Jamie, the Senior Intern in our Department of the Obvious, was exceptionally excited by this report that auditors found Facebook decisions have caused “serious setbacks for civil rights”. At first we thought it was the news itself, but Jamie then explained it confirmed his belief that presenting the obvious is a valid career path. He can’t wait to tell his parents.
Let’s try to find some good news today, if only for the challenge. We can start with this FitForCommerce report on leading retailers, which found they were steadily adding digital services even before the pandemic. Since 2016, the number offering online purchase for in-store pickup doubled from 33% to 66% while Web display of in-store inventory rose from 39% to 67%. An impressive 69% offer next day delivery and 20% offer same day delivery. Remember when those were crazy talk?
Spending your budget on privacy tech instead of cool things like trigger campaigns and personalization? OneTrust is offering a collection of free tools for data mapping, data access requests, cookie consent, and more. That’s free as in free beer and if there are limits, I couldn’t find them listed.
Unauthorized training data isn’t an existential threat to generative AI but it’s certainly a headache for users and developers alike. Most developers are trying to exclude materials that creators have explicitly labeled as unauthorized and citing “fair use” as justification for copying everything else. Getty Images has taken an opposite approach, building its gen AI tool only on materials that are explicitly licensed. It’s possible that tracing the provenance of training data will become a standard, similar to how organic food producers trace the origins of their ingredients.