Arvind’s Newsletter

My newsletter will be away for a few days as I am travelling.

1.
Amazon’s big dreams for Alexa fall short, reports FT.

It has been more than a decade since Jeff Bezos excitedly sketched out his vision for Alexa on a whiteboard at Amazon’s headquarters. His voice assistant would help do all manner of tasks, such as shop online, control gadgets, or even read kids a bedtime story.

But the Amazon founder’s grand vision of a new computing platform controlled by voice has fallen short. As hype in the tech world turns feverishly to generative AI as the “next big thing”, the moment has caused many to ask hard questions of the previous “next big thing” — the much-lauded voice assistants from Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft and others.

A “grow grow grow” culture described by one former Amazon Alexa marketing executive has now shifted to a more intense focus on how the device can help the ecommerce giant make money.

Under new chief executive Andy Jassy’s tenure this change of focus has resulted in significant lay-offs in Amazon’s Alexa team late last year as executives scrutinise the product’s direct contribution to the company’s bottom line.

The belt-tightening came as part of broader cuts that have seen the ecommerce giant slash 18,000 jobs across the group amid pressure to improve profits during a global tech downturn.

2.OpenAI Is Now Everything It Promised Not to Be: Corporate, Closed-Source, and For-Profit

OpenAI is at the center of a chatbot arms race, with the public release of ChatGPT and a multi-billion-dollar Microsoft partnership spurring Google and Amazon to rush to implement AI in products. OpenAI has also partnered with Bain to bring machine learning to Coca-Cola's operations, with plans to expand to other corporate partners.

There's no question that OpenAI's generative AI is now big business. It wasn't always planned to be this way.

3.Japan and South Korea said they would drop or resolve multiple disputes in a bid to forge closer ties. The announcements came days after South Korea’s president characterized Japan, his country’s former occupier, as a partner rather than an aggressor. Seoul and Tokyo are both close U.S. allies, but their own bilateral relations have been plagued by decades of distrust and unresolved arguments, particularly over the use of Korean forced labor by Japanese companies during World War II. One reason their ties may be warming: Concern that China — with whom both South Korea and Japan have poor relations — may, like Russia in Ukraine, use military force to reshape the region.

4.Construction will begin this year on a $10 billion, 200 mph rail link between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. California is also building a new San Francisco-LA line, while U.S. President Joe Biden’s 2021 infrastructure bill included $600 billion for transport. On a per-mile basis, U.S. rail projects are among the most expensive in the world, due to regulatory and workforce problems. But progress has been made. A recent study found that the share of trips made by car peaked in 2001, with more Americans cycling and walking or using public transport and taxis. The U.S. is still a car country, but perhaps less so than it was.