Rami's Readings #32

Welcome to Rami’s Readings #32 - a weekly digest of interesting articles, videos, Twitter threads from my various sources across the Internet. Expect a list of reads covering technology, business, culture, fashion, travel and more. Learn about what I do at ramisayar.com/about.

Apéro & Intellect #1 - Recap

I hosted the first Apéro & Intellect in New York City yesterday. Apéro & Intellect is a series of intimate gatherings discussing Artificial Intelligence over coffee, tea, or cocktails designed to stimulate your mind and palate.

Attendees asked for actionable tips for applying LLMs/ML daily. These are the top 3 tips that resonated the most:

Thank you for attending! The next one will be announced in this newsletter.

🤖 AI Reads

Apple is reportedly spending ‘millions of dollars a day’ training AI

Notes: Millions a day sounds about right.

Automation Nation? AI Adoption in Canadian Businesses

Notes: Fantastic report on the state of AI adoption in Canada. My highlights from the report:

Canada has a long way to go before we have integrated AI into our economy. By 2021, only 3.7 percent of Canadian firms had deployed AI in their business in any capacity. When compared to other similar countries, Canada lags in AI adoption. Global leaders like Denmark have so far had more than double the rate of adoption of AI as Canada.

Adoption has also been leaving some equity-seeking groups behind: businesses owned by women, Indigenous peoples, and people living with disabilities are far less likely than other businesses to currently be using AI.

This next quote further reinforces the need for innovation teams at all companies:

We find that firms that report any spending on R&D are nearly seven percent more likely to have adopted AI than similar firms with no R&D spending.

Quebec is the adoption leader in Canada but nowhere near where it should be given the heavy AI R&D spend in the province.

While Québec is acknowledged as a leader in the research and development of new AI technologies, its success in the adoption and commercialization of those tools has been more sluggish. The SDTIU shows that Québec does have the highest rate of AI adoption in Canada, but not by a wide margin and still within the margin of error. This means that just as adoption in Canada has been weak compared to peer countries, adoption in Québec is similarly lagging behind.

Anthropic’s Claude AI chatbot gets a paid plan for heavy users

Notes: A competitor to ChatGPT Plus.

💼 Business Reads

Blancpain X Swatch Collaboration Sparks Another Sales Surge

Notes: The collaboration is the brainchild of Nick Hayek (son of the late Nicholas Hayek). This collaboration is even better - you get an automatic movement! For those curious, Nicholas Hayek is of Lebanese origin and was instrumental in saving the Swiss watch industry during the Quartz crisis. I recommend reading this book Mister Swatch. The book is hard to find in North America, but Amazon has a few listings from overseas sellers. Read this HBR article book teaser.

A Mysterious Lab In NYC Is Shutting Down. It’s the End of an Era for Biosecurity

🛡️CyberSecurity Reads

UK Pulls Back from Clash with Big Tech Over Private Messaging

Notes: Another attempt to outlaw end-to-end encryption halted.

Thus, in Blue Zones, people aren’t necessarily living longer lives; they’re just experiencing a ‘senior moment’ with their date of birth.

🔀 Other Reads

Congratulations Coco!

Notes: I was able to watch the game live on ESPN and it was fantastic!

That is all for this week. Signing off from Redmond.