Hello everyone, Raj here. Ant's taking a few days off this week and left me with the keys to the castle. I promise not to throw any parties Dad.
ChatGPT's popularity continues to soar. Pundits are saying it's now rivals Google Chrome if you compare its 3.7 billion monthly visits to Chrome's 3.4 billion monthly users. To continue that trajectory requires OpenAI to improve its models at the same rate, if not faster, keeping them ahead of competition and the growing expectations of everyday users. Their new "Orion" model due later this year isn't cutting the mustard and insider reports are saying in some cases like coding there are no improvements over GPT-4. This has OpenAI shitting themselves and they're now having idea showers and brain storms about how to get around it. One bright idea at the top of the pile is to let it generate content, which is then feed back into, curbing the dwindling supply of training data. As if the internet wasn't full of enough SEO riddle, misinformation garbage as it was. Does anyone else feel like this is like having an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters hoping one bangs out Shakespeare?
Universal's Super Nintendo World is one of the most joyous experiences of my life. I was lucky enough to visit it last year and I really can't describe how amazing it was to just stand there and feel like I was in a Mario game. Today Nintendo announced they're making the area even bigger and had Mario creator Miyamoto give the world a tour of the new Donkey Kong Country area. Just like Mario, the Donkey Kong themed area looks exactly like it's N64 counterpart and offers an interactive experience with the environment along with new food and a mine cart themed rollercoaster. It will open its doors this December and land in the US parks next year.
ANZ CEO Shayne Elliot jumped in front of investors at their full-year results jamboree to announce that ANZ's 7000 engineers had embraced GitHub co-pilot, letting it pitch in 7% of the codebase over the past 6 months. That's cool and all, I guess, but I'd love to know how they measured this as having used Co-Pilot Enterprise it doesn't actually give you a metric like that, nor is it that simple to measure as the code may be "generated", but is 99% of the time modified to actually work in day to day use. Instead I fear its more a "look at us using AI" shout out to investors who now believe it's a must-have for any business. He continued his AI buzzword-bingo-card adding that they've partnered with some mob in Palo Alto to add generative AI to their stack, but had no examples of what for and how it might be used? Maybe some pretty pictures based on your bank balance will start showing up.
If you haven't heard of Nerd Nite Melbourne, they're this cool group that put on a series of talks every month. They have really incredible speakers who are incredibly knowledgable in their fields of expertise and make for an incredible night. In addition to that they also do special events and tonight they're putting on Extra Lives. Billed as the world's first Audience RPG, the audience participating choose-your-own-adventure connects console gaming and live music with 60+ possible endings to discover. Tickets are still available for kick off tonight in Brunswick.
The artist Lillian Schwartz was honored with a CHM Fellow award in 2021 for her pioneering work at the intersection of art and computing. In the first half of the 1970s, she created a remarkable series of films that brought the new technology of computer animation into the artworld. Her work, and those of artists like her, expanded the scope of media art, and spurred fresh developments in technology. (Computer History Museum)
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The Sizzle is created on Wathaurong land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.