Let’s kickstart the week!
Happy Tuesday! 🙂 I hope you had a great start of the week. In the previous week we’ve seen many interesting articles. This week there was lots of news from Facebook, they’ve open sourced their Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) platform, are launching Facebook for work and are looking back at the most talked about stories of 2015. To close I’ve added an article on how Elon Musk plans to deal with one of the potential dangers of 2016 and beyond, A.I. taking over.
Hopefully this kickstarts your week!
@JamalZyat, the multitasking intern here at Nameshapers.Â
How to survive your (office) party using apps
It’s the end of the year which means many mandatory social events. If you’re dreading the idea of having to make small talk all evening the apps in this article might be perfect for you.
“Make your exit from a dull conversation look more legitimate by faking an incoming phone call. That’s right, there’s an app for that — you no longer have to text a friend to save you.
Or, if you don’t have time to call, place your phone in your pocket with the app open and the screen on. Then, knock on the screen where the app is located to activate the timer.”
“If you’re looking for a fun ice breaker, try Hypotheticals, an app dedicated to hypothetical situations which can make conversations a bit more exciting. With a few “would you rather” questions and situational propositions, you might be surprised by your coworkers’ responses.”
Personally I liked the icebreakerapp Hypotheticals the best, you will discover things about co-workers that you didn’t know before!
Facebook just made its A.I. servers open source
Artficial Intelligence and Neural Nets are the hottest thing in Tech right now. Companies like Facebook, Google and Tesla are all competing to recruit the best talent and design the best systems. In this developing war Facebook has just made a very bold move. It made its servers open source!
“The hope is that, by open sourcing its servers, Facebook can establish an industry standard for AI-specific hardware. If other startups (or even larger companies) use Facebook’s design, it will become cheaper and more common in the long term…”
Personally I can’t wait to see how these developments in A.I. play out, for those who are also a tad bit worried the last article in this newsletter is very interesting.
What were the most discussed topics on Facebook in 2015?
The end of the year is always a good time to look back, so the end of year lists are popping up everywhere. After Twitter released its list a few days earlier Facebook has joined the fray. This amazing and somewhat disconcerting list is a must read for marketers interested in what people like to share.
The first thing you’ll notice is the amount of tragedy that has dominated this year compared to the previous. On the other hand, if we look at entertainment the list is more positive:
“General entertainment was somewhat more positive, with the most discussed TV show on Facebook being Game of Thrones, followed by The Walking Dead. And naturally, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the top movie in the world on the platform. It’s still a mystery why Ed Sheeran [ed: Who just quit social media] is so popular, though.”
Will we soon use Facebook for work?
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Many of us are already using social media in our private life, but how many of you are already using it professionally within your organisation?
Professionals who are using social media in the workplace have discovered that tools like Microsoft’s Yammer, Salesforce Chatter and Slack can significantly boost the efficiency of collaboration between team members. Now Facebook wants to enter the battlefield, and it’s playing to win:
“…competitors target and deploy in technical areas for engineers, developers, or startups. But Facebook is banking on its familiarity to win over entire companies.”
Definitely an article to check out if you’re looking to use social media internally. After all, it seems easier to build a support base for using Facebook than for using other tools.
Can we prevent Artificial Intelligence from taking over the world?
With the development of A.I. and Neural Nets moving at the speed of light it is important not to lose sight of the potential dangers. Luckily we have Elon Musk and Y combinator who are coming up with a plan to prevent Skynet from taking over: An open source A.I. framework called OpenAI. It makes its results public and its patents royalty free.
“There are a few different thoughts about this. Just like humans protect against Dr. Evil by the fact that most humans are good, and the collective force of humanity can contain the bad elements, we think it’s far more likely that many, many AIs, will work to stop the occasional bad actors than the idea that there is a single AI a billion times more powerful than anything else. If that one thing goes off the rails or if Dr. Evil gets that one thing and there is nothing to counteract it, then we’re really in a bad place.”
Sam Altman — CEO Y combinator
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