“Did the Beatles ever mention television in their songs?” In an article that’s both worrying and funny, Nicholas Carr shares Gemini’s problems: “First, with the confidence characteristic of chatbots, Gemini declares that, yes, indeed, the words “television” and “TV” appear in Beatles lyrics. It offers “Yellow Submarine” and “Here Comes the Sun” as prominent examples. …

Stories stir, numbers numb I enjoyed listening to strategist Kevin Chesters talk about crafting stories that drive behaviour change. As part of his research into storytelling, he spoke to a wide range of communicators, including a vicar who said:  “Often the only thing people remember about a sermon is not the words, but how the …

“Treat the AI like an infinitely patient research assistant” Sharing a metric tonne of sense, Neil Perkin has some great tips on using GenAI as a thought partner. I particularly like the idea of using LLMs to play the role of your audience and asking it to critique presentations: “You can give it context like …

Negative social proof We’re a funny bunch of fish, us humans. And Richard Shotton has been reminding us why. He’s been looking at the pitfalls of trying to shock people into action by flagging negative behaviours, because you either excuse yourself (‘not me’) or you plead helplessness: “Either way, our behaviour is unlikely to change. …

It’s like ray-eee-aaaain A bit like Turkeys voting for Christmas, Microsoft has co-authored a paper showing that using AI can weaken humans’ critical thinking skills.  “[A] key irony of automation is that by mechanising routine tasks and leaving exception-handling to the human user, you deprive the user of the routine opportunities to practice their judgement …

Prediction Pre-mortems Tim Harford wrote this fascinating piece on the forecasting paradox and “prospective hindsight”. One sentence stood out to me, especially with the plethora of trend reports that float around at this time of year: “Thinking seriously about the future can be a worthwhile exercise, not because the future is knowable but because the …

Don’t trust the data  Jane Frost, CEO of the Market Research Society, shared some sage words along with Grant Feller’s story about how wrong people were to trust data. Gulp. Grant said: “Data deceives. We’re in awe of it and yet we don’t ask the right questions of it. Why? So what? Why does it …

Well, that went quickly. First week back, so forgive the dustiness.  I thought I’d start the year with 9 reminders to take you into 2025… 1. Watching works I must admit to a touch of bias here, but if you don’t believe me, read what the CEO of KFC in China had to say. 2. …

Well! You lot like a video (good news for us). And you also like to be amused. Stacked with nostalgia, empathy, trends, and social issues, here are the 10 most clicked links in The100 during 2024. Hold onto your hats… In 10th The Valeriepieris Circle – one-sixth of the world’s land area, but more people …