Image of the week: Ai-Da the artist
Every now and again it seems wise to check in on how the robots are doing and what they're up to this week. The answer, on this occasion, is painting creatively and taking (pre-submitted) questions from journalists. The uncannily human-like Ai-Da, named in honour of mathematician and computing pioneer Ada Lovelace, is a robot artist who will open her solo exhibition Leaping into the Metaverse – curated by her creator Aidan Meller – at this year's Venice Biennale.
Ai-Da, who has previously demonstrated her poetic abilities, was created more than two years ago and is updated as AI technology improves. Meller told the Guardian that the first public demonstration of a creative robotic painting at the British Library this week was not "can robots make art?" but "now that robots can make art, do we humans really want them to?" Ai-Da, meanwhile, says the artists she most admires are Yoko Ono, Doris Salcedo, Michelangelo and Wassily Kandinsky. Cool list.
In numbers: Twitter change
$2.9 billion
Money that Elon Musk, the world's richest man, spent buying a 9.2 per cent stake in Twitter, the social media company with which he has a love-hate relationship. With his wealth oscillating either side of $300 billion, this is, of course, loose change.
14.9%
Within hours Musk had become the 12th member of Twitter’s board, with his term running until 2024. His maximum stake cannot exceed 14.9 per cent during this time, Twitter said. He can still exert plenty of power though.
74%
Voters in Elon Musk’s poll on whether Twitter should have an edit button who responded “yse” (his editing joke). Twitter has since confirmed it is working on one. But it has been “since last year”, okay?
Getting to know: Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht
With wealth of $6.5 billion (€6 billion) apiece, Melanie Perkins (34) and Cliff Obrecht (36) are Australia's newest billionaires, their fortunes deriving from their stakes in Canva, the graphic design software maker they co-founded with Cameron Adams in Sydney in 2013. Canva, valued at $40 billion, is now "the hottest ticket in town", says the Australian Financial Review (AFR).
From Perth, Perkins and Obrecht met at a fireworks display and became a couple, marrying in 2021. They first made money selling spray-on tattoos at fairs, then there was a school yearbook business, until Perkins, now Canva’s chief executive, had the lightbulb moment that people shouldn’t have to buy specialist software for web design.
Spirits are high. On a company video call before Christmas, there were singalongs, pretend cocktails and all three founders dressed as dogs in what AFR described as a nod to the pandemic’s “fur babies” phenomenon. But Canva’s figures are far from fluffy: it has attracted 60 million monthly users to its freemium software and more than 5 million paying subscribers and its revenues are now high enough to make any dog’s tail wag.
The list: Amazon’s word screening
The Intercept reported this week that Amazon is planning an internal messaging app in the US that will block or flag posts containing words it doesn't like. Amazon responded that such an app, if approved, would only screen "offensive or harassing" terms and denied plans to screen "many of the words" on its list. Let's get a flavour of some of them anyway.
1. Union: Trade unions are Amazon's Kryptonite judging from its efforts to stop them being formed. Nevertheless, workers at the retail giant's Staten Island warehouse in New York have just managed to become the first Amazon employees in the US to unionise.
2. Plantation: Several words connected to slavery were also on the "auto bad word monitor", according to The Intercept.
3. Robots: Is the term "robots" offensive or harassing? If not, then it'll presumably be fine to talk about them on the proposed chat app.
4. "This is dumb": Well, it certainly would be.
5. Restrooms: Amazon workers notoriously haven't always had time to use them without missing their work quotas. Try referring to "the jacks" or "the bog" instead?
