The Gilbane Advisor

Curated for content, computing, and digital experience professionals

Gilbane Advisor 4-9-25 — LLM biology, AI Index

April 9, 2025 /

This week we feature articles from Jack Lindsey, et al, and Eliza Strickland.

Additional reading comes from Omer Goldman & Uri Shaham, Steven Sinofsky, Volodymyr Pavlyshyn, and Adam Bignell.

News comes from MindsDB, Access Innovations, Perplexity & firmly.ai, and Contentful.

Our next issue arrives April 23.

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

Opinion / Analysis

On the biology of a large language model

Jack Lindsey and his colleagues at Anthropic…
“The black-box nature of models is increasingly unsatisfactory as they advance in intelligence and are deployed in a growing number of applications. Our goal is to reverse engineer how these models work on the inside, so we may better understand them and assess their fitness for purpose.”

Anthropic’s new research into how LLMs “think” is fascinating. Don’t be put off by the length of their paper — you can learn a lot by reading some of the introductory material, the discussion at the end, and then surfing the case studies and topics in-between. (1 hr 49 min)

https://transformer-circuits.pub/2025/attribution-graphs/biology.html

12 graphs that explain the state of AI in 2025

The always useful and free AI Index from Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) is available. The 455 page 2025 issue is “stuffed with graphs and data on the topics of R&D, technical performance, responsible AI, economic impacts, science and medicine, policy, education, and public opinion.” IEEE Spectrum’s Eliza Strickland provides highlights and links to the full report. (7 min)

https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-index-2025

More Reading

All Gilbane Advisor issues

Content technology news

MindsDB brings federated data access to Model Context Protocol

MindsDB & MCP enables AI applications and agents to run federated queries over data stored in different databases and applications as if they were a single database.
https://mindsdb.com

Access Innovations releases Data Harmony 3.17

The new version includes knowledge maps that illustrate the linkages (with color-coded legends) between categories and terms in a taxonomy.
https://www.accessinn.com/data-harmony-products/

Perplexity integrates firmly.ai ecommerce technology

By embedding firmly.ai’s commerce platform, Perplexity users can now complete their entire shopping journey, from product discovery to secure transaction, without leaving the platform.
https://www.firmly.ai ■ https://www.perplexity.ai

Contentful launches new CMS capabilities and Shopify partnership

New AI and personalization capabilities for technical teams build on the company’s CMS, and Contentful Studio, and a low-code product for marketing teams.
https://www.contentful.com/newsroom/contentful-reveals-next-phase-of-growth-with-modern-digital-experience

All content technology news

The Gilbane Advisor is authored by Frank Gilbane and is ad-free, cost-free, and curated for content, computing, data, web, 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

MindsDB brings federated data access to Model Context Protocol

April 3, 2025 /

MindsDB announced comprehensive support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP) across both its open source and enterprise platforms. This integration positions MindsDB as a unified AI data hub that standardizes and optimizes how AI models access enterprise data, simplifying artificial intelligence deployment in complex data environments.

The Model Context Protocol, an emerging open standard developed by Anthropic, creates a universal way for AI applications to connect with data sources and tools. By implementing MCP, MindsDB enables AI applications and agents to run federated queries over data stored in different databases and business applications as if they were a single database. MindsDB’s implementation extends beyond basic MCP compatibility to:

  • Provide one-step querying across multiple sources with comprehensive audit capabilities
  • Integrate with existing enforcement mechanisms to maintain data governance
  • Enable complex workflows including multi-source joins, automated data transformations, and natural language query conversion
  • Use native integrations when MCP support is insufficient and optimizes queries for efficient execution at the data source

MCP support is available in both MindsDB’s open source and enterprise editions. The open source version provides core MCP functionality for developers and small teams, while the enterprise edition adds advanced security, governance features, and premium support for organizational deployments.

https://mindsdb.com

Gilbane Advisor 4-2-25 — AGI debate, Cybernetic teammate

April 2, 2025 /

This week we feature articles from Gary Marcus, and Ethan Mollick.

Additional reading comes from Eve Weinberg, Amber Case, Iulia Brezeanu, and Greg Kamradt.

News comes from Adobe, Databricks & Anthroic, Bynder, and Algolia.

Our next issue arrives April 9.

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

Opinion / Analysis

Ezra Klein’s new take on AGI – and why I think it’s probably wrong

Gary Marcus is right…
“In a new episode of his podcast with Ben Buchanan former special adviser for artificial intelligence under Biden, entitled, The Government knows A.G.I. is coming, The New York Times’ usually fabulous Ezra Klein declares with too much certainty that AGI is pretty much imminent, and urges you to get with the program.” (11 min)

https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/ezra-kleins-new-take-on-agi-and-why

The Cybernetic teammate

Having an AI on your team can increase performance, provide expertise, and improve your experience

Ethan Mollick…
“So, what happens when AI acts as a teammate? This past summer we conducted a pre-registered, randomized controlled trial of 776 professionals at Procter and Gamble, the consumer goods giant, to find out.” (5 min)

https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/the-cybernetic-teammate

More Reading

All Gilbane Advisor issues

Content technology news

Adobe launches Adobe Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator

AEP enables businesses to build, manage and orchestrate AI agents from Adobe and third-party ecosystems. Adobe also announced, a suite of agents.
https://news.adobe.com/news/2025/03/adobe-launches-adobe-experience-platform-agent-orchestrator-for-businesses

Algolia launches AI-powered Collections

Collections reduce choice overload, guide users through intuitive navigation, improve search relevance, and help users find products faster.
https://www.algolia.com/products/ai-browse

Databricks brings Anthropic’s Claude models to platform

The strategic, five-year partnership offers Anthropic’s models and services natively through the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform.
https://www.databricks.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/databricks-and-anthropic-sign-landmark-deal-bring-claude-models

Bynder announces AI Agents

The AI agents execute business-critical tasks such as content enrichment, discovery, transformation, and governance for strategic DAM deployments.
https://labs.bynder.com/features/ai-agents

All content technology news

The Gilbane Advisor is authored by Frank Gilbane and is ad-free, cost-free, and curated for content, computing, data, web, 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

Contentful launches new CMS capabilities and Shopify partnership

March 31, 2025 /

Contentful launched new features and partnerships that, with Contentful’s content management system (CMS) capabilities, deliver a modern solution for creating digital experiences. Anchored in core content operations, enhanced by AI, and featuring data-driven AI-enabled personalization at the core of the digital experience platform (DXP).

Contentful’s new AI and personalization capabilities build on the company’s composable CMS, a core platform tailored to technical users, and Contentful Studio, a low-code digital experience-building product for marketing teams.

AI Actions is Contentful’s framework for AI-powered content operations, enabling marketers to embed generative AI models into any stage of the content lifecycle from creation to adaptation to publishing. AI Actions remove the friction of repetitive marketing tasks, like translations and localization for global audiences, one-click SEO, and alt-text generation.

Contentful Personalization will live directly within the Contentful web app. Customers can easily find and manage all their audiences, experiments, and personalized experiences in one unified workspace. By centralizing everything in a single command center, Contentful streamlines personalization, making it faster and more efficient for the marketing team to optimize customer experiences.

Contentful and Shopify also announced a new strategic partnership designed to connect and synchronize content and commerce systems.

https://www.contentful.com/newsroom/contentful-reveals-next-phase-of-growth-with-modern-digital-experience

Access Innovations releases Data Harmony 3.17

March 31, 2025 /

Access Innovations, Inc. released the Version 3.17 update for its Data Harmony software suite. The newest version of the software includes knowledge maps that illustrate the linkages between categories and terms in a taxonomy. The knowledge maps have color-coded legends that tie to main categories of terms within each taxonomy to make them easier to decipher at a glance.

Other improvements in Data Harmony Version 3.17 include a Google Gemini integration so that taxonomies can link to a GPT model for a generative AI conversational search. Also, a new online dictionary link allows an individual who is building a custom taxonomy to look up terms without having to leave the platform in which they are working.

The software focuses on improving the quality of LLMs (large language models). Once someone queries a GPT or generative predictive text system, that system queries the LLM. The system compiles words gathered from the LLM according to the algorithms in the GPT, so the results from AI are only as good as the quality of the LLM data. By focusing on that data, Access helps AI perform better with more accuracy and efficiency. The software categorizes knowledge assets to improve search precision.

https://www.accessinn.com/data-harmony-products/

Perplexity integrates firmly.ai ecommerce technology

March 27, 2025 /

Perplexity, an AI answer engine, announced it will be integrating firmly.ai agentic ecommerce technology to scale access to Perplexity’s native shopping experience. This collaboration enables seamless purchases for all consumers and merchants of any size.

Consumers are increasingly using Perplexity to shop online. By embedding firmly.ai’s Agentic commerce platform, Perplexity empowers more users to complete their entire shopping journey, from product discovery to secure transaction, without leaving the platform. This streamlined solution not only shortens the purchase funnel but also solves latency, improving the consumer experience.

With a single integration to firmly.ai’s API, Perplexity can now connect to any e-commerce merchant. Merchants can tap into this new sales channel instantly while retaining their merchant of record (MOR) status, ensuring full control over transactions, customer relationships, and data. Merchants can access millions of potential customers while protecting the value of their brand. For more information and to apply to be part of the native marketplace, visit the firmly.ai site.

https://www.firmly.ai ■ https://www.perplexity.ai

Databricks brings Anthropic Claude models to platform

March 26, 2025 /

Databricks announced a five-year partnership to offer Anthropic models and services natively through the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform. Combined with Databricks Mosaic AI, the deal brings Anthropic’s Claude models directly to over 10,000 companies, alongside their business-critical, proprietary data. Anthropic’s newest frontier model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, is now available via Databricks on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform.

Databricks Mosaic AI provides the tools to build domain-specific AI agents on organizations’ data that deliver results with governance across the entire data and AI lifecycle, while Anthropic’s Claude models optimize for real-world tasks.

  • Build domain-specific agents on enterprise data: Anthropic Claude provides advanced reasoning, planning and problem-solving capabilities, helping customers build and deploy domain-specific AI agents that can handle large, diverse data sets with a large context window.
  • Integrated natively with the Data Intelligence Platform: Available via SQL query and model endpoint, Claude models integrate into the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform. Enterprises can customize Claude models with retrieval augmented generation (RAG) by automatically generating vector indexes or fine-tuning models with enterprise data.
  • Unified governance and responsible AI development: Combines Anthropic’s safety research and constitutional AI approach with Databricks’ Unity Catalog, a unified and open governance solution for data and AI.

https://www.databricks.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/databricks-and-anthropic-sign-landmark-deal-bring-claude-models

Bynder announces AI Agents

March 25, 2025 /

Bynder, a global provider of AI-powered enterprise DAM has announced its AI Agents, a suite of AI capabilities that will execute business-critical tasks such as content enrichment, discovery, transformation, and governance for strategic DAM deployments.

Powered by LLMs, Bynder’s AI Agents have the intelligence to deliver a higher degree of personalization and will understand the context and intent behind a user’s prompt to execute complex content management tasks.

Bynder’s Enrichment Agent can ‘see beyond the pixels’ to streamline business workflows to address business-specific needs and will help users extract information from assets and enrich those assets with meta-data based on user prompts more accurately. The Enrichment Agent will work together with Bynder’s Ecosystem Agent and 120+ pre-built integrations with upstream creative tools and downstream delivery platforms to create automated workflows.

Bynder’s Transformation Agent will help users modify and repurpose assets utilizing Gen-AI. Automating traditional asset editing tasks will enhance creative productivity, reduce content production costs, and accelerate time-to-market.

Bynder’s Governance Agent will enhance asset governance and compliance to ensure brand authenticity and safety. The Governance Agent will scan the web to identify expired, outdated, or non-compliant digital assets in seconds and can detect AI-generated content, providing clarity for brand compliance.

https://labs.bynder.com/experiments/ai-agents/

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