TOP STORIES #44

Well.... HAPPY NEW YEAR! 2024 is already looking like it is going to be quite exciting

We start the year with some really big news that is all over the Internet just in time for CES (go figure) - Microsoft has announced the first major change to the Windows keyboard layout in 30 years.

PLEASE read "Signs and Portents" under the Cloud and AI section below.

We are now getting a dedicated CoPilot Key! I think this is a genius marketing move on the part of Microsoft as it will drive interest in CoPilot and drive sales of new hardware at the same time.

A PC without a Co-Pilot key will just look so old and uncool! (If you are not sold on the Co-Pilot idea, then there may be seriously good deals on keyboards without the Co-Pilot key in the coming months).

So, brace yourself for a flood of requests for new notebooks with the "cool AI key" and the Intel AI Core Ultra CPU (Meteor Lake) inside!

The next two weeks will be dominated by what is happening at CES, and then the aftermath.

Most of the events are going to be live-streamed here.

You will see an interesting addition to the Keynotes, L'Oreal is going to be presenting - which I think will be really interesting!

Here is a list of all the session categories you can visit:

Keynotes and Great Minds – your chance to hear from global industry leaders.
Research Summit – insights into the trends impacting consumer behavior and more.
Innovation Policy Summit – where government officials and industry experts discuss AI, AVs, health care, privacy, blockchain, international trade, competition, and more.
C Space Storytellers – conversations around the future of advertising, brand marketing and more.
CMO Insights – a look at how AI and other tools impact marketing strategy.

If colleagues want to join the maillist they can click here.

Hardware

Dell Releases new Laptops with the CoPilot Key

Dell has updated it's range of XPS la[tops with a bunch of new features most Notably the Core Ultra CPU's and the THE KEY!

Intel to announce roadmap beyond 18A

Up to now we have only had a picture of Intel's roadmap to 2025, but now we are going to get insight into what the more distant future holds Read more here.

The Best Business Monitor for 2024

Dell has announced its new 40" curved 5K monitor for business use. This is probably the best monitor you can get for 2024!

Read more about it here. The only monitor that you can consider that would beat the Dell monitor is the SAMSUNG 57" 8K Odyssey. Both monitors have the same pixel density of 144 PPI

The First Graphene Processor

This should be read in conjunction with "Signs and Portents".

Signs and Portents was written without considering how Graphene processing technology could accelerate what is being predicted. It is truly scary and exciting when you look at the bigger picture of technological development and where this might take us.

This new announcement about graphene is exciting as it suggests that processors using this technology will be able to work significantly faster and consume less power.

There is a great YouTube Video here that explains this development in more detail.

ZEISS Announces a SmartGlass Transparent Camera

Imagine the window or screen you look at or through is actually a camera as well. Gone is the need for a cut-out or a hole in a screen to poke a camera through - the screen IS the camera!

ZEISS has made this announcement just in time for CES 2024 (of course) with a press release explaining what this "Smart Glass" can do - and acting as a camera is just one of the things it can do.

The idea of "Smart Glass" has been around for a while, but being able to act as a camera, is new! Read more here,

Microsoft

New Revision to the Windows Keyboard and CoPilot App for iOS and Android

As you may have noticed this news is everywhere, but what slipped under the radar is the release of the CoPilot Apps. Read more here. More detail on the apps here and here.

Create new Office Documents with One Link

Microsoft has got some new domain names. For example, when you click on a https://word.new link, it will open a new Word Document. This applies to Excel etc....Read here for more detail.

Cloud and AI

Signs and Portents

This insightful paper talks about what we can expect from AI in 2024.

It is quite long, but I really urge you to read it if you are involved in any way with AI, from deciding to procure CoPilot from Microsoft through to using AI to developing apps, or even just using Bing Chat, GPT 3.5, 4.0 or Bard for any thought you may want an opinion on, or if you are starting to use AI to support your work, and if you are not I urge you to consider starting....

This paper references other papers that are important to read as well, so this is not a 5-minute read, but very very important. (Tip: Use Chat GPT 4 or CoPilot to help summarise it for you - but be sure to give it context when prompting)

The Author addresses points that I have been emphasising for a while, especially relating to a Harvard paper that reveals the use of GPT-4 significantly improved the quality of results from the consultants.

He talks about a paper that looked at legal work, where there too is a significant improvement in quality.

One notable outcome of the studies is that the biggest improvements are for lower performers when they used GPT-4 to help them - this is called the levelling effect where AI helps those not performing well to rise to be close to those of the best performers

He addresses the importance of adopting AI aggressively and uses an example of what the CEO of the company IgniteTech did - he gave everybody a paid subscription to GPT-4 and fired anybody who did not try to use it at least once in the first month, and gave prizes to those that showed how they were using GPT-4 to improve their work. Clearly, this is a bit extreme, but it is worth pondering when considering how you should be adopting AI enhancement for your employees to do better, however it is important to pay attention to what he calls "The Jagged Frontier" where it becomes clear that AI is better at some tasks than others.

What is really worth paying attention to is the chart at the beginning of the paper, which shows the timelines of expected milestones of AI technologies in the next 10 years, but pay close attention to the band between 2025 and 2030.

Clearly, with the announcement of the first functional Graphene semiconductor this week, this could completely change the roadmap from 2030 onwards, and we may even see SGI (Super General Intelligence before 2040!

Bard Advanced to compete with ChatGPT

2024 will surely be the year of AI as competition heats up between all the big players. It looks like Google is getting ready to compete head-on with ChatGPT (aka Microsoft). Read more here.

Security

New Flaw Lets Attackers Bypass Security and Spoof Emails

A new flaw has been found to allow bad guys to send emails from arbitrary email addresses. We have to remain ever-vigilant! Read more here.

What's up at FTG

We will be back at work from next week, so news on what we are planning for 2024 will start from next week as well.

Movies

Sadly, 2024 is going to be a bleak year for the movie industry as Hollywood is still recovering from COVID and now more recently the writer's strike that has caused even more delays in productions. Disney is badly affected.

Nevertheless, here is a list of movies we can expect for January (worldwide).

Now Playing: One Life

Now Playing: Noah's Ark

12 January: Mean Girls