amazon spokespeople said that Black Friday deliveries would absolutely not be affected by the strikes, and the worst thing about this whole situation is… we believe them.
#3 - Shein Comes To Life
As part of their attempt to move out of the shadowy section of internet shopping – the world of photoshopped product imagery and too good to be true descriptions – Shein staged a pop-up shop in New York this week.
One of the tropes of ordering online from Shein is not knowing if what you’re going to get is actually what you see on the screen. With prices that low, and designs that are often rip-offs of other products, something’s got to give, and often that was the product itself.
There are plenty of YouTube videos where influencers fill time by showing us the image of what they ordered on Shein – often wedding dresses and occasion wear – and then compare it to the inevitably ridiculous bin bag covered in glitter and sequins that they actually received.
The golden era of these sorts of videos, however, seems to have passed, and Shein are getting better and better at knocking off fast fashion styles while keeping their prices low.
This pop-up lends them legitimacy by showing consumers that the products actually exist – you can see and touch them, the images aren’t photoshopped, and that cocktail dress still somehow costs less than the cocktail you’ll buy while drinking it.
It IS too good to be true, of course, however now it’s the employees making the clothes for pennies and the landfills filling up as they disintegrate after the first wash that are taking the brunt of that.
The consumer, however, are still getting decent-ish clothes out of the deal (by decent we mean they actually exist, look like the picture and aren’t barbie-sized when they arrive) and maybe Shein are banking on the fact that for many fast fashion lovers, that’s good enough.
#4 - The Booming Business Of Returns
A new business is booming across the world – reverse logistics.
Reverse logistics is the supply-chain process of returns, and is a rapidly growing sector of the economy which is booming in tandem with the rise in online shopping that started during the pandemic.
While in-store returns can involve searching for paper receipts and convincing the person at the till that you honestly haven’t worn or used the item, many online retailers expect you to return at least some of what you’re buying – making returns easy by using resealable bags and pre-printed labels.
Venture capitalist firms have pumped nearly 200 million dollars into reverse logistics startups in the last year, over 2.5x as much as in 2021, and Loop Returns, a company which sells software to companies looking to streamline the return process for consumers, raised 115 million dollars at the end of 2022.
Established companies are also jumping on the bandwagon after seeing the potential in reverse logistics, like Uber, who launched a feature which enables drivers to pick up your packages and take them to a returns centre for you, and UPS, who have seen their returns business grow 25% since 2020 and recently bought the startup Happy Returns.
Happy Returns, who set up “box free, label free returns” for companies using reusable fabric bags rather than carboard, have a section on their website on why now is the time to solve returns.
They note that while 12% of returns are only made due to sizing issues, 95% of shoppers said that a poor returns experience would make them less likely to repurchase from a particular brand.
Shoppers now expect as much from their returns experience as they do from their buying experience, and, for now, retailers seem to be happy to oblige.
#5 - The Dangers Of Screen Sharing
So, you’re in a meeting with your boss, colleague or client and, as always when using Teams – yes Microsoft we’re putting you on blast here because this is a disaster waiting to happen – the window automatically shown when you turn on screen sharing is your most recently opened chat window.
Now, because we’re nice professional types over here at B&H, we’ve never had an issue where our most recently opened chat windows have got us in trouble on screen share, but we imagine many many MANY people have.
A recent screensharing mishap, this time not the fault of Teams itself (the videoconference technology being used at the time has not been released) has led to a pretty important lawsuit between automotive technology company Valeo and Nvidia, the “world leader” in AI software.
Valeo are suing Nvidia, accusing them of benefiting from their code, after catching a glimpse of the code on the desktop of an ex-employee who left to join Nvidia when he minimised his PowerPoint presentation.
Could it have just been a similar code? Yes, but the fact that it was saved under the file name “ValeoDocs” did give them a bit of a clue. Valeo employees manged to get a screenshot before the ex-employee realised his error, and the rest is history.
Moral of the story: don’t steal trade secrets from your ex-employers, if you do, don’t save them under an incriminating file name, and if you still do, don’t show them to said ex-employers on screen share.
Brave & Heart over and out.
Bonus
Anti-Black Friday Advertising
This Black Friday, the French government launched an ad against Black Friday starring an “anti-salesman”.
In the ad, a shopper is struggling to decide on his purchase, asking the anti-salesman to help him choose between two shirts, both 70% off.
The anti-salesman suggests going for the one that’s 100% off – the one he’s already wearing!
The ad got mixed reactions, however, with the Commerce Alliance, the Union of Textile Industries and the French Union of Fashion and Clothing Industries asking for the ad to be recalled.
Oops.
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