Ged Carroll

Category: innovation | 革新 | 독창성 | 改変

Innovation, alongside disruption are two of the most overused words in business at the moment. Like obscenity, many people have their own idea of what innovation is.

Judy Estrin wrote one of the best books about the subject and describes it in terms of hard and soft innovation.

  • Hard innovation is companies like Intel or Qualcomm at the cutting edge of computer science, materials science and physics
  • Soft innovation would be companies like Facebook or Yahoo!. Companies that might create new software but didn’t really add to the corpus of innovation

Silicon Valley has moved from hard to soft innovation as it moved away from actually making things. Santa Clara country no longer deserves its Silicon Valley appellation any more than it deserved the previous ‘garden of delights’ as the apricot orchards turned into factories, office campus buildings and suburbs. It’s probably no coincidence that that expertise has moved east to Taiwan due to globalisation.

It can also be more process orientated shaking up an industry. Years ago I worked at an agency at the time of writing is now called WE Worldwide. At the time the client base was predominantly in business technology, consumer technology and pharmaceutical clients.

The company was looking to build a dedicated presence in consumer marketing. One of the business executives brings along a new business opportunity. The company made fancy crisps (chips in the American parlance). They did so using a virtual model. Having private label manufacturers make to the snacks to their recipe and specification. This went down badly with one of the agency’s founders saying ‘I don’t see what’s innovative about that’. She’d worked exclusively in the IT space and thought any software widget was an innovation. She couldn’t appreciate how this start-ups approach challenged the likes of P&G or Kraft Foods.

  • Yeezy + more stuff

    Yeezy

    In 2020 Forbes magazine described Yeezy’s rise as “one of the great retail stories of the century”. Yeezy influenced and inspired a multitude of other fashion brands. Kanye West and the Yeezy brand has been a phenomenal power in street wear. West collaborated with BAPE early on his career and Yeezy took off with the famous Nike collaboration output: Air Yeezy sneakers. Adidas reached out to West, after

    The Adidas-Kanye West divorce bill is in: ending sales will cut expected profits at sportswear company by over a third | South China Morning Post 

    Adidas has a plan to sell Yeezy sneakers without Ye – Because the company owns the designs it made with Ye, it can—and it probably will—sell the shoes, chief financial officer (and interim CEO until Dec. 31) Harm Ohlmeyer said on the company’s Nov. 9 earnings call. – They can’t use the Yeezy name though. Given that Yeezy is responsible for up to 40 percent of adidas properties according to some sources, this could end up being the best of both worlds for adidas. Kanye West was unhappy for a long time with the adidas deal, so unlikely to complain, and he may yet be able to use the Yeezy brand with another sneaker maker, for instance in China.

    China

    Nvidia hobbles A100 chip to meet US export control rules | EE Times 

    Opinion | How China Lost America – The New York Times – interesting piece by Thomas Friedman – the big take out for me is that China thinkers don’t realise that Xi Jinping doesn’t care due to his Marxist dialectic world view. Read also: The Return of Red China: Xi Jinping Brings Back Marxism – China is now breaking from decades of political, economic, and foreign-policy pragmatism and accommodationism. Xi’s China is assertive. He is less subtle than his predecessors, and his ideological blueprint for the future is now hiding in plain sight. The question for all is whether his plans will prevail or generate their own political antibodies, both at home and abroad, that begin to actively resist Xi’s vision for China and the world. But then again, as a practicing Marxist dialectician, Xi Jinping is probably already anticipating that response—and preparing whatever countermeasures may then be warranted – Kevin Rudd on China

    Consumer behaviour

    PR emails: I said yes to every single one for a day. Oof. | Slate – Could it be possible that the publicists are on to something? Is the daily flood of hopeless pitches actually a secret window into American ingenuity, optimism, and desperation—not to mention a very interesting line of scientifically tested sex toys?

    In repressive Qatar, hotels are a haven for sex, booze and more | Financial Times 

    Design

    Really interesting commentary on how Adidas designed the mesh used in the 4DFWD running shoe that provides a similar energy transfer to the carbon fibre shank in  Nike Air Zoom Alphafly NEXT% shoes that completely changed long distance running

    Who Will Replace Evans Hankey as Jony Ive’s Successor as Apple’s Design Chief? – Bloomberg – this looks like a potential crisis for Apple. They don’t seem to have built up a design team culture in the way that Dieter Ram did at Braun

    Is CGI getting worse? Yes and no. The reason why it seems to be worse is down to worker exploitation

    Economics

    China unveils new policies to solicit foreign investments in manufacturing operations – implies a point of weakness in the Chinese economy. This also explains China slashes quarantine time for international arrivals to 5 days | South China Morning Post in the hope that senior executives will be bothered to turn up. These policies might be needed due to the multitude of down sides in sourcing from Chinese factories:

    • COVID-zero
    • Brand China
    • Coercive technology / process transfer
    • Restrictive outbound capital platforms

    Automotive supply chain saw component demand revival despite macro headwinds | DigiTimes 

    Morgan Stanley (MS) Cuts China Annual Inflow Estimate as Risks Mount – Bloomberg – slowing foreign investment

    Expect a global economic recession in 2023: Report: TSMC takes action in response to falling demand | EE Tiimes 

    Finance

    Sam Bankman-Fried is not very good at League of Legends | Financial Times – parody meets real life personified. Read in conjunction with What if crypto just…dies? – by Noah Smith – Noahpinion

    China given advantages in loan for Kenyan rail project, contract shows | South China Morning Post 

    FMCG

    ‘Grave of the Fireflies’ candy-maker goes bust as costs soar | The Japan Times 

    You need this instant Japanese curry rice if you hate cooking but want to eat a balanced diet | SoraNews24

    Gadgets

    Inoreader – Take back control of your news feed – new RSS Reader, though I find Newsblur better for my needs

    Germany

    Scholz in China | Franco-German tandem | Supply chains – Chancellor Scholz’ China visit has cost him dearly in every other arena but China

    Hong Kong

    38,600 Hongkongers under 18 have applied for Britain’s special BN(O) visa scheme, but most requests come from residents in prime working years | South China Morning Post – Nearly a third of 142,000 Hongkongers who have applied for a special visa that leads to British citizenship are under 18, while those aged 25 to 54 make up the majority – Hong Kong already has an ageing population. You will also find that the leavers are likely to skew much higher in certain professions and skills sets such as nursing, social work, business management, accountancy and teaching

    Health

    ‘I miss eating’: the truth behind the weight loss drug that makes food repulsive | Food | The Guardian – this is a mess for Novo Nordisk. (Disclosure: I worked on the global launch of Wegovy®)

    Innovation

    NTT claims it can stop the noise leaking from headphones • The Register 

    Bosch taps IBM quantum computers in hunt for new EV materials | DigiTimes and IBM think they’re on to something big: IBM sees 2023 as quantum inflexion point | EE Times 

    Infineon, X-Fab join Fraunhofer DNA memory project | EE Times 

    Japan budgets $2.4 billion for chip R&D hub with US, Europe | EE Times

    Eliyan raises $40m to shake up chiplet interconnect | EE Times 

    Japan

    Honda and Nissan move financial forecasts upward as Yen stays weak | DigiTimes 

    Germany finishes first again with Japan and Canada rounding out the top three nations | Ipsos 

    Japanese clothing chain Uniqlo now selling flowers online, they’re way better than we imagined | SoraNews24 – interesting brand extension by Uniqlo

    Luxury

    Hermès, L’Oréal bounce back in China despite ongoing lockdowns | Advertising | Campaign Asia 

    Marketing

    Life and work post Covid – production and post | shots 

    Materials

    Great video on how additive manufacturing’s unique properties can result in innovation. This heat exchange was printed from laser sintered aluminium alloy powder. The weight savings and increased thermal efficiency figures claimed are very impressive. The problem is using this technology at scale, or will it be niche like carbon fibre fabrication is now?

    Some machines combine CNC milling machines with additive manufacturing capability, this hybrid expertise makes a lot of sense.

    WFL additive manufacturing
    Tim Wantink – The WFL M80 Millturn with 10 kW laser-unit for additive manufacturing

    Online

    TrustCor Systems verifies web addresses, but its address is a UPS Store – The Washington Post 

    Deception Is a Weapon in Russia’s War in Ukraine – The New York Times 

    Retailing

    China’s Singles’ Day 2022 sellers aim for quality over quantity | Quartz – similar to what’s been said on Campaign Asia – I think it will be difficult due to platform power

    Security

    China Recalibrates Its Strategy in the Pacific Region – The China Story 

    Microsoft links Russia’s military to cyberattacks in Poland and Ukraine | Ars Technica 

    Australian police reveal Russians behind Medibank medical record hack | South China Morning Post 

    Software

    Signal >> Blog >> Reflections: The ecosystem is moving – interesting discussion on federated versus centralised systems

    Taiwan

    TSMC and UMC report double-digit October sales growth; no 3nm for Arizona yet | DigiTimes 

    Technology

    The US used shell companies during the Cold War to secure titanium from Russia. Now it seems that Russia has done similar things with electronics components for its smart weapons obtained from US manufacturers.

  • Ford Fiesta

    My Ford Fiesta driving experience

    The Ford Fiesta will be forever linked to my early driving experience. I started learning to drive in the 1990s. Back then leasing agreements and car finance weren’t really a thing due to high interest rates. (There is a whole other blog post that I should write at some point about the risk of sub prime car loans, but not today.)

    Car insurance was cripplingly expensive. It was even more expensive when you had no no claims and three points on my licence for an accident that I still claim wasn’t my fault.

    I also have a Dad who is a time-served mechanical fitter and all-round engineering wizard. At the time we had access to a garage with a vehicle pit, welding equipment and an engine hoist on the evenings and from Saturday afternoon on during the weekend. My Dad had good personal relationships with a number of people who ran scrapyards. You went in, tore the parts you wanted off the cars and took them to the owner and negotiated a deal.

    One salvage yard took things a step further by tearing cars down themselves and selling the parts alongside the basics that you’d need for servicing and usually buy from a motor factors. They’re still going strong and still only do business in-person or over the phone. No fax machine, email or website.

    My Dad had been servicing and repairing cars since the mid-1960s and worked repairing a wide range of tracked and wheeled vehicles for the likes of Bord na Mona and Massey Ferguson.

    Driving bangers

    The vehicles that I owned were nothing to brag about, but they were really, really cheap and at least one of them was really, really dangerous. The most dangerous car was a Fiat 126. It cost £150 and I bought it off a former colleague who I met working one summer repairing tools and equipment rented out for use on construction sites. Even in the early 1990s that was a ludicrously cheap car.

    The engine was terrible, as were the drum brakes. The body work crumbled in a way that one would expect for a Fiat made in the 1970s. Drum brakes ‘fade’ with repeated use (like going through a set of turns), they don’t work particularly well in the wet and they were prone to locking up on occasion.

    Because of the noise, dangerous brakes, exceptionally poor build quality and Russian roulette-like standing starts it was tiresome to drive anywhere for anything more than an hour. The lights were pathetic the wipers were ineffective and the all the rubber seals leaked.

    But it also put a smile on my face more times than any other car that I have owned. It handled really well. You could go sideways around corners and still stay in lane. You had a ludicrously low seating position and an exceptionally direct gear change. As a young man with a complete lack of appreciation for risk, it taught me that small cars can be fun.

    Also as a cash-strapped young man, I appreciated that paying less to run a car was a good idea, so I aspired to own a diesel.

    Building a Ford Fiesta

    Eventually, through my Dad’s contacts I managed to get the diesel engine from a Ford Escort van that had been rear-ended and a Ford Fiesta delivery van with a blown petrol engine. At the time a friend that I knew through scuba diving had done a diesel engine swap into a mark two Ford Fiesta XR2. My vehicle was much rattier.

    1987 Ford Fiesta XR2
    A mark two XR2 very similar looking to the car my friend transplanted with a diesel engine. The only difference being that his had the ‘pepper pot’ alloy wheels. Picture by Kieran White on Flickr (creative commons licence)

    We used the beefier Escort springs to handle the increased engine weight, but kept the Fiesta braking system and gearbox. So I had a diesel Ford Fiesta van. Over a weekend, we used a Makita jigsaw to remove the van panels were the windows should be. New window gaskets and rear side windows from a totalled Ford Fiesta mark one. In went the mark one seats and rear seat belts and I had a car.

    The van was old enough that I didn’t need to pay VAT after converting it to a car according to the DVLA at the time.

    The gearbox was less direct than my previous cars, the steering lacked the go-kart feel of the Fiat and there was more body roll, but the Fiesta was a good car to drive. It had enough power for confident standing starts at junctions and motorway driving was comfortable. The best part was the fuel economy, I typically got 70 miles to the gallon (over 29 kilometres per litre).

    I read that Ford was getting rid of the Fiesta and I was reminded of my old car and the role that it played in taking me around the country and allowing me to earn a living before I had moved to London.

    Why are Ford Motor Company likely to be binning the Ford Fiesta?

    I suspect that it is down to a number of factors:

    • Consumers want the higher driving position of a crossover or SUV, super mini vehicles like the Ford Fiesta have fallen out of favour
    Ford Fiesta Van.
    Carl Spencer | Flickr (creative commons licence)
    • Small vans no longer share the same body shape as their car equivalents. Ford has its Transit Courier small van with a body better designed to cope with large objects or small pallets. So there are less common tooling that they can use to mitigate for lower production volumes
    • Germany is an expensive place to built a small car, even in a highly automated factory
    • It makes sense to prioritise scarce components in crunched supply chains to vehicles that produce the highest profit margin
    • An electric version of the Fiesta would give only a limited range between recharges. Electric battery carrying capacity is directly proportion to the size of the vehicle floorpan and Fiestas are very small. BMW couldn’t get its I3 to work from a business and consumer offering perspective
    • The price point of an electric Ford Fiesta would represent poor value for money for consumers

    Goodbye to the Fiesta

    Ford of Europe put together a farewell video to announce the end of Ford Fiesta production.

    https://youtu.be/UYcoJ5cU-v4
    Ford of Europe

    YouTube channel Big Car did a great history of the Fiesta that is worth watching. Until I watched this video I had no idea that the impetus to develop the Ford Fiesta didn’t come from within Ford of Europe, but from American executive Henry Ford II. Henry Ford II is most famous amongst gear heads now as being the executive who drove support for the Ford GT40 after talks had collapsed with Ferrari.

    Hank Deuce as he was known was portrayed by Tracy Letts who acted opposite Matt Damon and Christian Slater in the movie Ford vs. Ferrari.

  • Shackleton & more things

    Ernest Shackleton, the Irish explorer and the heroic age of antarctic exploration are evoked in Apple’s ads for its Apple Watch Ultra – a rival to Casio’s G-Shock Master of G range and the Protrek range, Seiko’s similarly named Prospex range and Citizen’s Promaster range of watches.

    https://youtu.be/tidgsqAf_tI

    The underlying dialogue uses the text to a newspaper advert attributed to Shackleton when he was looking to recruit crew members for his ship the Endeavour. The Endeavour expedition competed with the rival Roald Amundsen’s expedition to reach the South Pole.

    The monologue also reaches back to the way Apple did its Think Different brand campaign rather than the kinetic iPhone, iPod and iWatch ads of the past.

    Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.

    The reality is that the ad didn’t become widely known until decades after Shackleton had died. There is no evidence to suggest that he ever wrote the words (stirring though they are in nature), or that the advert was ever published by Shackleton.

    Instead of Shackleton, who then wrote the words attributed to him? We’ll probably never know. What we do know is that they were first published in a book published in 1959. The 100 Greatest Advertisements: 1852-1958 written by Julian Lewis Watkins and was first published by first published by Dover Publications, Inc. Whether it was Shackleton who wrote them or not, they went into popular culture and sparked additional interest in the Irish explorer. Shackleton died in 1921 when returned to the Antarctic with the Shackleton–Rowett Expedition, he suffered a fatal heart attack while his ship was moored in South Georgia. We don’t know whether Ernest Shackleton would have appreciated the Apple Watch Ultra as a technical marvel concocted by wondrous boffins, or a pointless exercise in frippery for the serious explorer.

    Rolex Deepsea Challenge – a watch even more worthy of Shackleton?

    I know a watch is special when my Dad is telling me about it as soon as it’s launched. Rolex has upgraded its Rolex Sea-Dweller Deepsea to create the Rolex Deepsea Challenge. Out goes the largely useless date window, in comes an an all titanium grade 5 alloy case that’s 50mm across. This means that the watch moves from being waterproof of a depth of 3,900 meters to 11,000 meters (or just over 6.8 miles) with the new Deepsea Challenge.

    The Deepsea Challenge watch follows on from the years of experience that Rolex has had making titanium watches under its secondary Tudor brand using a similar (if not the same) grade 5 titanium.

    Titanium Grade 5 is the most widely used titanium alloy. It has (relatively) good hot formability and weldability. It is resistant to salt water, marine atmosphere and a variety of corrosive media temperatures below 300 ° C. Grade 5 titanium alloy is most likely to be accepted by the human body – its hypoallergenic and ideal for medical transplant components like hip joints.

    It is made up of 88.74-91.0 percent titanium, 5.5-6.75 percent aluminium, 3.5-4.5 percent vanadium and no more than 0.015 percent hydrogen.

    There is obviously osmosis between the two brands in terms of innovation, materials, process and technologies. This also explains why Tudor tries to do innovative designs in its range rather than just digging into the rich seam of ‘heritage looking’ watches with the Black Bay, Ranger and Heritage Chrono models.

    It is capable of going deeper than any body of water on earth. Rolex may have felt compelled to respond to Omega’s Seamaster Planet Ocean Ultra Deep.

    The watch community has already started spoofing the watch, which is another sign of it having become an icon. Whether it’s a famous icon, or infamous icon remains to be seen.

    35th Tokyo Girl’s Collection

    I talked years ago on this blog about the innovative approach to retailing behind the Tokyo Girl’s Collection. I came across their 2022 autumn and winter collection opening stage event, which I am sharing here.

    https://youtu.be/vx4AzkAtD3o

    USB-C

    Apple on the EU regulating connectors to standardise on USB-C. The reason why Apple went to detachable cables on chargers is very interesting. Apple are reluctantly complying over USB-C. The discussion around innovation is really interesting, particularly the way in which Apple executives duck the question.

  • AI and creativity

    Why AI and creativity?

    This post on AI and creativity was inspired by experiments being done at work by a member of our design department. They had been using Midjourney to create images within a minute of receiving an initial set of words as creative prompts.

    For example we created this surreal image which fits somewhere between Christian kitsch familiar to catholic households around the world and a touch of Syd Mead‘s visual futurism. This comes from the prompt. 

    Jesus fighting alongside the US Air Force
    https://flic.kr/p/2nSGwLB

    Other efforts weren’t successful, we had faces featuring eyes with two pupils and when it tried to render round shapes, it didn’t know when to stop. The hands would go on and on as a twisted mass of flesh. This could be resolved by creating a human character in a service like MetaHuman and uploading that to Midjourney as a base model instead.

    How neural networks drive AI and creativity?

    Midjourney works using two neural networks. The first works to render an image. The second compares the processing image to exemplars from a data bank of images. There is a back and forth exchange between the two networks until a number of variants are rendered. At this point the human operator is given a choice, or they can choose to have other variations created if the originals don’t meet their requirements.

    These images can be rendered in high resolution allowing for an amazing level of detail.

    Dystopian vibes

    The dystopian feel of the use of AI and creativity is down to a few different factors.

    The first reason is that dystopia is at the centre of our cultural zeitgiest in the west. Documentary maker Adam Curtis covers it really well in this discussion with with the Joe Politics channel on YouTube. This zeitgeist affects the type of imagery that the AI has available to draw upon and the kind of prompts that people use to create AI images.

    Secondly, the use of AI to ‘create’ something lacks the feeling and collective emotional experiences of a real person. Those elements can’t be captured in prompts which is why images land with the sensation of a dead fish.

    What does AI and creativity mean for agencies?

    Concepting

    The most immediate impact could be in rapid concepting, analogous to how rapid prototyping for manufacturing design. Creative teams would still need to conceive of ideas but concepts could then be brought to live in minutes.

    It’s as far away from the black marker and pad that creative directors traditionally used; as paste up graphic design techniques from the use of desktop publishing software that started to impact the design world in the mid to late 1980s.

    News illustrations and graphic novels show the way

    One of the first areas that is really shaken up by AI and creativity has been the world of the political cartoonist and news illustrator. At the moment newspapers and news magazines pay skilled artists to develop and conceptual designs that convey a political concept.

    A good example of this is the covers of The Economist magazine. However things are starting to change. US political publication The Bulwark has already started using AI generated illustrations processed by Midjourney. Midjourney has also been used to create graphic novels.

    One could easily see how this might be extended into business-to-business marketing for intangible products like software and services.

    Production

    The hyper-realistic effects that AI can produce is likely to inspire a desire in clients to use them more often for cost effective production costs. At the moment however, the results can be very hit and miss. There is a problem with hands, faces, interlocking round shapes and a ‘dead’ look to the work.

    Social implications

    At first we had a discussion about what happens to designers? Were they doomed? Should there be a universal income for them or should they march in the streets to ? How could the technology be stopped?

    I wasn’t exactly a ray of sunshine in this discussion. I pointed out that over the past few centuries, capital won out over labour every time. So people only kept their jobs if they cost less than the process to automate their tasks.

    Globalisation versus automation

    London like a few other cities have ad agency work done that is designed for global audiences. At the moment I work on campaigns designed for markets including: the UK and Ireland, Spain, Italy, the US, Vietnam and Japan. Globalisation seems to have benefited hub cities rather than moved the work to cheaper locales.

    This in sharp contrast to what happened to British manufacturing. Whole sectors largely disappeared:

    • Steel making
    • Textile mills
    • Shipbuilding
    • Car manufacturing
    • Chemical industry
    • Pharmaceutical manufacturing
    • Engineering and fabrication

    Where capacity was spared, it was largely down to the UK being a good point of entry into the European Union. As the number of countries expanded new manufacturing jobs moved east; and workers moved west to fill workforce needs in established UK factories depressing salaries.

    Research shows that globalization only accounts for 13 percent of job loss in US manufacturing while 88 percent of losses were from automation including robotic manufacturing. In fact, availability of ever-cheaper automation options combined with uncertainty in the global supply chain has led to a resurgence in “onshoring” manufacturing.

    Debunking the Myths: Job Loss, Globalization and Automation by Greg Council Parascript (April 14, 2017).

    Automation has been the quiet destructor of roles. During the 1960s businesses had typing pools and secretaries. Many of these roles disappeared due to desktop computers, office productivity software and the democratisation of touch typing as a skill.

    The Technium

    Even if labour won out over capital in the UK, there is no guarantee that they would be able to stop the march of technology. Kevin Kelly in his book What Technology Wants shares the idea of ‘The Technium’. The idea behind The Technium is that technology has a momentum of its own building on previous progress. Kelly goes as far to describe it as a super organism of technology. He believes that it exerts a force that is partly cultural with technology influencing and being in turn being influenced by technology. All of which means adaption and accommodation are likely to be the way forward for now.

    Adaptation

    While people don’t realise it, you’ve been using what could be termed AI for decades:

    • Autofocus on a camera
    • Losing ‘shake’ in camcorder and smartphone video
    • Programmes in a microwave the attempt to cook a casserole or baked potato
    • Predictive text (although it seems to have become more stupid over time)
    • Siri, Alexa and Google’s various search functions

    In the case of a designer it would also include tools like the ‘lasso’ function in Photoshop that automatically cuts around objects including frizzy hair on a model. So it’s a bit late in the day for people to get squeamish about AI and creativity. Dominant creative software company Adobe sees the place of AI and creativity more as a technology to augment designers in their work rather than replace them. Much of the current Adobe focus seems to be on lowering the on-ramp for new users of their software packages.

    There will be more of a challenge for supporting professions like photographers. Fashion brand Hugo Boss is looking to 3D AI powered design to aid in product design and 3D rendering threatening product photography for websites, look books and catalogues.

    Limitations of AI and Creativity

    One of the things that my colleagues said which really struck with me was ‘if an AI told the world’s funniest joke’ would it know that it was funny? Software is being used to track emotional response, but it wouldn’t necessarily know why something was funny.

    The AI can’t be coded with a summation of life experiences, it can analyse emotions, but as far as we know doesn’t experience them yet. This probably explains why Studio Ghibli and Disney animation feels like it has much more life in it than the best AI renders.

    Is it art?

    Auction houses have sold works generated using AI, but is the art in the creation of the work, or in the decision to use an AI to do the work and thinking of the artist behind that idea? AI can produce works as they have existed before and mash-up genres and ideas, but it wouldn’t be able (at the moment) to create something completely novel through a leap of abstraction, such as a concept like Marcel Duchamp’s sculpture ‘Fountain‘.

    AI images can be nice, but do they involve an illusion of creativity? Everything that appears in an AI image is depended on the inputs that the AI receives and the content in image banks that it uses as a reference – which is the reason why AIs often sign works with an indecipherable script.

    Do artist styles have to be better protected as part of their IP as well as their works?

    IP issues goes beyond artists. We created an artistic rendering of Pokemon character ‘Pikachu’ on Midjourney using the prompt

    Definitely not a pikachu

    In conclusion

    If you’re a creative we eventually managed to get to four thoughts from the discussion:

    1. In the grand scheme of things, change is the only constant
    2. AI has been changing things and will continue to do so
    3. It is inevitable that there willl be some automation and augmentation happening in the creative professions such as design
    4. In the words of Douglas Adams book Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy ‘Don’t Panic’ – but be prepared to adapt and learn new skills and develop new areas of expertise

    Suggested reading

    AI-generated images open multiple cans of worms | Axios 

    AI-generated digital art spurs debate about news illustrations | Axios 

    AI Makes 1993 Video Game Look Photorealistic 

    The Push of a Button – by David OReilly – Reminders 

    DALL-E now allows anyone to cash in on AI art, but ownership gets complicated | Quartz

    GitHub – microsoft/AI-For-Beginners: 12 Weeks, 24 Lessons, AI for All! 

    Inceptionsim : Going Deeper into Neural Networks

    The Golden age of AI-generated art is here. It’s going to get weird – FT Online

    Novo Nordisk wins over doctors with AI email subject lines — and a human touch – Endpoints News 

    MAX Sneaks – by Kevin Hart & Bria Alexander, Adobe, Inc.

    Demo of AI ad copywriting and art direction for online ads 

    Books

    Harvard Business Review – Artificial Intelligence: The Insights that you need to know (HBR Insights Series)

    Society of Mind by Marvin Minsky

    Artificial Life: A Report from the Frontier Where Computers Meet Biology by Steven Levy

    Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition and Still Can’t Get a Date – Robert X. Cringely

    Inevitable & What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly

    The Quest for Artificial Intelligence: A History of Ideas and Achievements by Nils J Nilsson

    8vo: On The Outside by Mark Holt & Hamish Muir

    Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy

  • Illegal foreign police stations + more things

    Illegal foreign police stations

    The amount of stories about the Chinese illegal foreign police stations that have broke over the past couple of days is really interesting. The clampdown on illegal foreign police stations seems as if it was either coordinated, or there was an inciting incident that persuaded other governments that they had to act. Secondly, what becomes apparent from the coverage is that governments were aware about them for a while, but chose to do nothing. The mainstream media lack of coverage made China critics look like paranoid cranks when they discussed Chinese illegal foreign police stations in their countries. There is a contrast between the British military Operation Motorman to stop what they perceived as the illegal provisional IRA policing of ‘Free Derry’ and the current handling of illegal foreign police stations set up by the Chinese.

    Police car

    Chinese police operatives operating in Canada, U.S. says in new court filing – The Globe and Mail 

    Chinese overseas police station in Dublin ordered to shut – The Irish Times 

    Netherlands accuses China of operating ‘illegal’ police stations | Financial Times – talk of illegal foreign police stations has been going around the Chinese critics circles for years. It just goes to show, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean you’re wrong.

    I think that one of the reasons why illegal foreign police stations hasn’t been covered well by mainstream media is that they didn’t want to give credence to coverage by media that are right of centre like Fox News.

    China

    US think tank CSIS shares expert thought on the 20th Party Congress.

    China’s limitless presidency means limited diplomacy | Financial Times – … Chinese diplomats find it disconcertingly easy to revert to behaviour that could be seen as bullying. This confirms the suspicion that European governments have of the Communist party: that it is becoming more brazen. A certain school of Chinese nationalism says that the west is set on containing China’s rise at all costs — and that, as a result, Beijing may as well conduct external relations for internal consumption. Yet European alliances are still in China’s grasp, and many of its own objectives, from technological upgrading to climate action, can only be achieved with a wide range of allies and Video before Hu Jintao’s exit from congress puts files in focus – Nikkei Asia 

    The FT on Evergrande Group bankruptcy.

    Economics

    The end of the system of the world – by Noah Smith and Are the UK, Japan, and Italy “undeveloping countries”? 

    Energy

    The foundations of Russia’s oil and gas industry

    Finance

    ‘We never lost interest’: Asian family offices buy into crypto | Financial Times – Digital asset investments fuelled by weak returns from equity and property

    FMCG

    Krispy Kreme, Crocs, and Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing 

    Households forgo air fresheners and vitamins in cost of living squeeze | Financial Times 

    Germany

    German exporters rethink €100bn ‘love affair’ with China | Financial Times – Competition — fair and otherwise — remains a problem. “Our members know that every technology they bring into China, in a relatively short time, will be part of the Chinese market,” said Ulrich Ackermann, head of foreign trade at the VDMA. “We say, be aware you can be kicked out in a short time.” Ackermann spoke of a German manufacturer of construction machinery, whose state-owned Chinese rival sent machines to customers, free for use for the first year. “How can we compete with that?” – This has been the standard playbook for decades. Huawei won telecoms because of state bank vendor financing at negative interest rates, not superior technology and certainly not superior reliability. What took the Germans so long to catch on? I suspect it was the outsized political impact that a few large companies have on German policies versus the middle sized companies that actually drive exports, German employment and prosperity. 

    Health

    BBC: World Health Organization Says Further Research Needed on Pandemic’s Effect on Mental Health, Particularly for Younger People and Women

    Hong Kong

    Pro-democracy Publisher Jimmy Lai Found Guilty on Fraud Charges – The Diplomat – surprising lack of coverage in the UK, particularly as Lai is a British citizen

    Hong Kong Policy Address: How much of John Lee’s maiden speech was old wine in new bottles? – Hong Kong Free Press HKFP – Hong Kong has experienced a mass outflow of residents since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and the implementation of the national security law. The previous administration disputed the scale of the exodus, with Lam attributing it to the suspension of quarantine-free travel with mainland China, saying that the number of One-Way Permit holders coming into Hong Kong had significantly decreased. Lee, who has been pressured to stop the exodus of talent from the city, acknowledged the trend for the first time on Wednesday, admitting that the local workforce had shrunk by 140,000 people over the last two years. Lee had previously rejected the use of the term “emigration wave” to describe the city’s recent and dramatic population decline.   While Lam said that she did not want the government to be asking citizens to stay, Lee presented a series of proposals on Wednesday, ranging from new visa schemes to stamp duty cuts, designed explicitly to attract talent. – even the talent attraction proposals won’t make much difference, looking for people only from the world’s top 100 universities and earning at least $318,000 per year. That isn’t going to plug education, healthcare and social care staff gaps. It won’t fill much of the many financial services opportunities either, nor multinational regional hubs

    Ideas

    Adam Curtis on the collapse of the Soviet Union and modern Russia. His commentary on Brexit is spot on.

    Smiles in Profiles: Improving Fairness and Efficiency Using Estimates of User Preferences in Online Marketplaces

    Forbidden Questions – Marginal REVOLUTION – asks some interesting questions around science, innovation and politics. On the Flipside you have communism’s examples of bad science as an exemplar of what can go wrong when politics frames scientific exploration and ideas

    Innovation

    Chip start-up pushes into Taiwan in quest for ever-smaller chips | Financial Times – NanoWired spun out of Germany but is pinning its hopes on TSMC rather than Dresden based semiconductor plants

    I was fired from NYU after students complained that the class was too hard. Who’s next? – The Boston Globe – What is overwhelmingly important is the chilling effect of such intervention by administrators on teaching overall and especially on untenured professors. Can a young assistant professor, almost all of whom are not protected by tenure, teach demanding material? Dare they give real grades? Their entire careers are at the peril of complaining students and deans who seem willing to turn students into nothing more than tuition-paying clients.

    Korea

    Kakao, Data Center Fire, the Data Residency Dilemma | Interconnect – Why not data centres further south in Deagu or just outside Busan? The author presupposes that the backup has to be outside the country

    Luxury

    China’s wealthy activate escape plans as Xi Jinping extends rule | Financial Times and as an interesting counterpoint: Asian art and luxury buying boom | Financial Times – At one level, it is a worldwide trend. From fine art to fine wine, luxury-sector companies have bounced back from the depths of the pandemic as their super-rich customers have, so far, been largely immune to global inflation and economic turmoil. After its worst decline on record in 2020, the global personal luxury goods market grew last year to reach €288bn in value, up 7 per cent on 2019, according to consultancy Bain. It says 2022 began with a further healthy rise. In Hong Kong, though, the picture has been quite distinctive, with some of the super-rich spending locally while others have moved abroad, joining an exodus of more than 153,000 residents since the beginning of 2021. The territory has recorded a 14 per cent drop in the number of millionaires in 2022 compared with last year (that is, people with at least $1mn in liquid assets, according to residency advisory firm Henley & Partners). With about 125,100 millionaires out of a population of 7.3mn, the city fell by four places to 12th globally for the number of high-net-worth individuals – building imperial palaces while China becomes redder…

    Chinese President Xi’s pledge at Congress means getting rich quick is out. Should luxury worry? – yes they should. It isn’t only about wealth but also about the defence against western values

    Second-hand Rolexes: watch out for stupid prices and superfakes | Financial Times – the FT blames millennials who started collecting watches when they couldn’t go on holiday during COVID. I think that the causes are multi-variant. Luxury brands have looked at and learned from streetwear ‘drop’ business models exemplified by the likes of Supreme and Nike’s SNKR app. Secondly, the market might moderate a bit when Rolex realises that there isn’t so much of a demand in China post the 20th party congress. I haven’t paid crazy money like what you’ve described for a pre-owned Rolex, but everyone of my watches original warrant cards have a (mainland) Chinese family name on them. Buying via the verified service on eBay at least reduces the risk of buying an overpriced real, rather than super fake Rolex. I think we should be thankful for small mercies that it didn’t go into meme stocks or OneCoin analogues.

    Marketing

    GroupM Drops New Evidence Of Disconnect Between Economy And Ad Spending 10/24/2022 – it makes sense that some marketers will be bumping spending up to increase relative share of voice during a recession as this will pay dividends from now through the next five years or so as an effect

    Materials

    Balenciaga releases coat made with Ephea, a leather alternative | Vogue Business – fungus based ‘leather’

    🌎 F* Weekly: The end of lithium batteries? – new battery technologies come out of university labs all the time but commercialising them is entirely another thing

    Media

    Chinese censors alter ending of Minions: The Rise of Gru film | China | The Guardian – DuSir, a film review publisher with 14.4 million followers on Weibo, noted that the Chinese version ran one minute longer than the international one, and questioned why the extra time was needed. “It’s only us who need special guidance and care for fear that a cartoon will ‘corrupt’ us,” DuSir wrote. Huaxia Film Distribution and China Film Co, the film’s distributors in China, did not respond to a request for comment

    Hit film Return to Dust has vanished from China’s cinemas. Why? | Financial Times – “In the beginning,” she says, “Return to Dust attracted almost no attention. An art-house film about poverty among rural peasants? Honestly, neither the government nor mainstream Chinese audiences would normally care.” But then came several fateful quirks of timing. Over the summer, an online short, Second Uncle, became a Chinese viral hit, telling the story of a kindly rural carpenter. On social media, the little-known Return to Dust was mooted as a companion piece. From such small acorns sprang word-of-mouth success. Week by week, the movie built an audience – it might be the government, it could also be forces in the domestic media scene as big budget Chinese films don’t need competition stealing their ability to pay back investments

    Bloomberg Media Is Removing Its Open-Market Programmatic Ads – makes a lot of sense, they can’t sell subscriptions on that poor a customer experience provided by the likes of Outbrain at the bottom of the page

    Information commissioner warns firms over ‘emotional analysis’ technologies | Biometrics | The Guardian 

    Security

    MEPs to call for greater powers for Brussels to curb EU spyware use | Financial Times 

    From East Berlin to Beijing, surveillance goes in circles | Financial Times – Last month, the Stasi HQ hosted a Berlin Biennale seminar on the “Digital Divide”, where panellists discussed the ways in which old, disproved theories are recycled in modern surveillance. Shazeda Ahmed, a post-doctorate at Princeton University, described the rise of emotion recognition technology in China. Parents have pressured schools there to give up emotion recognition in classrooms, but some police forces are investing in the technology, hoping that a person’s movements and gestures can signal their propensity to commit a crime. Such methods fall under the umbrella of “predictive policing”, but they are dangerously unproven. Academics doubt whether gestures can be analysed as discrete events that carry the same meaning from person to person. Speaking at the Biennale, digital rights lawyer Ramak Molavi gave a historical perspective, comparing emotion-recognition trends today to phrenology and physiognomy, the ideas that a person’s skull shape and facial features indicate their character. Molavi described how the ideas had been discredited, but enjoyed a renaissance during the Nazi regime – this isn’t the first time that science and ideology have led each other up the garden path

    Axios China: Spy chief joins Politburo 

    US charges alleged Chinese spies in telecoms probe case – BBC News 

    UK PM set to take on China with ‘NATO of technology’ | EETimes Europe 

    China Goes Full ‘Black Mirror’ With Robot Dog With Mounted Machine Gun 

    Taiwan

    Taipei urbanism – by Noah Smith – Noahpinion – I had a disorienting sense of being back in Japan — so much so that I kept expecting people to drive on the left side of the street. So much of the infrastructure in Taiwan looks and feels Japanese — the pavement, the building materials, the signs at the airport. People cite this as a residue of the colonial period, but given that the colonial period ended 77 years ago, it’s probably more due to Taiwanese architects, urban planners, and engineers continuing to look to Japan for inspiration. After a few minutes, however, the sense of Japan-ness faded, crowded out by two key features of the Taipei landscape: lush greenery and shabby building facades

    Technology

    SK Hynix announces capex cuts by 50%, and selling China fabs could be option in contingency plan 

    Web of no web

    We are dangerously reliant on GPS to tell the time | Financial Times

    Ford, Volkswagen pull the plug on joint robocar project | EETimes Europe