Doug Belshaw's Thought Shrapnel

8 February 2023

Bad Bard

Google is obviously a little freaked-out by tools such as ChatGPT and their potentially ability to destroy large sections of their search business. However, it seems like they didn’t do even the most cursory checks of the promotional material they put out as part of the hurried launch for ‘Bard’.

This, of course, is our future: ‘truthy’ systems leading individuals, groups, and civilizations down the wrong path. I’m not optimistic about our future.

In the advertisement, Bard is given the prompt: “What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can I tell my 9-year old about?”

Bard responds with a number of answers, including one suggesting the JWST was used to take the very first pictures of a planet outside the Earth’s solar system, or exoplanets. This is inaccurate.

Source: Google AI chatbot Bard offers inaccurate information in company ad | Reuters

8 February 2023

Buying when the market is selling

I love this. Nintendo is increasing the salaries of its employees even though it intends to make less of a profit. Short of giving everyone ownership, this is how you invest in your people during a downturn.

Nintendo plans to raise its employees’ base pay by 10% this year in the wake of inflation. Reuters reported that Nintendo plans to raise salaries even as it reduced its profit expectation for the year. Nintendo previously cut its operating profit forecast from a projected 582 billion yen to 480 billion yen ($3.6 billion).

Nintendo also amended its projected software and hardware sales. It projects that the Switch will sell 18 million units this year, as opposed to the prior forecast of 19 million. Similarly, it dropped the software sales forecast from 210 million units to 205 million. Nintendo re-affirmed that it does not currently have plan to raise prices for its consoles or games.

Source: Nintendo Will Pay Its Workers 10% More ¬ GameSpot

7 February 2023

The party’s over for office-based work

In-person working can be energising. But perhaps not every day, for most people? There’s a reason that lots of people have decided to continue to work at home after the pandemic showed them that a different approach was possible.

Take Google. The tech giant threw a massive welcome-back party complete with a Lizzo concert. Sure, it sounds cool, but unless Lizzo will one day be my manager, what does a concert have to do with getting me to my desk day after day after day? Will there be daily concerts? Everyone was isolated for two years. How does attending a concert with people I’ve never met or barely remember better connect me to the company? Being alone in a crowd would actually remind me just how few friends I have at the organization.

Source: Wake up, Corporate America: You can’t bribe, threaten, or feed people to get them back in the office | The Boston Globe

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Bad Bard

Buying when the market is selling

The party’s over for office-based work