Dear Reader,
It was a quiet week, the calm before a storm of 6 keynotes in 12 days culminating in SXSW as I look forward to heading into a transformed Austin without its convention center for a different sort of gathering. If you'll be there too, be sure to hit reply and let me know so I can get you some invitations to a few private events we're hosting or you can join our private Whatsapp group here. And for the other events, if you're in Orlando, New York or Las Vegas - let me know so we can connect in one of those cities as well!
For stories this week, there are some interesting developments on the AI marketing battlefront with Anthropic emerging as the clear winner so far. You will also read about a professor with a unique way to try and save history from being erased, as well as my take on why the "death spiral" of Las Vegas may be exaggerated. In bonus stories, Spotify reimagines the afterlife, a whiskey-sniffing robot dog and yet another Meta employee becomes a whistleblower after regrettably discovering he had actually been doing evil work.
Enjoy the stories and stay curious!
Rohit
Did you get this email forwarded to you? Subscribe here »
This Week's New Videos ...
The Professor Saving History and Truth With Guerilla Teaching Methods
When the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery changed the image of the current President in January, it also removed the original placard which mentioned Donald Trump’s impeachments and the Jan. 6 insurrection. Local historian James Millward had the sense that this was wrong and he shared with the Washington Post that after feeling that we were all witnessing “history being snipped and clipped and disappeared,” he decided to do something about it. So he went to the museum with a stack of paper in hand and gave any interested museum visitors printouts of the old wall text that stated plainly that Trump was “impeached twice, on charges of abuse of power and incitement of insurrection.” He called it "guerilla teaching."
This was a personal fight for Millward, as the co-founder of Citizen Historians for the Smithsonian, a group that has made it a mission to spend thousands of hours tracking changes made by the Trump administration to change the way history is preserved and show that people are paying attention. Their group recruited hundreds of volunteers last summer and fall to take more than 50,000 photos of every sign in the Smithsonian museums and National Zoo. A similar effort is happening digitally to save websites, online data sets and other knowledge in danger of being wiped away.
The fight isn't isolated to DC-based museums either. National Parks around the country are being hit with removal orders to take down signs related to Native Americans and climate change. This is a heroic fight and it's being waged by normal people who are deciding to show up and do something. As Stanford art history professor Richard Meyer also told the Post, he says, “the worst kind of censorship is the censorship we never know has happened.”
How Anthropic Is Winning the AI Platform Marketing War By Being Less Evil
Anthropic is winning the AI platform marketing war. In the quest to become the dominant category-defining player, OpenAI had the largest lead with ChatGPT. Then they abandoned their non-profit business model, integrated advertising and compromised their original moral principles. Now Anthropic is getting aggressive in their bid to promote themselves as a more responsible alternative. With their highly effective Super Bowl ads attacking OpenAI with humor to their latest high-stakes stand against the Pentagon, the message is consistent: we are the only AI company that isn't being reckless and is standing for something.
"Anthropic has argued that it was asking for reasonable assurances that its model would not be used for surveillance of Americans or in autonomous weapons, such as drone operations, that did not involve human oversight. The Pentagon wants all artificial intelligence contracts to stipulate that the military can use the models for any lawful purpose."
Whether you trust these principles to last or not, the message is winning right now. Fast Company noted that their branding and actions are burnishing their reputation while TechCrunch suggests that against the Pentagon in a "serious game of chicken, Anthropic may not be the one to blink first." I realize this may seem like a strange brand for me to be complimenting given they agreed last year to pay a record $1.5 billion to publishers and authors for illegally stealing more than 500,000 copyrighted books to train their models (including several of mine).
The thing is, it's pretty clear that all the other platforms also ingested data illegally and often scraped the content of books as well. Yet as of today Anthropic is the only AI platform that I currently have at least a chance of receiving some compensation from—which is kind of the point. In a world where we have lots of bad actors ready to manipulate us while stealing our data, any company that leads with principles will certainly stand out.
Is Las Vegas Really Experiencing a Death Spiral?
They say it's just for the rich people. Visitation is down 7.5% thanks largely to tariffs and reduced travel from international visitors (particularly Trump-despising Canadians). By most news reports, Las Vegas is in deep trouble (maybe even a "death spiral") and the rest of the country may not be far behind. That's the conclusion of an investigative report going viral this week from More Perfect Union provocatively titled "Why Vegas Doesn't Care If You Visit Anymore."
The numbers and public sentiment certainly seems to tell this story. The effect of Formula One on Las Vegas, for example, has been a windfall of nearly $1B yet economists suggest the revenue has only flowed into a limited number of hands. Among most locals, it's almost universally hated because it kills business (many small businesses report 30% drops in revenue) and many locals describe it as a "shitshow" with partitions over bar windows, entire streets blocked and iconic sights like the Bellagio fountains inaccessible.
The reality of Las Vegas, though, is more than this experience. I've been there several times in the past few months and will be back again next week. Like most places, when you venture out with locals (beyond the strip and casinos), you see a different side of the city. You might experience the emerging Arts District on the North side bringing people and foot traffic from locals and tourists. Or you may see unique local shows like Mondays Dark filled with overflow talent from the more touristy shows just gathering to raise money for local charities. Just 30 minutes outside the city, you can experience the awe of the Seven Magic Mountains public art exhibit designed to be a "creative expression of human presence in the desert."
This isn't the F1-crazed and gambling driven side of Vegas portrayed in movies that is too expensive for anyone but the rich and famous. This is the local Las Vegas that feels resurgent and alive. Most cities have this side to them, it's just not what most people tend to find. Unless they choose to seek it out.
