How Spotify tailors Large Language Models to our own content and users… to make AI better explain to each user why they should try a new recommendation. “AI recsplanations” as text on-screen or as words spoken by DJ can really help!
https://t.co/ytwa1bPcuu
This is everything. Including the incredible investment that goes into truth and the importance of trust and institutions to democracy. Pls watch, it’s short.
Super excited to announce that AI Playlist is available today in the US, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand! Converse with Spotify to co-create a perfect playlist for right now or to listen to later! https://t.co/JvZL6yxM9O
Very excited by our latest AI Playlisting feature available (in beta) for Premium users in the UK & AU today! Check it out and create a personalized playlist just by chatting with Spotify… https://t.co/kzGKJ5bj4y
My favorite part of #SpotifyWrapped is Your Artist Messages - tens of thousands of artists sent gratitude and love to their truest fans through Spotify for Artists. And artists took it in so many different directions this year.
Super exciting being with the team as we launched “included in premium” audiobooks on Spotify’s home page today! Now available in the UK & Australia and, later, the US and more countries!
Podcasters - what if I told you could offer your pod to any listener around the world, in their own local language but still keep it in your own voice? That’s the pilot we’re launching @Spotify!
It’s called Voice Translation and using AI, translates podcasts episodes into alternate languages, all in the podcaster’s voice. It’s pretty insane. Take a look and let me know what you think!
https://t.co/wwUYsd3Mgo
Podcasters - what if I told you could offer your pod to any listener around the world, in their own local language but still keep it in your own voice? That’s the pilot we’re launching @Spotify!
It’s called Voice Translation and using AI, translates podcasts episodes into alternate languages, all in the podcaster’s voice. It’s pretty insane. Take a look and let me know what you think!
https://t.co/wwUYsd3Mgo
If you feel like you still don’t have a handle on the fundamentals of AI/LLMs, you might be interested in a talk @GustavS recently gave to our team. He dives into that how these systems work is actually much simpler than many of us think
Full link: https://t.co/eIy5h2YJuL
Shortly after Steve Jobs returned as the CEO of Apple in 1997, he met with Jony Ive, Apple’s Senior VP of industrial design.
Apple had 40 products on the market.
“Jony, how many things have you said no to?” Jobs asked.
Ive was confused.
“You have to understand,” Jobs said,
“There are measures of focus, and one of them is how often you say no.”
“What focus means,” Jobs taught Ive, “is saying no to something that you—with every bone in your body—think is a phenomenal idea, and you wake up thinking about it, but you say no to it because you're focusing on something else.”
Jobs walked up to a whiteboard and drew a 2 x 2 grid. On top, he wrote “Consumer” and “Professional.” Down the side, “Portable” and “Desktop.”
Four products—meet Apple’s new radically focused product line, Jobs said.
After that meeting, over the next two decades, Jobs and Ive—focused on making a few high-quality products while saying no to everything else—transformed a dying, near-bankrupt company into one of the most valuable companies in the world, worth over $2.9 trillion.
Takeaway 1:
The philosopher Marcus Aurelius pointed out that the focus of doing less “brings a double satisfaction.”
You get the satisfaction of having fewer things to do. And…you get the satisfaction of doing those fewer things at a higher level.
You get “to do less, better.”
During Steve Jobs’ first visit to Jony Ive’s design studio, he looked around, and then he said, “Fuck, you’ve not been very effective, have you?”
It was clear to Jobs that Ive was full of ideas and potential he wasn’t able to execute or fulfill under Apple’s previous leadership.
In the Jobs era of “doing less, better,” Ive was very effective.
Some products he designed include: iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and AirPods.
Takeaway 2:
Even though he slashed the product line down to four products, Jobs loved to have and hear ideas.
“Steve used to say to me,” Ive said, “and he used to say this a lot, ‘Hey, Jony, here’s a dopey idea.’ And sometimes they were: really dopey. Sometimes they were truly dreadful.
But sometimes they took the air from the room, and they left us both completely silent.”
It made me think of what Jerry Seinfeld identifies as the ultimate skill of the artist: “taste and discernment.”
“It’s one thing to create,” Seinfeld says. It’s one thing to have ideas.
“The other is you have to choose. ‘What are we going to do, and what are we not going to do?’” What are we going to add to the product line, and what are we not going to add?
“This is a gigantic aspect of [artistic] survival,” Seinfeld continues.
“It’s kind of unseen—what’s picked and what is discarded—but mastering that is how you stay alive.”
- - -
“Everything just got simpler. That’s been one of my mantras—focus and simplicity.” — Steve Jobs
Follow @bpoppenheimer for more content like this!
Delighted to share our blog on work of @_Guz_ as part of internship at @SpotifyResearc with @enricopalumbo91@maryam_aziz_0 A Wang & H Bouchard. The work being presented at #TheWebConf2023 this week & explores how to reduce retrievability bias in search.
https://t.co/RbaLM2XbLe
Super proud of the great work from our Home teams to revolutionize the face of Spotify! Check it out as feeds roll out to half a billion users worldwide over the next weeks!
Ready, set, discover new audio easier than ever before! Take a look at our greatest app evolution yet. Introducing @Spotify's new Home feed. #SpotifyStreamOn
Glad to see @EU_Commission sending an updated statement of objection and once again agreeing with our view that Apple’s behavior causes harm to consumers and innovation. Important step, but more needed to ensure internet innovation can remain open. https://t.co/4DesQLVn49
Check out our new personal AI DJ on Spotify! DJ combines machine learning to personalize, generative AI to contextualize, and AI voice to synthesize. https://t.co/Xo6QcEYMDn
As we continue our #NeurIPS2022 series, we’re excited to share our interview with @TonyJebara, Head of ML at @spotify@spotifyresearch. We discuss his talk at @offlineRL, and how RL is being used broadly for personalized recommendations.
🎧https://t.co/qDZmbj3YYa
I’m at #NeurIPS22 to present at the Offline RL Workshop / the RL4RealLife Workshop and to check out LLM work which Spotify is rapidly investing in, see you in New Orleans!