Weekly Roundup: Friday, 21 July, 2017
Here are some links I thought were worth sharing this week:
AI
It’s Time To Stop Using AI As A Marketing Gimmick
This article by Kevin McNally sums up the hype vs reality of much AI talk. Hype: "The number of companies mentioning “artificial intelligence” in earnings calls this year skyrocketed, from 6 in 2013 to 244 in 2017". Reality: "Great, product-driven companies understand that machine learning and artificial intelligence aren’t solutions in and of themselves. They’re one solution, with strengths and weaknesses just like any other potential solution, and solve real customer pain points".
Apple Machine Learning Journal
"Welcome to the Apple Machine Learning Journal. Here, you can read posts written by Apple engineers about their work using machine learning technologies to help build innovative products for millions of people around the world."
MEDIA
Facebook Exec Campbell Brown: We Are Launching a News Subscription Product
Will this allow content producers like news organisations get revenue from Facebook? Depending on exactly how this will work it would also be a big shift from the paradigm that Facebook is paid by advertisers rather than users. "The feature appears to be built on top of Facebook's Instant Articles, which aggregates stories from hundreds of publishers based on a reader's interests and preferences. In addition to steering readers to a publisher's home page to consider taking out a digital subscription, Facebook plans to erect a paywall which would require readers to become subscribers of the platform after they'd accessed 10 articles". It will be interesting to see the details of this when it is rolled out later in the year.
ENTERPRISE
Oracle's Cloud Strategy: Ruthless Or 'Byzantine'?
Summary of Oracle's strategy. #1: Locking in Customers. #2: Using Draconian Licensing Policies to Extort Customers. #3: Gouging Customers.
“In January, Oracle changed the fine print on some of its license terms, essentially doubling the cost of running Oracle software on AWS and Azure, while leaving the cost of running on the Oracle Cloud unchanged”, “An 8 core physical box requires 4 cores of licensing,” explained Tim Hall, Oracle database expert and thought leader. “Now on the cloud, an 8 core VM (16 vCPUs on AWS or 8 vCPUs on Azure) requires 8 cores of licensing.”