The Copilot 55% Claim - Tech Insiders News, September 2022

A curated collection of «signal over noise» links about interactive technologies, AI, web3, sense-making, entrepreneurship, and psychology.

Cover image generated by DALLE, prompt: «The voices of an election powered by artificial intelligence at night in the Metaverse» (Inspired by the links below.) Full image at the bottom of the article.

1. A survey by Github on their AI-powered code assistant shows a 55% decrease in time spent writing the code. It’s very significant; I would add caution around these results, first because it’s self-promoting, then it’s only one study - remember, beware the man of one study - and then, the task given is quite common. What’s not mentioned as well is the quality assessment of the result: yes, AI-assisted developers were faster at completing the job, but was the resulting code up-to-date with the current security standards?
2. I talk a lot about AI-powered content generation. After 2D, text, and voice, 3D is the next step. Here is a thread with some examples. TL;DR: not ready yet, but some companies are working on it, so it’s coming fast. That means infinite game world generation and, as for 2D artists, a complete rethinking of the work of 3D artists.
3. A fascinating blending of technologies: Disney+ released on September 8th a sound-enabled Augmented Reality second screen experience (not sorry for the mouthful) short movie «Remembering». What does it mean? Users are asked to keep the application open while the movie plays, and the sound-detection engine ShazamKit will recognize the current playing time of the film. Then, at given times, the AR experience will automatically start!
   This gives us so many ideas for fun experiences with ShazamKit. 💡
4. Augmented Reality is coming… for car headlights! Heads-up displays are already standard in cars, but this is new: Ford is investigating adding projectors to the headlights to increase information and security at night. Clever use of projected augmented reality!
5. Karel Janeček, one of the candidates in the presidential elections in the Czech Republic, has made a conference in the Somnium metaverse. No words about the number of attendees…