Greetings Reader,

Welcome to AI versus Marshy - 14th edition.

I've been sick the last 5-6 days 🤢 so let’s bounce back with an update on AI, marketing, tools, and all things what the heck is going on.

This week:

• 🎐 AI-driven climate prevention
• 🧰 Tool of the week: Big Tech Ad Libraries
• 📈 A look at the Google Trends AI chart and the Hype Adoption Curve

Let’s get it.

-Marshy

It makes Climasens

There’s a startup out of Melbourne called Climasens. They’ve been awarded $5m by Google.org to partner with ClimateIQ and expand into the UK and US.

AI works well with large complex sets of data to uncover patterns we humans wouldn’t ordinarily see. The weather is one of the most documented yet chaotic data sets known to us - so it’s good to see innovation in this space.

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One area that you might not heard of is digital twinning - this is where take something in the real world, and make a copy of it with input/output data and a model. One of my old client’s Frazer-Nash Consultancy , did this work with power stations. You could predict the point of failure down to the minute with logged data.

Weather is even more complex than a power station - but things are moving in this area too. The CSIRO were able to predict erosion in the Northern Territory.

Also fun fact - I met Joe (Climasens co-founder) at a conference a couple of years ago and he was a nice guy to boot 🥾

Tool of the week: Big-tech Ad Libraries

An older - yet still pertinent - documentary appeared on Netflix in 2019 called The Great Hack.

The dramatised recollection of how your data can be used to target and influence you had knock-on impacts we’re still feeling.

One of the big changes since was an iOS 14 update made it far harder to track with ads.

Another change that you’re probably even less aware of is advertiser visibility.

With Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn - you can see what any company is advertising with right now. You can also see TikTok ads - but only in EU.

I thought this was a well-known thing, but was talking to an expert the other day and he didn’t know about it.

Great for seeing what competitors are doing, old clients are doing, or simply gauging how busy a company’s marketing team is!

Also I checked and Meta’s share price is in better shape than 2019 - yes even factoring in the whole Metaverse thing.

Yes, a new thing about that curve again

If you’ve followed AI closely this year - you might have noticed a dip in the buzz over the last couple of months.

No - just me?

Well look at this chart from Google Trends (another great tool).

There’s about a 10-15% dip in interest, that blows up even more when you look at it over a longer time horizon.

Now if you’ve paid real close attention to this newsletter. You would have read about a hype adoption curve. I hate the name and terms Gartner gives, but check it:

The trends chart looks VERY similar to the hype cycle chart.

Am I right?

You can read about it in more detail here. According to Gartner - Generative AI is at peak hype, and will likely fade.

It will contribute to many other technologies though - ranging from causal AI to smart robots.

My prediction - the trough won't be as long as what Gartner are predicting.

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Hey Reader thanks for reading - I'm enjoying charting this stuff and being forced to write about it each week helps me make sense of it too.

Keep learning!

-Marshy

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