The New York Times vs OpenAI | The Hi-Tech Discussion

Eventful. That’s how I would define the last 15 days of this year – and that’s something you wouldn’t expect to say about the end of December.

Business-wise, for instance, my team closed two clients: One on December 21st, and one on December 25th (no, it’s not a typo, we closed them on Christmas).

And in the tech industry? I was almost concerned this edition of the Hidalgo Tech Discussion was going to be short of topics, but I am happy to admit I was wrong: Tech is the gift that keeps on giving, and there’s always something going on in the industry.

I promise to keep this one short. Let’s dive in.

OpenAI & The New York Times Lace Up The Gloves

Microsoft and OpenAI are closing the year with a copyright from none other than the New York Times. The issue? The Times said OpenAI used, without permission, countless of their articles to train ChatGPT and Copilot.

So, what does the old glory newspaper want?

Well, they ask that OpenAI destroys their models and training data containing the offending material, claiming that what happened is a threat to independent journalism and to society itself.

Now, I don’t live in America but if there’s something that I couldn’t help but notice in the last five years is that most newspapers over there are quite biased, so I wouldn’t say that journalism is at stake (it’s already dead) or that society is in danger (another paper would replace the Times if it went down).

However, there’s a real issue here: Intellectual property. The New York Times isn’t sure the first actor to complain about ChatGPT’s training data – thousands of artists, writers, bloggers and journalists have – but it is for sure one of the loudest voices. The response, however, is that several news organizations are finding ways to protect themselves from AI using their content.

This is an issue that impacts advertisers, too, though. For instance, TechCrunch reports that, according to the Atlantic, if Google were to integrate AI into search, 7.5 times out of ten it would answer the users’ queries without requiring a click-through to a website. Publishers in the Google suit estimate they’d lose as much as 40% of their traffic.

If you ask me, the smarter play is making deals with these AI companies. Give them licensing rights, find common ground – at this point, we’re beyond stopping AI from scraping anything.

Good luck with the lawsuit.

Xiaomi Launches A Car

I remember when my Italian mechanic would tell me that electric cars had no future. That they were just tablets with seats, and that they polluted way more than they helped the environment. That was in 2014.

Fast forward to the last week of 2024, Xiaomi of all companies achieves what Apple has had patents for for years: Launching a car. Now, Apple hasn’t done it probably because they’re aware of something that in Marketing is known as “The Law of Line Extension” – meaning, if Harley Davidson launched a hotel franchise, it would fail because their brand doesn’t have those associations.

Nonetheless, Xiaomi is to be commended not just for trying, but also for the result of this attempt: That car looks sexy. The SU7 looks like a McLaren from the front, resembles an Aston Martin from the rear, evokes the outline of a Tesla from the side. It will be out in 2024, and it will run on HyperOS, a system the company has been working on for more than half a decade.

Why is it special, you ask? You see, HyperOS is Black Mirror x Watch Dogs. The system can run homes and phones and cars – basically giving the all-seeing Chinese government even more insight into your every move. Orwell would be proud.

Us? Much less… and it’s a painful thing to say because I really like this machine, and because I love innovation and differentiator. And Xiaomi takes the high ground here, because achieving an all-encompassing OS is something no other car manufacturer has. Not even Tesla.

But it’s not just electronics and colorful screens. The car’s alleged autonomy is 800km / 500 miles on a full charge. It will charge as fast as 220km every 5 minutes, and it will hit 0-100km/h in 2.78 seconds.

Now, Xiaomi’s challenge isn’t getting also the Westeners to buy their car – if China made us addicted to TikTok trust me, they can make us buy anything – but it is actually running an electric car company… an initiative that requires capabilities that are quite alien to the world of phones.

And that challenge is one that, love them or hate them, Tesla has mastered.

Breaking: You Will Have An Amazing New Year

As promised, I kept it short. There’s some work that still needs doing, and you probably don’t have much time to read a long article, BUT: If you came this far, I want to wish you an outstanding start to 2024, and an even better rest of the year.

This series will come back next week as the world recovers from its collective hangover.

I’m sure even then there will be no lack of news coming from our exciting tech world.

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