What Is A Foundation Model (FM)? 

A foundation model is an “ultra-large” machine learning model that generative AI uses. FMs, which are machine learning (ML) models, are pre-trained on vast amounts of data and power generative AI. The term generative AI refers to a type of AI that can create new content and ideas, including conversations, stories, images, videos, and music. ChatGTP, for example, is currently the most well-known generative AI chatbot. 

Bedrock 

Bedrock is essentially an AI app-building toolkit that’s available to Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers. AWS is the biggest cloud provider in the world and with Bedrock, customers can choose from a range of FMs such as AI21’s Jurassic-2, Anthropic’s Claude, Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion, and Amazon Titan. Using Bedrock (accessible via an API), AWS customers can customise and fine tune a model to perform a specific task without having to annotate large volumes of data. 

Easily Find And Customise The Right Model For Your Own Purposes 

Amazon says that with Bedrock’s serverless experience, customers can “easily find the right model for what they’re trying to get done, get started quickly, privately customise FMs with their own data, and easily integrate and deploy them into their applications using the AWS tools and capabilities they are familiar with (including integrations with Amazon SageMaker ML features like Experiments to test different models and Pipelines to manage their FMs at scale) without having to manage any infrastructure.” 

Example 

One example (from AWS) of how customers could use Bedrock is a content marketing manager working for a fashion retailer, needing to develop fresh, targeted ad and campaign copy for an upcoming new line of handbags. AWS says the marketing manager could provide Bedrock a few labelled examples of their best performing taglines from past campaigns, plus the associated product descriptions, then Bedrock could automatically start generating effective social media, display ad, and web copy for the new handbags. However, Amazon is quick to point out that Bedrock would also not include any of the customer’s data to train the underlying models, and with all data being encrypted and not actually leaving a customer’s Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), AWS says customers can trust that their data will remain private and confidential. 

The Advantages of Bedrock 

The advantages of Bedrock are: 

– It’s relatively straightforward and easy to use and customers can take the base FM and build differentiated apps using their own data (a little data or a lot) just by using a few prompts. 

– Customers can access high-performing FMs that give good results and are best-suited for their purposes. 

– Bedrock enables a seamless move into applications, without having to manage huge clusters of infrastructure or incur large costs.  

– Bedrock allows customisation but keeps the customer’s data secure, and private. 

– It’s a scalable and reliable service that uses AWS managed service (the biggest cloud service). 

– Bedrock makes the power of FMs accessible to companies of all sizes, thereby allowing them to accelerate the use of ML and get the value from ML across their organisations and make it easy to build their own generative AI applications. Amazon says it thinks “Bedrock will be a massive step forward in democratising FMs.” 

Also Announced 

As well as announcing the introduction of Bedrock, Amazon has also announced: 

– The general availability of Amazon EC2 Trn1n instances powered by AWS Trainium and Amazon EC2 Inf2 instances powered by AWS Inferentia2, which it describes as “the most cost-effective cloud infrastructure for generative AI”. 

– The general availability of Amazon CodeWhisperer, free for individual developers. Amazon CodeWhisperer is an AI coding companion that uses a FM to improve developer productivity by generating code suggestions in real-time based on developers’ comments in natural language and prior code in their Integrated Development Environment (IDE). 

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

Amazon says AI and ML have been a focus for over 20 years and that many of the capabilities customers use with Amazon are already driven by ML, however Bedrock provides a way for Amazon to compete in a rapidly growing and competitive generative AI (chatbot) market. With Bedrock, Amazon joins ChatGPT (OpenAI), Bard (Google), Copilot (Microsoft), Tongyi Oiawen (Alibaba), and others who are offering businesses the chance to create more value, save costs and time by leveraging the considerable power of AI. Amazon’s AWS is already the biggest cloud service so AWS can take advantage of this to introduce Bedrock to its many business customers, adding value for them and a helping to retain them. For businesses and developers who are AWS customers, Bedrock provides an easy, low-cost way to access and use powerful FMs to create specific, customised tools that can add value to their businesses and for their customers.

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Why Use Fake Reviews? 

On the site of one of the world’s largest retailers and the top online marketplace, large numbers of positive reviews and five-star ratings can give sellers a competitive edge that brings in greater profits.  Those who write the reviews on behalf of sellers can receive benefits like money, refunds, and free products.  

How Big Is The Problem? 

Only Amazon has that data for the true scale of the problem, however, fraudulent-review-detection service Fakespot suggests that around 42 percent of 720 million Amazon reviews assessed in 2020 were fake. 

Damaging 

Fake reviews can be damaging to buyers, other sellers, and Amazon’s platform. For example, fake reviews: 

– Promote products to the top of the list which may not best match the customers’ needs and may not be the best quality or value for money. This can lead to buyers purchasing low-quality products that leads to dissatisfaction. 

– Can mean that Amazon retailers who are selling a higher quality product have greater difficulty standing out among competitors with falsely positive reviews, thereby hitting their revenue. 

– Lead to some retailers being negatively affected when some competitors post fake negative reviews about their products.   

Common Ways To Spot Fake Reviews and Dubious Ratings 

Common ways to spot possible dubious ratings and fake reviews include: 

– Look at the percentage of 1- to 5-star reviews. If a listing shows hundreds or thousands of reviews with only five-star reviews, or if, say, 70 per cent of the reviews are 4 or 5 stars, and only 30 per cent are 1-star reviews, this is an unusual pattern, and one to be wary of. If a product only has 5-star reviews, this could be suspicious. 

– Vague reviews, e.g. just using short comments like “Love it!” or “Great” could be a sign that they are fake. 

– Beware reviews that mention a competing brand or product and warn you not to spend money on it. 

– Study the negative reviews and filter the reviews by 1-star ratings. If there appears to be a common pattern, e.g. reviewers repeatedly reporting deficiencies in the product, this could be a sign that all is not as it should be. 

– Beware ‘merged reviews.’ This is where there are multiple variations of a products, and a seller may have merged the listings together, manipulating the review to make it seem as though there are more good ratings on the product that is being sold than it has. This means that many of the ratings for a product may be for one that’s totally unrelated. By reading several of the reviews, this can often reveal which product the reviews are about. 

– Check the pattern of ratings. If there are substantial amounts of ratings at different ends of the scale – highly positive and highly negative – with nothing in between, this polarisation about a product could be sign of fake reviews. 

– Read and search comments for any mentions or comments about the buyer receiving a gift card or a free product in exchange. This could be a sign that sellers have been incentivising customers who have bought their products, e.g. by using inserts for a gift card or a free product in exchange for a good review. 

– Check the dates of when reviews were posted. If many were posted in a short time period, this could be a sign that there was a push for reviews on Facebook groups or other platforms. 

Using Third-Party Websites and Browser Extensions 

There are several websites and browser extensions that can be used to identify fake amazon reviews. These include: 

– Reviewmeta. Users can paste the Amazon product page URL into a search box to analyse the users’ reviews.

– Fakespot. This is a browser extension that can be used to spot fake reviews on a variety of websites, including Amazon and eBay. 

– The Review Index. Like Reviewmeta, this analysis tool works by copying and pasting the product link into the search bar. 

What Is Amazon Doing About Fake Reviews? 

In addition to suing the admins of more than 10,000 Facebook groups, other measures that Amazon has taken to tackle fake reviews and dubious ratings include: 

– Banning paid-for reviews that are outside of its Vine program. 

– Introducing a ‘disclosure’ informing customers when a reviewer has been incentivised. 

– Restricting eligibility to review a product to customers who have spent at least £40 on the site within the last 12 months. 

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

Fake reviews and dubious star ratings appear to be quite difficult for Amazon to stop, thus it is a problem that has grown following the pandemic years as some third-party sellers tried to get a get a competitive edge and cash-in on the surge in online shopping that the pandemic created. Clearly, it’s still possible for many people (if Amazon’s suing 1000+ Facebook Groups) to find ways to manipulate the ratings. It may be difficult in the short term to detect and stop practices like including inserts with products offering incentives for good reviews (unless they’re reported or mentioned online) or using merged reviews. Manipulation and fake reviews, however, are unfair, but are still rewarded by Amazon which is why they are still happening. In addition to making it more difficult for sellers who are operating honestly, plus affecting customers who may be buying inferior products due to fake reviews, criticism about the matter is damaging for Amazon’s reputation. Clearly, users of the platform (both sellers and buyers) would welcome the introduction of more and better measures to filter out and prevent fake reviews and ratings. In the meantime, as buyers, we can only continue looking out for the signs mentioned in this article, and perhaps consider using websites like Reviewmeta if the purchase is an important one. 

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SMEs Optimistic About AI

Contrary to a popular belief that AI may still be a little ‘pie in the sky’ for many SMEs, an Adecco study (2017) showed that small businesses are more open and optimistic about AI and its potential to boost business growth than larger companies. The study, which took into account the views of 1000 workers in 13 sectors across the UK showed that companies with more than 5,000 staff are almost twice as sceptical about the business impact of AI compared to businesses with less than 250 employees.

Machine Learning and AI

Just to clear up some of the popular terminologies that are often used interchangeably, artificial intelligence (AI) is the encompassing concept that machines can execute tasks “smartly” whereas machine learning contributes to this as machines (through algorithms) can be trained, can learn, and can adapt through experience.

Business-Led Approach

Business-led (rather than technology-led) applications of AI are likely to yield better results as this approach leads to a focus that can mean AI solving real problems in a value-adding way.

Already Using AI

Some examples of how SMEs are already using existing AI-powered tools in a business-led way as part of their daily/regular work include:

– Operating systems and add-ons + digital assistants. These include Windows 10 which has Cortana, Teams, and other AI-powered features. Apple incorporates the Siri assistant and Amazon’s AI-powered digital assistant is, of course, Alexa.

– CRMs. These include Salesforce and Zoho, with its ‘Zia’ AI-powered assistant.

– Popular email platforms. In September for example, Mailchimp launched a set of AI-based tools to give small businesses access to the same kind of capabilities as their larger competitors. These include personalised product recommendations for shoppers, forecasting tools for behavioural targeting (of those most likely to buy), a tool to help businesses design their own visual asset and a tool to help write better email subject lines.

– Banking apps. For example, the Lloyds Bank, Halifax, and Bank of Scotland banking app use AI to give customers mobile notifications which can be customised to track their spending and transactions.

– Online and mobile advertising e.g., AdWords and Facebook adverts.

Resources

There are many resources and solutions to be found online that can help SMEs to access and use AI.  Some of the AI resources include:

– Google’s AI Tools.  Google’s online AI tools at https://ai.google/tools/ include the TensorFlow browser-based library for training ML models, and ML Kit as well as guides to ML and AI at https://ai.google/education/. Other AI products such as AI platform (for building machine learning models), Cloud AutoML for building ML models with minimal expertise, and AI Building Blocks can be found at https://cloud.google.com/products/ai.

– Microsoft’s (Azure) AI platform ‘Microsoft AI’ offers tools and help to develop AI solutions in conversational AI, machine learning, data sciences, robotics, IoT, and more.  See: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/overview/ai-platform/.  Also, Microsoft BI uses AI to model and visualise business data to help with decision making.  See: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/what-is-power-bi/

– Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a set of set machine learning tools for businesses here https://aws.amazon.com/ai/ plus a number of resources and guides here https://aws.amazon.com/ai/resources/.

– Funded by UK Innovate, the GoSmarter Toolbox gives SMEs six automation tools to easily and quickly automate invoice processing, meeting management, online bookings, sales processing, social media listening and more.  See: https://gosmarter.ai/.

– The UK government website provides many guides related to the use of AI, such as https://www.gov.uk/guidance/planning-and-preparing-for-artificial-intelligence-implementation.

– Various ‘out of the box’ AI-based tools can help solve common problems for SMEs. Examples include Timely, an app/digital record of all project and team time (https://memory.ai/timely), and Sage Ap Automation to help work with freelancers or external contractors this AI-based tool manages outgoing and incoming expenses and does the banking reconciliation. Other interesting ‘out of the box’ examples include Brisk which uses real-time data feeds to automate the monitoring of risks and opportunities for small businesses e.g., late-paying customers, supply chain disruption, online reputation, cybersecurity, employee well-being and more (https://www.getbrisk.com/), Scribless which enables small businesses to create handwritten messages at scale (replicate the handwriting of clients) to help create more effective marketing campaigns (https://scribeless.co/), and multiple applicant tracking/recruiting/HR solutions such as People HR (https://www.peoplehr.com/recruitment.html) and GoHire (https://gohire.io/).

Real-World Examples

Real-world examples of how SMEs are have used/are using AI to leverage their resources and add value include:

– Predictive Algorithms.  For example, as highlighted by NatWest, hotel technology specialist Noetic have developed predictive algorithms for hotels, based on data gathered through their websites that can identify what makes a good guest and can help the hotel to keep the guest and rely less on travel agents by offering these cheap to acquire, high spending guests more of what is known to attract them and keep their loyalty.

– Virtual customer service agents.  For example, SoDash, a social media and digital customer services agent can make customer service more efficient by collecting messages from many different channels e.g., Twitter, Facebook, email, and SMS, categorising them and sending automatic responses to common enquiries.

In Summary

In summary, AI can be used to enhance and improve many different aspects of business for SMEs including improving marketing and sales (making them smarter and improving insights), reducing repetitive, mundane tasks and freeing up more valuable resources, helping to manage finances, HR and recruitment, expanding the team with a chatbot, tracking a website user’s journey (and analysing their behaviour), and much more.

Using a business-led approach, looking closely at particular work challenges, and conducting an inventory of what skills are available within the business, companies can decide how they want to begin using AI e.g., an off the shelf solution, buying in initial expertise or committing in-house development time and resources in order to start gaining real-world benefits from AI that could translate into important competitive advantages.

Looking Ahead

The extreme disruption caused to global markets, business and supply chains by the pandemic and the realisation that more future business will be online lends itself to greater use of AI.  With more accessible and affordable AI products and resources available than ever before, many SMEs may now be seriously thinking about how AI can help them at least improve efficiency and improve automation as they look towards making the best of the recovery when it comes.

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Print What?

Printing With Alexa allows the simple “Alexa, print….” followed by what the user requires to produce a printed document.  Amazon says that the kinds of things that can be printed this way include “shopping and to-do lists, games like mazes and Sudoku, graph paper, lined paper, and test pages.”

The list of different documents, many of which are related to family activities, appears to reflect the working and learning from home that has become the new norm for many people over the last 6 months, and possibly again in the future with second spikes or more lockdowns.

Connecting

Amazon says that the service will work with compatible printers that are connected to the same wireless network as your Alexa device (provided it is a compatible Echo device too). The service is activated when the user says “Alexa, discover my printer”, or navigates to the “Devices” screen in the Alexa App, selects “+”, selects “Add Device”, and chooses “Printer” as the device type. Amazon says that the service works with most IPP-enabled network-connected printers manufactured by HP, Brother, Canon, and Epson.

Ink or Toner Re-Orders

The service also enables automatic ordering ink or toner from Amazon at a 10 per cent discount, thereby acting as a kind of hands-free replenishment process and providing extra revenue for Amazon.

Brand Voice

Back in February, before the worldwide pandemic lockdowns and working-from-home hit, Amazon was more focused on features for the business market with Alexa as it offered a new ‘Brand Voice’ capability through AWS (Brand Polly) to companies which enabled them to create their own custom voice for Alexa to replace the default voice with one that reflected their “persona”, such as the voice of Colonel Sanders for KFC.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

The ‘Printing With Alexa’ service is another step in Amazon’s plan to tie Alexa (and Echo devices) more closely in with all aspects of the user’s life e.g. making phone calls, setting their appointments, alarms and reminders, and linking in with many other devices on their home network plus IoT devices.  This strategy may put Amazon’s digital assistant at the heart of the operation of modern home and will, as in this case with the printer cartridge re-ordering, tie in with Amazon’s retailing platforms, thereby providing increased revenue for Amazon and a monetising of Alexa.  This may even spread to the ordering of groceries.  For example, in July, Amazon announced that it was taking on the supermarkets and Ocado in the UK with free grocery deliveries from its Amazon Fresh service.

Even though the pandemic has dampened business-targeted announcements, Amazon is still planning to keep monetising Alexa in the business market too where there is huge potential for modifications and different targeted and customised versions of Alexa and digital assistants.  For example, in April last year, Amazon launched its Alexa for Business Blueprints, which is a platform that enables businesses to make their own Alexa-powered applications for their organisation and incorporate their own customised, private ‘skills’.

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Prime Air

Amazon Prime Air completed its first fully autonomous drone delivery as far back as 7 December 2016 and describes the service as “a future delivery system from Amazon designed to safely get packages to customers in 30 minutes or less using unmanned aerial vehicles, also called drones”.

Since those early tests, Amazon Prime Air has been building and testing drones and the necessary technology at its development centres in the US, UK, Austria, France, and Israel.

Amazon acknowledges that although it has now been approved by the FAA for autonomous test flights, it will not be able to deploy the drones as a delivery option for customers until it has the regulatory support in the countries and areas that it wants to operate.

Drone Design Unveiled

Back in June 2019 at Amazon’s re:MARS Conference (Machine Learning, Automation, Robotics and Space) in Las Vegas, the company unveiled its latest Prime Air drone design which was reported to have advances in efficiency, stability and safety. The hybrid drone design could do vertical take-offs and landings and could easily transition between this and ‘airplane mode’ to enable it to efficiently cover distances of up to 15 miles to deliver packages under five pounds to customers.

Others – Including Alphabet (Google)

Amazon Prime Air Joins Alphabet Inc’s unit Wing and United Parcel Service Inc as recipients of FAA approval for drone delivery.

Alphabet Inc.’s Wing service, for example, was approved in the U.S. by the federal government last October and has been offering parcel delivery by drone in a limited test area around Christiansburg, Virginia.  During the pandemic, Alphabet’s drone deliveries doubled in test areas in the U.S. and Australia. Alphabet’s Wing also has a drone delivery service in the Vuosaari district of Helsinki in Finland and in Canberra, Australia where it delivers goods from a variety of vendors including Mitchell Supermarket, Krofne Donuts and even Drummond Golf (golf balls, tees and gloves).

Live Organ Delivered By Drone

The potential for done delivery was shown to be wider than simply parcels back in May 2019 when a human kidney for transplant was delivered by drone to a Medical Centre in Baltimore in the first delivery flight of its kind. The drone transportation of the living organ over a one-mile journey used cutting-edge technology in the form of an AI-powered drone that had been specifically designed to maintain and monitor the organ during the journey.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Drone deliveries offer huge potential and opportunities for businesses trying to offer customers speedy delivery, sometimes to difficult-to-reach locations at a time when our roads are often congested, particularly in urban areas.

Drones also proved their worth during the pandemic lockdown where Alphabet’s drone service, in partnership with local businesses and Virginia Tech was able to make safe, essential local food and medical deliveries to those people unable to go out.

With approval from bodies such as the FAA, and with the right regulations in place and partnerships with businesses and other organisations, the scale and scope of drone deliveries can be tested and realised in a way that can add value and provide a competitive edge to all kinds of businesses and organisations that need to deliver goods and other items very quickly.

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Antitrust Laws

In the U.S., home of big tech companies Facebook, Apple, Google and Amazon, the bosses of which are about to face an antitrust grilling, there are three core federal antitrust laws. The objectives of the laws are to help consumers by protecting the process of competition, making sure there are strong enough incentives for businesses to operate efficiently, to keep prices down, and keep maintain quality of goods and services.

When Microsoft faced Congress back in 1998 over an antitrust row about Microsoft allegedly forcing PC manufacturers to make Internet Explorer the default browser on their computers, the Sherman Act of 1890 was the main Act used in the against Microsoft.  This act concerns monopolies and prohibits “unreasonable” restraints of trade.

The other two core federal antitrust laws are The Federal Trade Commission Act which bans “unfair methods of competition” and “unfair or deceptive acts or practices”, and the Clayton Act which relates to some practices that the Sherman Act does not clearly prohibit e.g. mergers.

Before Congress

This week, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Sundar Pichai of Google, Tim Cook of Apple and Jeff Bezos of Amazon are all appearing before members of the U.S. Congress to face questions related to the antitrust laws and to help the U.S. government decide whether these companies have become too big and powerful.

Complicated Argument

The arguments in relation to Google and Facebook particularly (both of which offer services for free, funded by advertising), are likely to be complicated by their ‘free’ business model.

Facebook, for example, offers Instagram, WhatsApp, and its classic Facebook platform free to consumers and Google offers its search engine, email, YouTube, and other services for free. Apple also offers free apps for download.  The offering of these free services could, therefore, make it difficult for Congress to use an antitrust law against them that is based on consumer pricing.

Issues

Some of the issues the Congress legislators may mention have also been echoed in the UK. These issues include:

– Big tech companies thrived during the pandemic which may indicate that they could be “too big to fail” and that this could indicate that they have become too powerful and this could represent an unfair situation for competitors.

– The tech giants, like Amazon and Google, own the Internet utilities and, therefore, could be acting unfairly e.g. Amazon promoting its own products over others on Amazon marketplace.

– That even though some key services are offered for free, the tech giants may be hurting consumers in a less direct way by making it difficult for other competitors to compete with ‘free’ and thereby damaging the wider economy.

– The issue of the role that powerful platforms such as Facebook have played (and could play) in the influencing of votes in elections due to content posted and shared on those platforms.  Significantly, there is a U.S. presidential election later this year.

– Google and Facebook’s market positions may mean that they have had a detrimental impact on newspapers and their circulation.

– Apple and Google own iOS and Android and, therefore, could be said to control the app market, making it difficult for app makers to go anywhere else for sales and distribution.

– Companies like Google and Facebook may be too powerful in the advertising market.  This is a point that has been made in the UK too by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) which has noted that Google has more than 90 per cent of the £7.3bn search advertising market and Facebook has more than half of the £5.5bn UK online display advertising market.

Counter Arguments

Obviously, the heads of tech giants Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon have their own counter-arguments and points.  These may include:

– In providing free services, they also face competition from other popular free services such as TikTok, and their free services e.g. Facebook provides a great way for people to connect and share and for all kinds of businesses to promote themselves.

– Advertising e.g. via Google and Facebook provides a fast and effective way to help businesses compete and consumers to see and buy the products and services they want and need.

– Facebook may be likely to say that it has grown from nothing, in a fair way, and that U.S. laws also promote the kind of competition and innovation that has helped it and other U.S. companies to grow.

– Amazon, for example, has said that it welcomes scrutiny of all large institutions, including itself, government agencies and non-profits.

– Breaking up or over-regulating the big U.S. tech companies could hand more power to Chinese tech companies (e.g. Huawei).

Microsoft

Microsoft’s Bill Gates is reported to have said that he wishes the four tech giant leaders well before their grilling by Congress.  Microsoft provides an example of what could happen when the leaders face Congress members as back in 1998,  Bill Gates faced his own four-hour hearing in the hot seat as he and some peers (Sun Microsystems Chairman Scott McNealy, Michael Dell, Netscape’s president Jim Barksdale and more) faced some serious questions from Congress over antitrust laws.  In Microsoft’s case, the judge ruled that Microsoft should be broken up, but this decision was reversed on appeal and following a settlement reached by Microsoft and the court.  The hearing took its toll in other ways though, as it led to the demise of Netscape and to Bill Gates deciding to retire in 2000.

What Could Happen?

The ultimate fear among the tech giants is that the same sort of ruling as the initial one reached against Microsoft could happen again or that it could lead to over-regulation.

There are also fears among supporters of scrutinising tech companies that questioning the tech company bosses all together and not individually could mean that really difficult questions could be deflected and skilfully side-stepped and that some Congress members may simply use the occasion to ‘grandstand’.

In The UK

In the UK, the CMA is calling for the introduction of a new ‘Digital markets Unit’ that could be given the powers to enforce a code of conduct for big tech firms and even the powers to break them up.

Looking Ahead

It is difficult to deny that big tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Google are huge and powerful in markets across the world. The arguments relating to antitrust laws, however, are more complicated than they may first appear and there is also a political dimension in this debate as well as one relating to fair competition and how well consumers are served.  This argument may go on for quite some time yet, but the tech company bosses are likely to find the hearing in the U.S. an uncomfortable step in the way forward.

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Watch Party

The Watch Party feature, which is similar to that of Netflix, allows an Amazon Prime member to simultaneously stream and share their favourite movie or TV show with up to 100 friends and family members who are also Prime members.  The synchronised playback controls mean that the Prime Member can use live ‘live chat’ via text with the group and pause, play, and skip the action for the group.

Watch Party does not require a plug-in to download and can be used for anything included with Prime.

Netflix and Others

Amazon Watch Party is clearly a similar (and competing) offering to Netflix’s service. Netflix Party also offers synchronised video playback and adds group chat to Netflix shows so that Netflix members can link up with friends and host long distance movie nights and TV watch parties.

Other streamers offering virtual viewing parties include Warner Media, Disney, and Disney Plus.

Desktop and U.S. Only

Amazon’s Watch Party is currently only available to those located in the U.S. and with a U.S.-based Prime subscription.  People can join in a web browser on their computer, and Watch Party is only for desktop browsers except Apple’s Safari, although a mobile version is reported to be on the way.  Devices such as Fire TV, smart TVs, game consoles, connected media players, mobile phones, and tablets are currently not supported for Watch party.

How To Use

To launch a Watch Party, a user clicks on the Watch Party icon on their screen, browses titles and episode lists to choose what to watch, chooses a name to use while chatting and then shares their Watch Party link with up to 100 people (friends join by clicking on their link).

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

The pandemic has been good news for those companies offering streamed online entertainment services as millions of people have been spending a lot more time on those platforms and seeking entertainment while off work and having their movement outside restricted.

The fact that families and friends have been separated from each other and that people have been unable to have shared, public entertainment experiences e.g. cinema and concerts, has created more of an opportunity for shared online entertainment experiences such as Watch Parties.

For Amazon, Watch Party is a way that it can compete with other big streamers such as Netflix, and Amazon is in a good position to do so with the vast amount of entertainment titles that it offers.

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Report

A recent report by 451 Research states that technology generally will play a crucial role for businesses continuity post-lockdown and that in the past 2 years (in the U.S.) there has been increased interest in the use of voice interfaces in the workplace, with voice-activated interfaces and digital assistants being among the top disruptive technologies that organisations were looking to adopt.  The report also highlights how, in the past year there has been a growing number of speech-enabled devices designed specifically for the workplace, such as desk phones, meeting room equipment and hearable devices.  Also, voice-enabled intelligent assistants have been integrated with meeting room equipment and team collaboration workflows.

Conclusions

Now, in the post-COVID-19 business environment, the report concludes that:

– These technologies and integrations could become particularly valuable in making the workplace safer and more contactless and help to retain the necessary physical distancing for those who are required to return.

– The need to provide a safe workplace will see organisations accelerating digital transformation initiatives, driving adoption of voice interfaces, biometrics, and real-time communications.

– Voice user interfaces, real-time communications and location management services will be used to help support frontline workers as well as helping organisations to further automate their operations.

Examples

Some of the examples cited in the report of those who currently use voice technology and who could benefit from using more of it include frontline workers such as nurses and doctors, first responders, factory workers, grocery store employees, drivers, and food and grocery and delivery gig workers.

It should be remembered that the report is U.S. based, where integrations of voice-enabled intelligent assistants with meeting room equipment and team collaboration workflows deployed in the workplace began around three years ago, and where intelligent assistants e.g. Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri are ubiquitous for the average consumer. Also, in the U.S, Amazon has been active in expanding its Alexa for Business that uses voice commands for e.g. managing meetings and controlling conference room devices.

Challenges

Some of the challenges that businesses in the UK face in addition to the market conditions and making the office/workplace physically safe on a daily basis are how they offer good service levels with many staff still not back at the office and how they can quickly and affordably take advantage of the benefits of technology to make things work and remain competitive.

Change

With social distancing looking as though it will need to be in place for many months to come, yet with many returning to workplaces in the UK after becoming used to working remotely (facilitated by technology), there is now an expectation that (and a necessity for) workplaces to change in order to maximise safety for the users of all work buildings.

Ways that businesses in the UK could operate safely, embrace technology, and move forward could include:

– Making more use of Alexa for Business, Microsoft’s Cortana, biometrics, and chatbots with AI for speech recognition.

– Workers continuing to make use of as Microsoft Teams, Slack, or Zoom, and using simple chatbots and other speech-based technologies e.g. voice-to-text transcription.

– Making even greater use of the Cloud.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Just as governments have to balance public health with the economy, most businesses will need key people to return to their premises and will already be at least in the process of physically creating an environment, working routines and policies that ensure maximum safety within available guidelines.

The realisation by many managers and their employees that technology can successfully be quickly mastered and used to keep critical parts of the business going during lockdown looks likely to contribute to serious consideration being given to the use of more technologies such as voice and contactless technologies going forward.

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Last May

Last May, Amazon was a leading investor in a funding round of $575 million for UK-based food delivery company Deliveroo. At the time (17th May), Deliveroo’s founder and CEO, Will Shu, said of the $575M Series G preferred shares funding from Amazon and existing investors T. Rowe Price, Fidelity Management and Research Company, and Greenoaks, “This new investment will help Deliveroo to grow and to offer customers even more choice, tailored to their personal tastes, offer restaurants greater opportunities to grow and expand their businesses, and to create more flexible, well-paid work for riders.”

Amazon Restaurants

Amazon had previously operated its own ‘Amazon Restaurants’ food delivery service in London, but this was closed in December 2018 following strong competition from Deliveroo, Uber Eats, Just Eat, among and others. It was also reported that Amazon had previously tried two times to buy Deliveroo outright.

CMA Concerns

The Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA), however, had concerns that the investment by Amazon in Deliveroo would be bad for competition and had launched its own investigation. The two main concerns expressed by the CMA were that:

– There were only a small number of companies that acted as the middleman between restaurants and customers and the Amazon/Deliveroo deal could have damaged competition in online restaurant food delivery by discouraging Amazon from re-entering the market in the UK i.e. re-entry by Amazon would have significantly increased competition in online restaurant food delivery in the UK.

– The CMA was concerned that the deal could have damaged competition in the emerging market for online convenience grocery delivery, where the 2 companies already had established market-leading positions.

COVID-19 Change

In the light of what the CMA says has been “a deterioration in Deliveroo’s financial position as a result of coronavirus (COVID-19)”, the CMA has now put aside its original concerns and provisionally cleared Amazon’s investment in Deliveroo. There will, however, be a three-week consultation period and a final decision will not be made until 11th June after all relevant feedback about the investment has been gathered (all submissions will need to be made by Monday 11th May 2020).

The CMA appears to have concluded that only Amazon would be able to provide the kind of funding that Deliveroo needs to meet its financial commitments in the extraordinary global circumstances caused by the pandemic.

Stuart McIntosh, Chair of the CMA’s independent inquiry group, said of that “some customers are cut off from online food delivery altogether, with others facing higher prices or a reduction in service quality. Faced with that stark outcome, we feel the best course of action is to provisionally clear Amazon’s investment in Deliveroo.”

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

For Deliveroo this is, of course, a great outcome at a crucial moment. The outcome also shows how the pandemic has had a dramatic effect on all aspects of business, including the decisions made regulators against a changed backdrop. The decision may also, as the CMA pointed out, be good news for customers, particularly those who are more “cut off” from their normal food supplies.

This decision is unlikely to be welcomed, however, by competitors such as Uber and Just Eat who saw-off Amazon’s move into the food delivery market in London last time.

The post Amazon Can Own Deliveroo Because of Pandemic appeared first on Mear Technology.

Climate Change

The widely recognised effects of climate change are likely to be responsible for the seemingly more frequent and record-breaking extreme weather events such as storm Dennis here in the UK which brought a record number (594) of flood warnings across England and devastation to many town and businesses.

The increase of a whole degree in temperature since the Industrial Revolution has, for example, warmed the atmosphere, making it able to hold more moisture and become unstable. This is likely to mean, at the very least, more storms and flooding in the coming years, and highlights the need for longer advance warnings (Dennis was forecasted 6 days in advance) and more targeted information.

Met Office

The current Met Office system for weather forecasting utilises 200 billion daily observations from satellites, weather stations and ocean buoys that are interpreted by Cray XC40 supercomputers which are due to reach the end of their life in late 2022.  Even though the Cray XC40 is in the top 50 of the world’s most powerful computers, and performs more than 2 million calculations per second for every man, woman and child on the planet, the need for faster, even more accurate, earlier and even more locally-focused weather forecasting requires an investment in new computers to replace the Cray systems for a 10-year period from 2022 to 2032.

New Investment

The new Met Office supercomputer system, announced against the backdrop of storm Dennis, will cost £1.2 billion (which include hardware and running costs too over a ten-year period) but could, according to the department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) deliver £19 worth of economic benefits for every pound spent.

The new system will create a simulated picture of the weather, will divide the globe into grid smaller squares, and will have a massive increase in processing power (six times more powerful) at its disposal which will mean that:

– Four-day weather forecasts will be as accurate today as one-day forecasts were 30 years’ ago.

– With the grid that the simulated picture of the earth’s weather is divided into, the new system will be able to operate (and deliver accurate forecasts) for a resolution as sharp as 100m squares.

– Extreme weather conditions will be spotted earlier.

– Improved daily to seasonal forecasts and longer-term climate projections can be made.

– The effects of a hotter world in the future can be explored, and more detail can be added to projections taking account of factors such as the way nitrogen reacts with the carbon in the air.

– Scenarios such as how the country can make the best use of the land if/when the target of net zero emissions by 2050 is reached can be explored.

– Data from the supercomputer can be used to inform UK government policy as part of leading the global fight against climate change.

Artificial Intelligence

The Business and Energy Secretary, Alok Sharma, has highlighted how the new supercomputer looks likely to drive forward innovation and grow world-class skills across supercomputing, data science, as well as machine learning and artificial intelligence.  The Met Office’s new supercomputer will, for example, be able to use artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to carry out even more detailed climate model analysis.

Supercomputer Carbon Footprint?

Some commentators have pointed out that the new supercomputers will require a massive amount of electricity to operate them (as the existing ones do), thereby meaning that ironically, they could be contributing to the global warming that is producing the changing weather conditions that they have been introduced to predict.

The Met Office has, therefore, invited potential providers to come up with low-carbon options and it is likely that much of the processing work could be located in countries with easy and abundant sources of clean energy within the European Economic Area e.g. Iceland (geothermal energy) or Norway (hydropower).

Other Weather Forecasting Options For Business

Weather Source and its Snowflake, cloud-based (AWS) data exchange is an example of another accurate forecasting service for businesses that helps them to quantify and manage climate risks. In addition to being fast and providing forecasts projected over 15 days, the service requires only a few hundred gigabytes of new data to be processed per day, therefore, making it a very efficient option.

Benefits

Looking forward, the socio-economic benefits of the new Met Office system are likely to be many.  These will include better forecasting at airports to help the aviation and travel industries,  more sophisticated modelling of flooding to help businesses with premises in flood areas with continuity and contingency planning, providing more detailed information to the energy sector which will have knock-on benefits to many businesses, and providing insights and early warnings that are vital for the UK’s transport infrastructure and for business transportation, delivery and distribution services.

In a world where the climate is capable of causing massive damage and disruption on a more regular basis, the investment in even more powerful supercomputer technology and AI by the Met Office could actually bring considerable savings for businesses of all kinds and provide a better basis for government decisions.

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