This week we feature articles by Mike Loukides, and Danilo Najkov.

Additional reading comes from Maria Stasimioti, Sarah K. White, Natasha Lomas, and Wangchunshu Zhou, Ningyu Zhang, Peng Cui, et al.

News comes from Adobe, Acquia, Netlify, and Cloudinary.

All previous issues are available at https://gilbane.com/gilbane-advisor-index

---

Opinion / Analysis

The real problem with software development

“It’s not writing code, it’s managing complexity”. So true. Mike Loukides has an excellent piece explaining what this means for modern software development, and for the utility of generative AI coding. This non-technical article (no code) is useful for anyone who has to make decisions about, or understand, software development projects, strategy, or operations. (5 min)

https://www.oreilly.com/radar/the-real-problem-with-software-development/

Unlocking the power of facial blurring in media: A comprehensive exploration and model comparison

Danilo Najkov reports on his project to understand how face detection and blurring is currently being accomplished. He compares algorithms used, and provides visual examples, and a web application he built to do so. (12 min)

https://towardsdatascience.com/unlocking-the-power-of-facial-blurring-in-media-a-comprehensive-exploration-and-model-comparison-261031603513

More Reading

• MADLAD-400… Google’s new multilingual machine translation model for low resource languages via slator
• From Deloitte… 12 most popular AI use cases in the enterprise today via CIO Magazine
• Agents: An open-source framework for autonomous language agents via AIWaves
• Good piece on the tradeoffs… A closer look at e/OS: Murena’s privacy-first ‘deGoogled’ Android alternative via TechCrunch 

All Gilbane Advisor issues

---

Content technology news

Adobe unveils Adobe GenStudio for enterprises

Solution combines content ideation, creation, production and activation to support the enterprise content supply chain with generative AI.
https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2023/Adobe-Unveils-Adobe-GenStudio-for-Enterprises/default.aspx

Acquia adds generative AI to digital asset management platform

Native integration for AI-generated product and image descriptions to speed time to market for digital assets used across customer channels.
https://www.acquia.com/newsroom/press-releases/acquia-dam-generativeai

Netlify announces Software Developer Kit (SDK)

New suite to accelerate modern web development for enterprise developers with a streamlined, accelerated path to composable web architecture.
https://www.netlify.com/products/software-development-kit

Cloudinary updates Digital Asset Management (DAM) platform

Studio is a new feature that allows allows non-technical users to quickly adapt images and video with built-in generative AI capabilities.
https://cloudinary.com

All content technology news

---

The Gilbane Advisor is authored by Frank Gilbane and is ad-free, cost-free, and curated for content, computing, web, data, and digital experience technology and information professionals. We publish recommended articles and content technology news weekly. We do not sell or share personal data.

Subscribe | View online | Editorial policy | Privacy policy | Contact

This week we feature articles by Reggie Raye & K. Alexandria Bond, and Michael Blau.

Additional reading comes from Tom Krazit, Carl Franzen, Lukas Blecher, Guillem Cucurull, Thomas Scialom & Robert Stojnic, and Paul Baier, Jimmy Hexter, & John J. Sviokla.

News comes from Kobai & Databricks, Merkle, InfluxData, and Neo4j.

All previous issues are available at https://gilbane.com/gilbane-advisor-index

---

Opinion / Analysis

Text-to-CAD: risks and opportunities

I haven’t seen much discussion of generative AI and 3D, where the output is a 3D CAD model rather than an image, but of course this is already a thing. Reggie Raye & K. Alexandria Bond provide a readable and useful overview of some tools to use, as well as advice on dealing with the unique design and engineering applicable. (12 min)

https://thegradient.pub/text-to-cad/

Secrets, and how to prove them: A magician’s guide to zero-knowledge proofs

If you’ve read multiple explanations of what a zero-knowledge proof is and you’re not convinced you’ve quite got the hang of it, or you are confident you have, but are looking for a non-technical explanation, you know, for a friend, you’ll appreciate this short demo and explanation by magician by Michael Blau — though he keeps his secret. He also works with crypto investors. (3 min)

https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/a-magicians-guide-to-zero-knowledge-proofs/

More Reading

• WASM update… WebAssembly: Some assembly still required via Runtime
• Nougat: Neural optical understanding for academic documents. Noble quest (very technical) via Meta AI
• McKinsey unveils its own generative AI tool for employees via VentureBeat
• Where should Your company start with GenAI? via HBR

All Gilbane Advisor issues

---

Content technology news

Merkle launches global composable commerce accelerator for Salesforce Commerce

Developed to work with Contentful and Magnolia content management systems, the accelerator extends Salesforce Commerce Cloud and streamlines integration.
https://www.merkle.com/en/merkle-now/press-releases/2023/merkle-launches-global-composable-commerce-accelerator-for-sales.html

InfluxData Announces InfluxDB Clustered

The rebuilt database engine is optimized for real-time analytics with higher performance, unlimited cardinality, and SQL support.
https://www.influxdata.com

Kobai announces partnership with Databricks

Kobai’s Saturn platform is embedded directly in the data layer, allowing organizations to query data without moving it from the lakehouse.
https://www.kobai.io/articles/strategic-partnership-between-databricks-and-kobai

Neo4j adds vector search within its native graph database

Enables customers to achieve richer insights from semantic search and generative AI applications, and serve as long-term memory.
https://neo4j.com/press-releases/neo4j-vector-search/

All content technology news

---

The Gilbane Advisor is authored by Frank Gilbane and is ad-free, cost-free, and curated for content, computing, web, data, and digital experience technology and information professionals. We publish recommended articles and content technology news weekly. We do not sell or share personal data.

Subscribe | View online | Editorial policy | Privacy policy | Contact

This week we feature articles by Ina Fried & Scott Rosenberg, and Peter Lawrence.

Additional reading comes from Vitalik Buterin, Daniel Smilkov & Nikhil Thorat, and Jan Kammerath.

News comes from Google, Open AI, ElevenLabs, Bloomreach, and DeltaXML.

All previous issues are available at https://gilbane.com/gilbane-advisor-index

---

Opinion / Analysis

AI could choke on its own exhaust as it fills the web

In the last issue before our summer break we recommended a paper on LLM model collapse, caused by LLMs training on data sets that include previously generated data. This week Ina Fried, Scott Rosenberg provide a short and useful summary of this and other “AI disorders” and some of the repercussions as more generated data populates the web. (3 min). 

https://www.axios.com/2023/08/28/ai-content-flood-model-collapse

Having a tough chat with an LLM about knowledge graph paths

There is a lot of enthusiasm around pairing knowledge graphs and LLMs, but there is also a lot to learn. Peter Lawrence is on the case, and in this article explores how “an LLM can be tuned or prompted with a knowledge graph, to answer tough questions about shortest paths through the graph.” (15 min)

https://blog.gopenai.com/having-a-tough-chat-with-an-llm-about-knowledge-graph-paths-d4fc43f97332

More Reading

• Fascinating and way detailed… What do I think about Community Notes? via Vitalik Buterin
• Introducing Lilac open source product to analyze, structure, and clean unstructured data with AI. via Lilacml Blog
• A practioners journey… Relational database systems are becoming a problem — but what to do about it? via Jan Kammerath

All Gilbane Advisor issues

---

Content technology news

Duet AI for Google Workspace now available

With Duet AI, we added AI as a real-time collaborator that can act as a coach, source of inspiration, and productivity booster.
https://workspace.google.com/blog/product-announcements/duet-ai-in-workspace-now-available

Introducing ChatGPT Enterprise

Offers enterprise-grade security & privacy, higher-speed GPT-4 access, longer context windows, advanced data analysis, and customization options.
https://openai.com/blog/introducing-chatgpt-enterprise

XElevenLabs releases Eleven Multilingual v2

New foundational deep learning model supporting multilingual capabilities across 28 languages to broaden and improve accessibility of content.
https://elevenlabs.io/blog/multilingualv2/

Bloomreach announces Clarity

Businesses connect conversations to product catalogs, and integrate individual conversations across channels, including website, chat, and SMS.
https://www.bloomreach.com/en/products/clarity

DeltaXML improves CALS table handling to merge products

Flexible n-way comparison and merge of CALS tables to produce rigorous and accurate comparisons. Supports table versions different structures.
https://www.deltaxml.com

All content technology news

---

The Gilbane Advisor is authored by Frank Gilbane and is ad-free, cost-free, and curated for content, computing, web, data, and digital experience technology and information professionals. We publish recommended articles and content technology news weekly. We do not sell or share personal data.

Subscribe | View online | Editorial policy | Privacy policy | Contact

This week we feature articles by Amber Case, and Ilia Shumailov, Zakhar Shumaylov, Yiren Zhao, Yarin Gal, Nicolas Papernot, & Ross Anderson.

Additional reading comes from Raiza Martin & Steven Johnson, Jerry Liu, Sara Fischer, and Nikhil Simha.

News comes from Adobe, CrafterCMS, and Bloomreach.

👉 It’s time for our annual summer break. Our next issue will be published on September 6. I hope you all have a pleasant, and not-too-hot-or-rainy, August.

All previous issues are available at https://gilbane.com/gilbane-advisor-index

---

Opinion / Analysis

The curse of recursion: Training on generated data makes models forget

Training on generated data is an iffy proposition at best, yet it is also difficult to avoid, or even detect. This is not an unknown problem, but is certainly under-appreciated. This paper argues that the problem is unavoidable and explains why. There is lots of math but the narrative is well written, making the paper useful even for the math-squeamish. (28 min)

“Model Collapse is a degenerative process affecting generations of learned generative models, where generated data end up polluting the training set of the next generation of models; being trained on polluted data, they then mis-perceive reality.”…

Abstract: https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.17493v2 Full PDF: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.17493v2.pdf

How to identify “Truthy” tech trends

Amber Case provides an entertaining, and at least mostly true, analysis of truthiness in tech. It’s also likely that most of us know multiple people who would benefit from reading it. (8 min)

https://caseorganic.medium.com/how-to-identify-truthy-tech-trends-70f553c5a445

More Reading

• “An AI-first notebook, grounded in your own documents” Introducing NotebookLM via Google Labs
• LLM-powered knowledge workers… Data Agents via LlamaIndex blog
• AP strikes news-sharing and tech deal with OpenAI via Axios
• Case study… Chronon — A declarative feature engineering framework via The Airbnb Tech Blog

All Gilbane Advisor issues

---

Content technology news

Adobe Firefly supports prompts in over 100 languages

Users can now generate high-quality images, create text effects, streamline workflows and improve productivity in their language of choice.
https://firefly.adobe.com

CrafterCMS release version 4.1

The updated CMS includes several new content authoring features for creating content-centric digital experiences, and a switch to OpenSearch.
https://craftercms.com

Bloomreach supports OAuth 2.0 authentication

Businesses have the ability to integrate Bloomreach Engagement with third-party applications that require OAuth through webhooks.
https://www.bloomreach.com/en/news/2023/bloomreach-now-supports-frictionless-integrations-with-third-party-applications-requiring-oauth-2.0-authentication-method

All content technology news

---

The Gilbane Advisor is authored by Frank Gilbane and is ad-free, cost-free, and curated for content, computing, web, data, and digital experience technology and information professionals. We publish recommended articles and content technology news weekly. We do not sell or share personal data.

Subscribe | View online | Editorial policy | Privacy policy | Contact

This week we feature an article by Boaz Barak.

Additional reading comes from Anna Kaley, Maria Rosala, Kara Pernice & Patty Caya, Rachel Andrew, Tom Davenport & Maryam Alavi, and Dean Allemang.

News comes from Brightspot, dtSearch, Databricks, and Snowflake.

All previous issues are available at https://gilbane.com/gilbane-advisor-index

---

Opinion / Analysis

Metaphors for AI, and why I don’t like them

Boaz Barak finds metaphors very useful tools for facilitating understanding, but as Dennett ‘intuition pumps’ that leave out complicating detail. Barak is concerned that the use of metaphors to explain AI is leading to “over-interpretation”. In this excellent piece he looks at the ‘stochastic parrot’, ‘blurry JPEG of the web’, and other AI metaphors to make his case for caution. (13 min)

https://windowsontheory.org/2023/06/28/metaphors-for-ai-and-why-i-dont-like-them/

More Reading

• 10 best intranets of 2023: What makes them great via Nielsen Norman Group
• New to the web platform in May and June via web .dev
• Good read for senior managers… How to train Generative AI using your company’s data via HBR .org
• Sometimes it looks like they do… LLM, explain yourself! via Dean Allemang

All Gilbane Advisor issues

---

Content technology news

dtSearch updates enterprise products

dtSearch enterprise and developer product line searches terabytes across online and offline data; products can run on premises or the cloud.
https://www.dtsearch.com

Brightspot integrates OpenAI

Content creators can leverage AI-assisted suggestions for headlines, subheadlines and full body text to expedite the content-creation process.
https://www.brightspot.com/cms-resources/tag/artificial-intelligence

Databricks announces LakehouseIQ

LakehouseIQ is a knowledge engine using generative AI to provide useful, contextual answers to natural language questions from all approved employees.
https://www.databricks.com/blog/introducing-lakehouseiq-ai-powered-engine-uniquely-understands-your-business

Snowflake unveils large language model to extract data from documents

Document AI leverages Snowflake’s first-party large language model to unlock deeper insights from unstructured data in documents.
https://www.snowflake.com/news/snowflake-unveils-new-large-language-model-to-extract-deeper-insights-from-documents-while-continuing-to-advance-platform-speed-and-performance/

All content technology news

---

The Gilbane Advisor is authored by Frank Gilbane and is ad-free, cost-free, and curated for content, computing, web, data, and digital experience technology and information professionals. We publish recommended articles and content technology news weekly. We do not sell or share personal data.

Subscribe | View online | Editorial policy | Privacy policy | Contact

This week we feature articles from Shirui Pan, Linhao Luo, Yufei Wang, Chen Chen, Jiapu Wang & Xindong Wu, and Maria Antoniak, Li Lucy, Maarten Sap & Luca Soldaini.

Additional reading comes from Jon Udell, Fabio Matricardi, Mark Sundstrom, and Rhiannon Williams.

News comes from MongoDB, Drupal, Databricks, and Bloomreach & Shopware.

Note: We’ll be off next week and back on July 12th.

All previous issues are available at https://gilbane.com/gilbane-advisor-index

---

Opinion / Analysis

Unifying large language models and knowledge graphs: A roadmap

We’ve been focused mostly on practitioner-authored articles on this topic. This comprehensive paper is a useful resource for practitioners, strategists, and researchers alike. It is well written and illustrated, and a valuable reference that will come in handy at multiple points in related projects. (50 min)

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2306.08302.pdf

Using large language models with care

This is not news, but researchers Maria Antoniak, Li Lucy, Maarten Sap, and Luca Soldaini from The Allen Institute provide an important public service with their “introductory outline of the risks of LLMs, written for the everyday user.” This will be directly helpful to some of us, but especially useful for sharing with certain colleagues, or family and friends. (11 min)

https://blog.allenai.org/using-large-language-models-with-care-eeb17b0aed27

More Reading

• Why LLM-assisted table transformation is a big deal Some of you will know this – either way, a useful short read. via Jon Udell
•  Fun take on hype cycles for programmers… XML is the future via Bite code!
• For adventurous DIY’s like Fabio Matricardi… Answering questions about your documents using LangChain (and not OpenAI) via Artificial Corner
• Sad, but inevitable… The people paid to train AI are outsourcing their work… to AI via MIT Technology Review

All Gilbane Advisor issues

---

Content technology news

MongoDB launches five new capabilities for MongoDB Atlas

The new MongoDB features can help speed up innovation by standardizing workloads on a single developer data platform across the enterprise.
https://www.mongodb.com/press/mongodb-launches-five-new-capabilities-for-mongodb-atlas-to-build-new-classes-of-applications

Drupal 10.1 is now available

Customizing the look of your site easier, adds support for decoupled navigation, improves content modeling and editing, block management…
https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/releases/10.1.0

Databricks announces Lakehouse Apps

Databricks customers will be able to discover, deploy, and manage data and AI applications directly from Databricks.
https://www.databricks.com

Bloomreach and Shopware partner

Bloomreach’s marketing automation, product discovery, and content management will enhance Shopware e-commerce customer’s customer journeys.
https://www.bloomreach.com ■ https://www.shopware.com/en/

All content technology news

---

The Gilbane Advisor is authored by Frank Gilbane and is ad-free, cost-free, and curated for content, computing, web, data, and digital experience technology and information professionals. We publish recommended articles and content technology news weekly. We do not sell or share personal data.

Subscribe | View online | Editorial policy | Privacy policy | Contact

This week we feature articles from Simon Wardley, and Jakob Nielsen.

Additional reading comes from Sayash Kapoor & Arvind Narayanan, Rishi Bommasani, Kevin Klyman, Daniel Zhang & Percy Liang, and Alex Ratner.

News comes from Acquia, Adobe, Optimizely, and Expert[.]ai & Blue Prism.

All previous issues are available at https://gilbane.com/gilbane-advisor-index

---

Opinion / Analysis

Both articles this week argue that the current state of conversational programming with prompt engineering as the interface, is primitive, though directional. Simon Wardley’s post is a bit more technical, while Jakob Nielsen’s focuses on end-user usability.

Why the fuss about conversational programming

“In my last post on conversational programming I asked the reader to “get yourself ready for a world of conversational programming” but I wasn’t willing to call it for ChatGPT or the existing crop of LLMs.”

If you’re familiar with Simon Wardley, you won’t be surprised that he says we need to get to “code as maps”. Otherwise, see his previous post and perhaps some of his other links. (10 min)

https://swardley.medium.com/why-the-fuss-about-conversational-programming-70a8b7ca0d2b

AI: first new UI paradigm in 60 years

Jakob Nielsen…

“I doubt that the current set of generative AI tools (like ChatGPT, Bard, etc.) are representative of the UIs we’ll be using in a few years, because they have deep-rooted usability problems. Their problems led to the development of a new role — the prompt engineer.” (5 min)

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ai-paradigm/

More Reading

• It’s not so simple… Is AI-generated disinformation a threat to democracy? via AI Snake Oil
• Handy comparison table with details and scores for each requirement… Do foundation model providers comply with the draft EU AI Act? via Stanford Center for Research on Foundation Models
• Of course we need a platform… Snorkel’s Foundation Model Data Platform via Snorkel

All Gilbane Advisor issues

---

Content technology news

Acquia enhances digital experience platform for personalization

Enables digital experiences based on knowledge gained from a broader array of channels, using anonymous, known, and understood customer data.
https://www.acquia.com/newsroom/press-releases/acquia-enhances-digital-experience-platform-power-omnichannel-customer

Expert[.]ai expands partnership with SS&C Blue Prism

Processing unstructured language data for automation creates new potential for leveraging intelligent automation in the enterprise.
https://www.expert.ai ■ https://www.blueprism.com

Optimizely introduces Content Graph

Content Graph service extends the capabilities of Optimizely’s CMS by enabling flexible content delivery across channels and applications.
https://www.optimizely.com/headless

Adobe adds Firefly generative AI capabilities to Illustrator

Following Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Express, Illustrator is the latest Creative Cloud application to benefit from Adobe’s generative AI.
https://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator.html

All content technology news

---

The Gilbane Advisor is authored by Frank Gilbane and is ad-free, cost-free, and curated for content, computing, web, data, and digital experience technology and information professionals. We publish recommended articles and content technology news weekly. We do not sell or share personal data.

Subscribe | View online | Editorial policy | Privacy policy | Contact

This week we feature articles from Jacob Steinhardt, and Fan Li.

Additional reading comes from Shirley Lu & George Serafeim, Cassie Kozyrkov, M.G. Siegler, and Jeffrey Pound et al.

News comes from Adobe, Neo4j, Bloomreach, and Optimizely.

All previous issues are available at https://gilbane.com/gilbane-advisor-index

---

Opinion / Analysis

What will GPT-2030 look like?

Of course we would all like to know, but given the speed of new developments in machine learning it’s difficult to make, or have confidence in, any predictions. Jacob Steinhardt isn’t afraid to try, and his post is a must-read for anyone looking for some data points to inform their own research and thinking. You’ll want a cup of coffee or tea and perhaps a little more time than the specified read time (27 min).

https://bounded-regret.ghost.io/what-will-gpt-2030-look-like/

Explore OntoGPT for schema-based knowledge extraction

“The OntoGPT framework and SPIRES tool provide a principled approach to extract knowledge from unstructured text for integration into Knowledge Graphs (KGs), using Large Language Models such as GPT. This methodology enables handling complex relationships, ensures logical consistency, and aligns with predefined ontologies for better KG integration.”

Fan Li describes another open available tool that he believes overcome some limitations to the popular LangChain and LlamaIndex frameworks. The more tools the better. (7 min).

https://apex974.com/articles/ontogpt-for-schema-based-knowledge-extraction

More Reading

• How AI will accelerate the circular economy via HBR
• Linking un-structured Web documents to entities in knowledge graphs… Growing and serving large open-domain knowledge graphs via arXiv
• Platform play redux… Apple’s Vision Pro & Meta’s Vision Oh No via 500ish
• Generative AI vs enterprise AI… Why multi-purpose systems are hard to design safely via Cassie Kozyrkov

All Gilbane Advisor issues

---

Content technology news

Adobe announces Firefly for Enterprise

Adobe plans to enable businesses to custom train Firefly with their own branded assets, embedding Firefly into their own ecosystem.
https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2023/Adobe-Brings-Firefly-and-Express-to-Enterprises/default.aspx

Neo4j announces new integrations with generative AI features in Vertex AI

Enterprise customers can now leverage knowledge graphs with Google’s large language models to improve generative AI outcomes.
https://neo4j.com

Bloomreach enhances customer experience with Gorgias integration

Gorgias provides data about the customer experience and gives Engagement users a more in-depth understanding of the customer journey.
https://www.bloomreach.com/

Optimizely expands partnership with Contentsquare

Contentsquare enables Optimizely users to leverage heatmaps and data analyses to uncover customer insights and enhance experiments.
https://www.optimizely.com/insights/blog/optimizely-x-contentsquare-5-ways-were-better-together/

All content technology news

---

The Gilbane Advisor is authored by Frank Gilbane and is ad-free, cost-free, and curated for content, computing, web, data, and digital experience technology and information professionals. We publish recommended articles and content technology news weekly. We do not sell or share personal data.

Subscribe | View online | Editorial policy | Privacy policy | Contact