NEWS YOU CAN’T MISS

Is Your AI Assistant Spilling Your Secrets? 🤫

A recent incident involving the AI assistant Otter has raised significant concerns about privacy and confidentiality in business meetings. Here’s what happened:

• Alex Bilzerian, an AI researcher, had a meeting with potential investors over Zoom. The investors were using AI assistant Otter to transcribe the notes of the meeting.

• Unbeknownst to Bilzerian, Otter kept listening in, capturing "intimate, confidential details" uttered by the investors after he left the call.

• Then Otter sent him a detailed transcript of his meeting with them, plus everything they said afterward.

So what went wrong? Well, Otter says that the investors could have adjusted settings to prevent the automatic sharing of transcripts.

This is correct - they should have. But ideally, this should not have happened at all and Otter should have some checks and balances for its AI to prevent it from leaking hours of sensitive information.

If we stop to think about how we increasingly use AI productivity tools in everything from our email to our mobile phones to our virtual meetings, we will get worried.

This is literally any business person’s worst nightmare … confidentiality is crucial for success, and a breach like this can be devastating.

My take: we need stricter rules embedded into these AI assistants so that they have some business common sense and check before sending transcripts beyond a meeting, for example, to all attendees not physically present.

Check it out: The Most Viral AI Tool This Week

Okay, picture this: You have a mountain of information to get through – research papers, articles, meeting notes, and lengthy videos. You need to understand them and then summarise them for an exam or a briefing at work.

Anxiety-inducing, right?

But what if you could transform all of that into one easily digestible podcast, with AI hosts guiding you through the key takeaways and offering insightful analysis, all in an engaging manner?

That's exactly what Google NotebookLM does. It's literally like magic!

I decided to give it a try with my own newsletter. I uploaded it to NotebookLM, and within minutes, it generated a podcast with two AI voices discussing the content in a thoroughly fun and engaging way – and get this, they even pronounced my name correctly! Un-be-lieve-able. 🤯

People are using it in colleges, for example, and uploading entire books and listening to them as they go for a run. This is a big game changer for work, education, and media production.

Ready to try it? Go to NotebookLM, click on Try NotebookLM (you’ll need a Google account), and upload your stuff. Wait a few minutes. Boom – you have a podcast! 🎧

Or click here to listen to what it did with this very newsletter! 😎

ps. NotebookLM makes some mistakes or “hallucinates,” so please do your usual spot-checking for AI-generated content.

WOMAN IN TECH

Meet Tan Hooi Ling, Grab-Co-Founder

Celebrating this week's Woman in tech 🥳: Tan Hooi Ling, the remarkable co-founder of Grab, Southeast Asia's leading super app with over 32 million users per month.

Tan was born and raised in Kuala Lumpur. Growing up, she showed an early aptitude for mathematics and science and pursued her higher education at the University of Bath, earning a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in 2006.

She joined McKinsey & Company as a business analyst in Malaysia, and McKinsey sponsored her MBA at Harvard Business School, where she met her future Grab co-founder, Anthony Tan.

• The two created a business plan for a ride-sharing company like Uber in Asia.

• The idea was inspired by Tan’s own experience in Kuala Lumpur: both she and her mother would worry for her safety when taking taxis home alone at night.

• As she put it, "I would text her the taxi’s license plate number and how far away I was...because she wanted to be at the gate to usher me in quickly!" highlighting the need for safer transportation that Grab ultimately provided.

Grab was launched in 2012, and in 2015, Tan took on the role of Chief Operating Officer of Grab. The rest, as they say, is history!

Today, Grab has expanded way beyond ride-hailing to become a super app offering food delivery, digital payments, and other services, operating in over 400 cities across 8 countries with over 32 million monthly users.

Tan was listed on Forbes' 40 Under 40 in 2018 and named one of Forbes Asia's Power Businesswomen in 2019.

Her journey from a young girl in Malaysia to a tech industry leader is a testament to her resilience and vision. 😎 By the way, I use Grab every day so I’m a big fan!

Food for Thought

Would you let AI chauffeur you on your wedding day?

Move over limos and horse-drawn carriages—Waymo which runs the biggest fleet of AI-powered self-driving cars in the US, is bringing tech to romance.

Tech startup founders Josefina Van Thienen and Felipe Abello took their love for innovation to the next level by hopping into a Waymo robotaxi after their City Hall wedding.

Sure, it's a bold move, but for tech lovers, it seems like the perfect way to stand out and embrace the future on your special day.

How was your week? I had some ups and downs as usual but on Friday, I did my corporate headshots and then walked along the river, which was quite lovely. Hope you have a fabulous weekend!

Until next time! The future awaits.

Ayesha ♥️

ps. 2nd cohort of my AI course, 'Generative AI for Business Executives,' is now live. Secure your spot here.