The Gilbane Advisor

Curated for content, computing, and digital experience professionals

Gilbane Advisor 11-6-24 — Undead agents, Breaking web

November 5, 2024 /

This week we feature articles from Rafe Brena, and Benjamin Brooks. 

Additional reading comes from Jenna Ahart, Astasia Myers, Van Chien Nguyen et al, and Joan Westenberg.

News comes from OpenAI, Coveo & Shopify, DataStax, and Salesforce.

Our next issue will arrive November 20.

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

Opinion / Analysis

Agents are coming back from the dead

Rafe Brena has a delightful piece on the history of agents. It is fun, non-technical, and should be of interest to “anybody thinking about developing “agents” or just considering using them.” Be sure to checkout the link to Apple’s 1987 five-minute video of a “Knowledge Navigator”. (8 min)

https://pub.towardsai.net/agents-are-coming-back-from-the-dead-50c929ab8387

AI search could break the web

Developers should act before governments fall back on blunt tools.

Navigating the complex intersection of web ecosystem health, copyright and legal issues, AI / machine learning ethical issues, and current and potential regulations, is daunting. Even moreso given diverse type of expertise required for well-informed decision making. Benjamin Brooks provides some helpful clarity. (6 min)

https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/10/31/1106504/ai-search-could-break-the-web

More Reading

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Content technology news

ChatGPT will choose to search the web based on what you ask, or you can manually choose to search by clicking the web search icon or links to sources.
https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-search

Coveo partners with Shopify

The partnership brings AI search, generative, product discovery and dynamic session optimization commerce experiences to enterprise customers.
https://www.coveo.com/en/integrations/shopify-search

DataStax expands Astra DB extension for GitHub Copilot

Manage and interact with Astra DB and create Langflow GenAI applications through a more intuitive natural language interface.
https://www.datastax.com/blog/astra-db-extension-github-copilot-updates

Salesforce launches Agentforce

Agentforce delivers autonomous AI agents that can connect to enterprise data and take action across sales, service, marketing, and commerce.
https://www.salesforce.com/news/press-releases/2024/10/29/agentforce-general-availability-announcement/

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 most Wednesdays. We do not sell or share personal data.

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Coveo partners with Shopify

October 31, 2024 /

Coveo, an enterprise AI platform that brings AI Search and generative AI to every point–of-experience, announced they have partnered with Shopify to bring its commerce AI capabilities to Shopify enterprise customers.

Coveo will give Shopify enterprise merchants the ability to manage AI models and strategies for search relevance and semantic precision, personalization, recommendations and generative shopper experiences, enabling AI-powered product discovery and dynamic session optimization to drive higher conversion, revenue and margins within large scale and complex B2B, B2C and D2C businesses. Shopify merchants will have access to:

  • Search: Query suggestions, personalized 1:1 results, partial part # match, cross-reference lookups, powered by AI and semantics.
  • Personalization: with real-time individualized AI-powered search results creating a relevant experience for known or anonymous visitors.
  • Recommendations: Product and content recommendations augmented in-session based on real-time shopper behavior and intent cues.
  • Indexing: Unified indexing enables product discovery, regardless of catalog complexity.
  • Generative Experiences: Guided advisory experiences educating customers on products and putting retailers’ content to work in the discovery journey.
  • AI and ML Models: Deliver solutions for your shopper journey; from query suggestions to personalized and business-aware ranking.
  • Merchandising and insights: Controls to schedule campaigns, drive experimentation and apply business rules on top of AI.

https://www.coveo.com/en/integrations/shopify-search

OpenAI introduces ChatGPT search

October 31, 2024 /

ChatGPT can now search the web so you can get fast, timely answers with links to relevant web sources, which you previously needed to go to a search engine for. This blends the benefits of a natural language interface with the value of up-to-date sports scores, news, stock quotes. Chats now include links to sources, such as news articles and blog posts.

ChatGPT will choose to search the web based on what you ask, or you can manually choose to search by clicking the web search icon. Go deeper with follow-up questions, and ChatGPT will consider the full context of your chat. Chats include links to sources, such as news articles and blog posts, giving you a way to learn more.

The search model is a fine-tuned version of GPT-4o, post-trained using synthetic data generation techniques, including distilling outputs from OpenAI o1-preview. ChatGPT search leverages third-party search providers, as well as content provided directly by our partners.

Search will be available at chatgpt.com⁠ and our desktop and mobile apps. All ChatGPT Plus and Team users, as well as SearchGPT waitlist users, will have access today. Enterprise and Edu users will get access in the next few weeks. We’ll roll out to all Free users over the coming months.

https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-search

Gilbane Advisor 10-30-24 — LLM reasoning, alien thinking

October 30, 2024 /

This week we feature articles from Melanie Mitchell, and David Weinberger. 

Additional reading comes from Chris Messina, David Haber, Chance Miller, and Michael Parekh.

News comes from Semantic Web Company & Ontotext, Perplexity, Acquia, and Sitecore.

Our next issue will arrive November 6.

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

Opinion / Analysis

The LLM reasoning debate heats up

Three recent papers examine the robustness of reasoning and problem-solving in large language models

Melanie Mitchell describes each papers’ methodology, and findings, and concludes that “… there’s no consensus about the conclusion!” This may not be a surprise, but her article is a very readable and useful update. (11 min)

https://aiguide.substack.com/p/the-llm-reasoning-debate-heats-up

AI doesn’t think like us

David Weinberger wears his philosophy hat to make his case in this journal essay. The result is an especially thoughtful and balanced contribution to discussions about “knowledge” in a world of humans and machine learning. Prepare to think. (15 min)

https://dweinberger.medium.com/ai-doesnt-think-like-us-81a6fdc33e2a

More Reading

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Content technology news

Semantic Web Company and Ontotext merge to create Graphwise

The knowledge graph management platform includes complete multi-modal data support – unstructured, semi-structured and structured data.
https://graphwise.ai

Perplexity introduces Internal Knowledge Search and Spaces

 With Perplexity Pro and Enterprise Pro, you can search across both public web content and internal knowledge bases, and collaborate in Perplexity Spaces.
https://www.perplexity.ai/enterprise

Acquia adds new AI capabilities for digital asset management

Acquia Video Creator, by Moovly, is now available as an add-on module to Acquia DAM and PIM (product information management) solutions.
https://www.acquia.com/products/acquia-dam

Sitecore launches Sitecore Stream

Sitecore Stream helps orchestrate marketer experience across Sitecore solutions, including XM Cloud, Content Hub, and Digital Experience Platform (DXP).
https://www.sitecore.com/products/sitecore-stream

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 most Wednesdays. We do not sell or share personal data.

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

DataStax expands Astra DB extension for GitHub Copilot

October 29, 2024 /

DataStax, a AI platform, announced the enhancement of its GitHub Copilot extension with its AI Platform-as-a-Service (AI PaaS) solution. This extension makes it easier for developers to directly interact with DataStax Langflow and their Astra DB databases’ vector, tabular, and streaming data right from their IDE (integrated development environment) through the DataStax GitHub Copilot Extension. 

As generative AI adoption accelerates, developers are seeking tools that not only enhance productivity but also simplify complex workflows, enabling them to keep pace with innovation. New features include:

  • Database Creation: Developers can create databases (vector or serverless), in the user’s preferred cloud provider and region, in Astra DB directly through GitHub Copilot.
  • Flow creation: The Copilot Extension can build Langflow flows using simple English conversational prompts, provide direct links to the flows, and generate API calls to Langflow application endpoints in VSCode.
  • Expanded Capabilities: Copilot answers questions about databases and helps troubleshoot queries. These new features address challenges developers face by bringing low-code and traditional developers together, enabling a broader range of experience levels to leverage powerful AI tools within the familiar VS Code environment. This reduces the time to production, especially for teams that need to deliver quickly in competitive environments.

https://www.datastax.com/blog/astra-db-extension-github-copilot-updates

Salesforce launches Agentforce

October 29, 2024 /

Salesforce, a CRM (customer relationship management) provider, announced the general availability of Agentforce, a new layer on the Salesforce Platform that enables companies to build and deploy AI agents that can autonomously take action across business functions. Agentforce uses reasoning abilities to make decisions and take action, like resolving customer cases, qualifying sales leads, and optimizing marketing campaigns. Agentforce doesn’t depend on human engagement to get work done; these agents can be triggered by changes in data, business rules, pre-built automations, or signals via API calls from other systems.

Agentforce includes out-of-the-box agents that are easy to customize and deploy with low-code or no-code tools and that work around the clock across any channel. Users can customize pre-built agents to serve any industry and use case, like retail with order management topics, or financial services with billing and payment support topics.

With Agentforce, there’s no need to DIY (do it yourself) your AI. Customers can instantly turn their existing Flows, prompt templates, Apex, and APIs into agent actions, connecting to enterprise data, security models, and automations‌ with tools like Data Cloud, Slack, and MuleSoft. Salesforce admins and developers can use natural language to create instructions for agents.

https://www.salesforce.com/news/press-releases/2024/10/29/agentforce-general-availability-announcement/

Acquia adds new AI capabilities for digital asset management

October 23, 2024 /

Acquia, a provider of digital experience software, announced AI enhancements to the company’s digital asset management solution, Acquia DAM, to help creatives and marketers to increase productivity and extract more value from their digital content.

Acquia Video Creator, by Moovly, is now available as an add-on module to Acquia DAM and PIM (product information management) solutions. Acquia Video Creator allows users to produce professional-quality, brand-compliant videos with a drag-and-drop interface, existing assets from their digital asset library, customizable templates, and a library of graphics, animations, and video clips. Start entirely new projects, edit existing videos, and use AI features to generate scripts, voiceover, subtitles, transcripts, and translations. Acquia Video Creator also offers collaboration tools.

Acquia also expanded the AI features available within Acquia DAM to make it easier to manage, find, and share video and image assets. AI Video Transcription enables users to add an AI-generated video transcript that is stored on the video’s asset digest page. Transcripts are time-stamped and available via searches within the DAM. Automated Color Filtering removes human error that can arise in manual tagging by using AI to analyze the color profile of an image and provide filtering and search of specific HEX values.

https://www.acquia.com/products/acquia-dam

Semantic Web Company and Ontotext merge to create Graphwise

October 23, 2024 /

Semantic Web Company and Ontotext today announced the two companies have merged to become Graph AI provider, Graphwise. Semantic Web Company brings expertise in knowledge engineering, semantic AI and intelligent document processing, while Ontotext brings a versatile graph database engine and AI models for linking and unifying information.

Combining Ontotext GraphDB’s data management capabilities with PoolParty, knowledge and content management offerings from Semantic Web Company, Graphwise has created a comprehensive knowledge graph management platform, which includes complete multi-modal data support – unstructured, semi-structured and structured data. The Graphwise Platform, will enable customers to benefit from: 

  • Sophisticated, accurate and reliable AI applications that leverage the power of knowledge graphs for applications like Graph RAG, NLP, recommendation systems, and predictive analysis. 
  • Support unstructured and semi-structured data management into data fabric processes. 
  • The ability to scale effortlessly, while ensuring data remains well-structured and classified. This enables businesses to build AI systems capable of navigating vast networks of interconnected information without sacrificing accuracy or performance. 
  • Enhanced flexibility in designing models by providing the tools necessary in one platform to simplify architectural decisions.
  • A combined partner ecosystem and a broader market which creates more opportunities, including significantly larger project volumes. 

https://graphwise.ai

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