Empire State of Mind

Greetings from NYC and welcome to Public Media Innovators Weekly. This week we’ve got KQED and DML’s digital media collaboration, a few think pieces on the ethics of using AI, and finally, an anxious AI app.

But First…

A quick reminder that our next “3rd Thursday” webinar is slated for October 17 at 1p. We’re on the cusp of an era where serving our communities will mean maintaining a content presence on platforms like Roblox and Fortnite. The time to experiment with these platforms is now. Join us for Audience Engagement: Experimenting with Virtual Worlds Using Unreal Engine to find out more. Register here.

Empire State Of Mind

I’ve been in NYC for the Public Media Venture Group ’s fall Summit at Google. I’m still boiling down take-aways in my mind, but here are a couple of highlights. There’s been a lot of focus here on the future of news and how younger audiences are not only consuming news, but on how they are actually defining news. I’m old enough to remember the authoritativeness of the nightly news anchor (we were a ‘Peter Jennings house’ when I was growing up), but newer news consumers tend to value authenticity over authoritativeness. Call it the impact of the rise in influencer culture.

There is also a rising trend in thinking about the various types of output from public media organizations as product. NPR and PBS have organized around the “product” vernacular for a while now, and more stations (thinking about ROCKY MOUNTAIN PUBLIC MEDIA INC (né Rocky Mountain PBS ) are also creating leadership roles for the product perspective. In that vein, and this is clearly the Google influence, there was quite a bit of discussion regarding product-market fit.

So those are a couple of themes to ponder, but especially how your organization is thinking about your content (journalism, education, events) as products that fit their market.

Leaving a Mark

This week is the last week for Nebraska Public Media ’s 3rd GM, Mark Leonard (and yes, only 3 GMs, thus far, in 60+ years). Mark is retiring on 10/11 after 47 years in public media.

It was Mark’s idea to set up (what would eventually become known as) Nebraska Public Media Labs, and to create the position I would move to Nebraska to fill almost 9 years ago. From day #1, Mark was the silent partner in Labs. He understands the value of independent experimentation, of failing forward, of calling your shots and showing your work, and of contributing to the larger public media understanding of emerging technology through the sharing of lessons learned.

Labs is the beneficiary of Mark’s natural curiosity, especially regarding the question of how the media landscape is evolving and how public media can still fit within that landscape. And we’re also the beneficiary of his trust. Mark encouraged us to publish even when the content was experimental and the audience was developing. He encouraged us to pivot when one technology ascended the hype cycle and one descended into the trough of disillusionment. He encouraged us take a chance on younger hires and less seasoned talent that had fresh ideas and the passion to pursue them. And he encouraged us to form collaborations outside our own organization that would help our resources go further.

You’ve probably heard that our fourth GM will be Stacey Decker, the outgoing SVP of Innovation & Strategy at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The entire Labs team is excited to crack open a new chapter under new leadership. But there wouldn’t be a Labs team, let alone a Civics Scribble, Expedition Nebraska, Watershed, Center of Gravity, a pipeline of three video games in production, or even this newsletter without Mark. He doesn’t appear in any of those credits, because that isn’t his style. But his leadership suffuses all those endeavors. For that we are grateful, and we hope to continue to make him proud as he turns the page on a new chapter.

Okay, on to the links….

Focus…

From de-Bundling to re-Bundling: KQED and DML’s vision for digital media collaboration ( Tom Davidson - Editor & Publisher (E&P) Magazine ) - In the literal sense of the word, this is more "revolutionary" than evolutionary (an approach to media that is revolving back around again). But its good to see experiments like this happening. A few years ago, I set aside scrolling through social media, and switched to scrolling through AppleNews instead. But that product, frankly, gets worse with each passing year. So, I like the notion of potentially making a local public media companies site/app a news hub for the community.

Learn…

Audience Engagement: Experimenting with Virtual Worlds Using Unreal Engine (Public Media Innovators PLC) - For our October “3rd Thursday” webinar, Jason Cooper, Director of Multimedia at Horizon Productions, will share insights into using Fortnite’s Unreal Engine to build virtual worlds and interactive experiences. This webinar will explore how public media organizations can experiment with these tools to enhance storytelling, create dynamic content, and connect with audiences in innovative ways. Whether you’re looking to expand your digital presence or engage new demographics, this session will inspire you to explore the potential of virtual worlds in your work. —Also worth check out in the run-up to the webinar: Diriyah - The City of Earth

AI-Driven Audio for Storytelling & Content Creation ( Davar Ardalan - TulipAI) - Explore AI-driven audio for storytelling, content creation, and historical reenactments. Enhance sound quality and create multilingual, ethical, and culturally rich content with instructors with experience at NPR, Nat Geo, and Drexel University.

Think…

The Intelligence Age (Sam Altman) - I referenced this piece passing last week, but I think it deserves a bit more attention if for no other reason than that Altman is now last man standing at one of the most consequential companies in the AI boom, OpenAI. Published via Altman’s own site, not OpenAI’s, I think it deserves more attention because of how light on details and specifics it is. Altman has long believed fervently (if not religiously) in the aggregate positive effects of technology on society. Based on past interviews in the years prior to the advent of ChatGPT, it seems clear that he feels the rising tide lifts most boats, and if some are sunk in the process then that is a necessary investment in the future. But in this piece, you get a gossamer of the techno-utopian ideals that drive his strategy. Is all this this good or bad? You have to decide that for yourself and then act accordingly. —For comparison, you can also hear Google CEO Sundar Pichai discuss Google’s vision for the age of AI in this recent CMU President's Lecture Series with Sundar Pichai

The Playwright in the Age of AI (Jeffrey Goldberg - The Atlantic) - I'm a sucker for any piece of content about the creative process, and more so if that creative process involves or results in a piece about AI. So, I appreciated the discussion on what AI means for the creative process and how it can be constructive collaborator. And I actually saw McNeal last night while in NYC. Didn’t love it. But I did appreciate its ruminations on the fine line between artistic inspiration and plagiarism. It wrestles with a lot of questions that we’ve also begun wrestling with in public media. A lot of what is said in the interview is reflected directly in the text of the play, and Goldberg does a good job of presenting the thorny issues without giving away any spoilers.

On the Ethics of Using GenAI in Creative Practices (Hannah Liuzzo - Talkhouse) - There's probably a bit of bias confirmation here, but I appreciated the pragmatic stance on gAI ethics. Liuzzo's piece is not sanctimonious, nor does it turn a blind eye to the externalities of using AI. But it puts it in the proper context of our social/mobile existence. I love this line: "But for anyone who has ever posted a story on Instagram, there are massive data centers dedicated to archiving every single story you’ve posted since 2017. So that means the crush-baiting thirst trap close friends grwm cringe you posted before your sister’s bachelorette in 2019? It’s 'drinking water.'" —Reflecting a similar philosophy is Black Eyed Peas founder will.i.am, interviewed by Semafor’s Reed Albergotti about AI and the future of music.

Know…

People are skeptical of headlines labeled as AI-generated, even if true or human-made, because they assume full AI automation (Sacha Altay & Fabrizio Gilardi - PNAS Nexus) - Intuitively, this makes sense to me. The abstract is worth a skim, but mostly it's worth knowing about this phenomenon as you approach refining the details on your organizations gAI policy.

Warner Bros. Discovery partners with Google for AI-generated captions on Max streaming service (Ryan Browne - CNBC) - Interesting development. Lots of auto-captioning tools involve some AI or machine learning, somewhere in the mix. Will Google's tool, be better than auto captions on YouTube. Would it meet the accuracy rate we require for public media. And if so, can Google make this tool available to public media?

How agentic AI platforms will redefine enterprise applications (Dave Vellante & George Gilbert) - This one is really more for the CTOs on the list.

Civitai Gen-AI Makes Its Move (Charlie Fink - Forbes) - The big news here is SPINE, "a consolidated workflow that integrates GenAI tools into a user-friendly system for image, video, and music generation. This system brings popular tools like Udio for music, Kling for video, ElevenLabs for voiceover, Freepik for upscaling, and others into one cohesive multimodal environment." This won't be the last gAI prefab workflow you'll see, but it's the first and it isn't a vertical stack of one company's tools. That makes it noteworthy. —And here’s an alternate take on the same launch event from Wendy Lee of the LA Times: We went to a gala for AI-produced movies. Here’s what we saw

Meta plans to seed your feeds with AI-made posts (Ina Fried - Axios) - This tidbit nearly slipped under the radar, but thanks to Fried's reporting we can all consider the ramifications. For me, the phrase "opiate of the masses" keeps echoing around my brain as I think about content that allows "you [to] be the star of your own story and share your favorites with friends." But ultimately, this is a question of trust. The idea of algorithmically generated content tailored to appeal to individual users seems inevitable, but I personally don't trust Meta to put sufficient guardrails around the tech to keep it from being ultimately harmful to society.

OpenAI's o1 is a misunderstood model (Charlie Guo - Artificial Ignorance) - While this piece is a bit technical at times, the sections toward the end entitled "How o1 is different from previous models" and "Why o1 is already being misunderstood" are worth a read. The big takeaway is that we're used to products (like iPhones) iterating on the generations that have come before, amounting to expectations that are linear along one central trunk. But with these AI models, the evolution can follow multiple branches at one resulting in products with different strengths and weaknesses (like humans).

Here is what’s illegal under California’s 18 (and counting) new AI laws (Maxwell Zeff - TechCrunch) - California tends to lead the charge when it comes to progressive tech legislation in the US. This summery gives a sense of where legislation on AI could be going in other parts of the US.

Rosenworcel Calls for AI Reform at Berkeley Conference (Elle Kehres - RadioWorld) - A h/t to Liz Maestri at PMVG for sharing this one via her newsletter. Here's a line from the speech that outlines the FCC's ambitions relative to AI. "By any measure, it’s a lot. Because at the same time we are asking what we can do to support this technology and what we can do to manage its risks. We want to know what it means for the future of work. We are concerned about models that inherit the prejudices of the systems they are trained on and determine who gets a loan and who gets a job. We want to know what it means for competition. We want to talk about energy consumption. We want to understand what it means for the future of humanity". Read this one more for ecosystem-level context as much as anything else.

Microsoft throws in the towel on HoloLens 2 (Richard Speed - The Register) - R.I.P. HoloLens. It was the Vision Pro of its time and was arguably ahead of its time. But it was also a necessary step to get us where we're going.

And finally…

What would an AI with anxiety look like? (Jose16sp via Reddit) - And finally, possibly the most human AI app yet.

Have a creative, productive week!