We experience Artificial Intelligence in our lives every day – when Netflix recommends something we might like, Facebook recognises us in a picture, Spotify builds us a playlist or Microsoft's intelligent assistant understands a spoken instruction. All of these used to be things that humans – and only humans – could do. But AI is also powering business transformation and enabling new products and services – in ways we’ve never thought of before. Most of us haven't had the conversation about what that might mean for our businesses – and about the legal, economic and social implications of the change in motion. Sometimes, tech people haven't helped by treating AI as a sort of magic buzzword. It's not magic, it's real – and our choices about it matter. Let's have that talk.
All content for Actually Interesting is the property of The Spinoff and is served directly from their servers
with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
We experience Artificial Intelligence in our lives every day – when Netflix recommends something we might like, Facebook recognises us in a picture, Spotify builds us a playlist or Microsoft's intelligent assistant understands a spoken instruction. All of these used to be things that humans – and only humans – could do. But AI is also powering business transformation and enabling new products and services – in ways we’ve never thought of before. Most of us haven't had the conversation about what that might mean for our businesses – and about the legal, economic and social implications of the change in motion. Sometimes, tech people haven't helped by treating AI as a sort of magic buzzword. It's not magic, it's real – and our choices about it matter. Let's have that talk.
My music streaming service works a whole lot better than it used to.
There's a reason for that, and it's the decisive tilt that Apple made a few months ago towards algorithmic playlists on Apple Music. Having branded itself on the virtues of human curation – it's only a year ago that Apple CEO Tim Cook lamented the dehumanising effect of Spotify's data-driven approach to curation – Apple seems to be acknowledging that maybe Spotify has it right.
New Music recommendations have improved markedly under this personal robot curation – like I'm getting what an algorithm thinks I'd like, rather than what someone thinks I should like. But the playlist that's really working for me is Favourites Mix, a rolling weekly selection of things that I have loved (and sometimes forgotten) at some point in the past decade or more. Apple knows what I have loved because for all that time I've been telling it, by uploading Genius data from iTunes to the mothership. Apple had a lot of data to push my buttons with – it just finally got around to using it. It's great.
It's an example of the power of the aspect of AI we see most in popular culture – the recommendation algorithm. Actually Interesting spoke to Juan Swartz of the Christchurch-based tech company 4th and Andy Low, general manager of DRM New Zealand the country's largest digital distributor of music, about the power of the algorithm.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Actually Interesting
We experience Artificial Intelligence in our lives every day – when Netflix recommends something we might like, Facebook recognises us in a picture, Spotify builds us a playlist or Microsoft's intelligent assistant understands a spoken instruction. All of these used to be things that humans – and only humans – could do. But AI is also powering business transformation and enabling new products and services – in ways we’ve never thought of before. Most of us haven't had the conversation about what that might mean for our businesses – and about the legal, economic and social implications of the change in motion. Sometimes, tech people haven't helped by treating AI as a sort of magic buzzword. It's not magic, it's real – and our choices about it matter. Let's have that talk.
