Top 5 Stories of the Week: Google Sheets Adds ML, AWS Eye Trends, ChatGPT Dangers, and More

Even though the holiday season is in full swing, the tech world isn’t slowing down. This week brought new twists on established products as Google rolled out a beta version of Simple ML for Sheets, its cloud-based spreadsheet. The add-on borrows machine learning technology from its open-source project TensorfFlow.

Every company likes to brag about its vision and observe trends that we should all follow. However, when AWS looks to the future, as it did at its re:Invent conference, it makes sense to pay attention, so check out its picks for six trends that will drive machine learning adoption.

It’s hard to go a day without hearing about generative AI and its transformative potential. But there is still an underlying problem with ChatGPT and other large language models (LLM). Sometimes they make stuff up – after all these models are trained to predict responses to an input – whether a fact is true or not.

Any self-respecting tech professional loves a good prediction story. After all, your job requires you, as Wayne Gretzy once said, to “skate where the puck is going to be, not where it has been”. Deloitte, of course, is well positioned to anticipate and look to the future, so find out why AI, the cloud, and the metaverse (and Web3) are said to remain hot in 2023.

Layoffs are never good — yes, stating the obvious here — but there’s a ripple effect that makes the recent spate of tech layoffs all the more troubling. For an industry that already suffers from diversity and inclusion issues, downsizing can make a bad situation worse.

Here are the top 5 stories of the week of December 5^e.

1. Google brings machine learning to online spreadsheets with Simple ML for Sheets

   While simple calculations and graphs have long been part of the spreadsheet experience, machine learning (ML) has not. ML is often seen as too complex to use, whereas spreadsheets are meant to be accessible to any type of user. Google is now trying to change that paradigm for its online spreadsheet program Google Sheets.

   The beta version of the Simple ML for Sheets add-on. Google Sheets has an extensible architecture that allows users to take advantage of add-ons that extend the default functionality available in the app. In this case, Google Sheets benefits from the ML technology that Google first developed in the open-source TensorFlow project. With Simple ML for Sheets, users won’t need to use a specific TensorFlow service because Google has developed the service to be as easily accessible as possible.

2. AWS names 6 key trends driving machine learning innovation and adoption
   
   Opinions abound on why artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are growing. A recent McKinsey report identified the industrialization of ML and applied AI as one of its top trends for the year. During a session at the AWS re:Invent conference this week, Bratin Saha, vice president and general manager of AI and machine learning at Amazon, described six key trends the cloud giant is seeing and that help drive innovation and adoption in 2022 and beyond.

3. The hidden danger of ChatGPT and generative AI | The Rhythm of AI
   
   Since OpenAI launched its first demo of ChatGPT last Wednesday, the tool already has more than a million users, according to CEO Sam Altman — a milestone, he points out, that has taken GPT-3 close. 24 months to arrive and DALL-E over two months.

   The “interactive and conversational model,” based on the company’s GPT-3.5 text generator, certainly has the tech world in a swoon. Deloitte details emerging tech trends worth noting, as the countdown to 2023 heats up. But there’s a hidden problem lurking in ChatGPT: that is, it quickly spits out eloquent and confident answers that often sound plausible and true even though they’re not.

4. Deloitte details emerging tech trends worth noting, as the countdown to 2023 heats upInteraction, information and computation are certainly not new concepts for business leaders, but they are the three main areas where technology trends are expected to emerge in 2023, according to Deloitte.

   Within these areas, Deloitte has detailed what it predicts will continue to be the most sustainable technologies by 2023 – including artificial intelligence (AI), cloud and metaverse (along with Web3). Bechtel explained that the technologies fit into three buckets, which the report further details

5. What the layoffs mean for a tech industry that already lacks diversity
   Diversity, equity and inclusion are by no means new issues for the tech industry. However, new issues like the economic downturn can cause companies to take action such as layoffs, which can compound an already glaring diversity problem in the industry. Even among the most diverse tech companies — Twitter, Microsoft, Zoom and Cisco — three out of four have had to downsize this fall. Twitter, in particular, laid off 90% of its overseas staff in India. What exactly do measures like this do to diversity?