Getty Images Editorial Note: In response to Russia’s “unprovoked attack on Ukraine” on February 23, the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) published an updated set of cybersecurity recommendations for organizations. In the five years since I first explored the potential impact of a Digital Cold War on the IT industry, tensions with Russia have gotten worse, especially following a series of cyberattacks on systems in the United States. These include Russia’s involvement in the SolarWinds breach, as well as its interference with the 2016 US presidential elections via attacks on the Democratic National Committee infrastructure and the purchasing of tens of millions of ads on Facebook in an attempt to sow discontent among US voters. Under Vladimir Putin’s leadership, the nation has focused on international cybersecurity activity for many years. Ukraine invasion Under the pretext of “Peacekeeping operations,” Russia has now initiated a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Presumably, Russia also has been responsible for recent cyberattacks on Ukrainian banks. In response, the United States, NATO nations, and allied countries have imposed numerous economic sanctions on Russia, including blocking its two state-owned banks from debt trading on US and European markets and freezing their assets under US jurisdictions, as well as freezing the assets of the country’s wealthiest citizens. Germany has halted its plans on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 Gas Pipeline. Further wide-ranging sanctions are expected as Russia continues its assault on Ukraine. On February the 23rd, President Biden condemned the military action and said, “President Putin has chosen a premeditated war that will bring a catastrophic loss of life and human suffering. Russia alone is responsible for the death and destruction this attack will bring, and the United States and its Allies and partners will respond in a united and decisive way. The world will hold Russia accountable.” The economic impacts of this conflict will likely be significant, including a halt on Russian oil and natural gas exports to Western Europe and, presumably, the denial of civil and commercial air transit to Asia through Russian airspace. Although the United States, unlike Europe, is not a major consumer of Russian energy exports, it would be simplistic to say that Russia has no impact on US business at all. An extended conflict with Russia — coupled with the imposition of wide-ranging sanctions — will have a tangible impact on the global technology industry. Software companies with concerns about Russian connections Many companies with significant market share and widespread use within US corporations have various levels of connections with Russia. For example, some were founded in Russia and others are headquartered elsewhere but have a development presence within Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe. UK-incorporated Kaspersky Lab, for example, is a major and well-established player in the antivirus/antimalware space. It maintains its international headquarters and has substantial research and development capabilities in Russia, even though its primary R&D center was moved to Israel in 2017. It’s also thought that Eugene Kaspersky, the company’s founder, has strong personal ties to the Putin-controlled government. Kaspersky has repeatedly denied these allegations, but questions about the man and his company remain and will be further scrutinized, particularly as the conflict develops. In the past, evidence emerged that Kaspersky’s software was involved in compromising the security of a contract employee of the United States National Security Agency in 2015. Kaspersky Lab insists that, to the contrary, the evidence supporting this has not been properly established and has produced an internal audit of the findings. It’s also important to note that companies with no evidence of any wrongdoing are suffering guilt by association. NGINX Inc is the support and consulting arm of an open source reverse proxy web server project that is very popular with some of the most high-volume internet services on the planet. The company is of Russian origin but was sold to F5 Networks in 2019. The founder of the company, Igor Sysoev, announced his departure in January of this year. Parallels, Inc., which Corel acquired in 2018, focuses extensively on virtualization technology. Their Parallels Desktop is one of the most popular solutions for Windows virtualization on the Mac. Historically, their primary development labs were in Moscow and Novosibirsk, Russia. The company was founded by Serguei Beloussov, who was born in the former Soviet Union and later emigrated to Singapore. Two of their products, Virtuozzo and Plesk, were spun off as their own companies in 2017. Parallels’ Odin, a complex management stack for billing and provisioning automation used by service providers and private clouds running on VMware’s virtual infrastructure stack and Microsoft’s Azure, was sold to Ingram Micro in 2015. Acronis, like Parallels, is another company founded by Beloussov. After founding Parallels in 1999, and being involved with both companies for some time, he became CEO of Acronis in May of 2013. The company specializes in cybersecurity products for end-to-end device protection, and in the past, has had bare-metal systems imaging, systems deployment, and storage management products for Microsoft Windows and Linux. The company maintains its global headquarters in Singapore. However, it has substantial R&D operations in Eastern Europe in addition to operations in Israel, Singapore, and the US. Veeam Software founded by Russian-born Ratmir Timashev, concentrates on enterprise backup solutions for VMware and Microsoft public and private cloud stacks. Like Parallels and Acronis, it is also multinational. For many years, it had much of its R&D based out of St. Petersburg, Russia. It was purchased by Insight Partners in 2020 and installed a new management team. However, it has yet to be determined how much Russian legacy code is in its products or continues to be contributed to them. These are only just a few examples. Numerous Russian software firms generate billions of dollars of revenue that have products and services that have significant enterprise penetration in the United States, EMEA, and Asia. There are also many smaller ones that perform niche or specialized services, such as subcontracting. It should also be noted that many mobile apps — including entertainment software for iOS, Android, Windows — also originate in  Russia. Russian services firms will also be impacted Many global technology giants in

Collaboration as reality, not just lip service. Viewing change as part of the journey, not a troublesome detour. Powering technology with the right people, processes, and data. When Senior Analyst Su Doyle and I reviewed Forrester’s State Of Customer Obsession Survey, 2024, we found a thread connecting B2B companies that reach the highest level of customer obsession: They commit to putting the vision into action and never stop. Companies that attain the highest level of customer obsession have better growth, better retention, and better employee engagement than their non-customer-obsessed peers. You can learn from them, and it doesn’t have to happen all at once. In fact, while customer obsession remains a high bar on our continuum, with 3% of companies reaching that top level, the segment right behind it, customer-committed, grew considerably in this year’s survey, from 36% to 57%. Progress is clearly possible. But how? Centering leadership, strategy, and operations around your customer isn’t a quick win. But it’s a worthy one. Companies see plenty of milestones and gains along the way. We found that firms in the customer-obsessed segment are more likely to: Treat customer obsession as an investment. Customer obsession is a perpetual business orientation that requires the right resources, applied consistently and adjusted when necessary. For example, publishing firm Elsevier stays flexible by setting aside budget to fund squads that will uncover and deliver new products separate from existing iterations. Make change a constant, not a special event. Moving from a company-only focus to an expanded view of value for the company and the customer requires an appetite for change. Companies in the customer-obsessed segment remove barriers that limit employees’ permission to use their best judgment, whereas just 71% of the non-customer-obsessed group do the same. Take advantage of the CX toolkit. The right technology is crucial, as are the right people, processes, and data. All should work in harmony; none should be sidelined. Rabobank mapped dozens of customer journeys, then ensured that customer journey managers and service designers worked closely with data analysts, web managers, call center staff, technology teams, and other lines of business to manage them. Lead with courage and humility. Leaders at customer-obsessed firms adhere to strong convictions and seek the right internal and external partners to help, confirm, or redirect. All the companies in the customer-obsessed group indicated that senior executives at their firms recognize their own strengths and weaknesses, compared to 72% of the non-customer-obsessed group. Make silos an uncomfortable exception. Companies in the customer-obsessed group encourage, even mandate, collaboration. This means real support for cross-functional alignment around customer value, ensuring that brand, customer, and employee experiences are consistent, and showing employees how their daily work and KPIs match the company’s mission. Read the full report, The State Of Customer Obsession In B2B, 2024 (Forrester client access only), for more data and examples of companies taking action on customer obsession. Reach out to an expert to explore your own journey toward customer obsession. source

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Researchers at Archetype AI have developed a foundational AI model capable of learning complex physics principles directly from sensor data, without any pre-programmed knowledge. This breakthrough could significantly change how we understand and interact with the physical world. The model, named Newton, demonstrates an unprecedented ability to generalize across diverse physical phenomena, from mechanical oscillations to thermodynamics, using only raw sensor measurements as input. This achievement, detailed in a paper released today, represents a major advance in artificial intelligence’s capacity to interpret and predict real-world physical processes. “We’re asking if AI can discover the laws of physics on its own, the same way humans did through careful observation and measurement,” said Ivan Poupyrev, co-founder of Archetype AI, in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat. “Can we build a single AI model that generalizes across diverse physical phenomena, domains, applications, and sensing apparatuses?” From pendulums to power grids: AI’s uncanny predictive powers Trained on over half a billion data points from diverse sensor measurements, Newton has shown remarkable versatility. In one striking demonstration, it accurately predicted the chaotic motion of a pendulum in real-time, despite never being trained on pendulum dynamics. The model’s capabilities extend to complex real-world scenarios as well. Newton outperformed specialized AI systems in forecasting citywide power consumption patterns and predicting temperature fluctuations in power grid transformers. “What’s remarkable is that Newton had not been specifically trained to understand these experiments — it was encountering them for the first time and was still able to predict outcomes even for chaotic and complex behaviors,” Poupyrev told VentureBeat. Performance comparison of Archetype AI’s ‘Newton’ model across various complex physical processes. The graph shows that the model, even without specific training (zero-shot), often outperforms or matches models trained specifically for each task, highlighting its potential for broad applicability. (Credit: Archetype AI) Adapting AI for industrial applications Newton’s ability to generalize to entirely new domains could significantly change how AI is deployed in industrial and scientific applications. Rather than requiring custom models and extensive datasets for each new use case, a single pre-trained foundation model like Newton might be adapted to diverse sensing tasks with minimal additional training. This approach represents a significant shift in how AI can be applied to physical systems. Currently, most industrial AI applications require extensive custom development and data collection for each specific use case. This process is time-consuming, expensive, and often results in models that are narrowly focused and unable to adapt to changing conditions. Newton’s approach, by contrast, offers the potential for more flexible and adaptable AI systems. By learning general principles of physics from a wide range of sensor data, the model can potentially be applied to new situations with minimal additional training. This could dramatically reduce the time and cost of deploying AI in industrial settings, while also improving the ability of these systems to handle unexpected situations or changing conditions. Moreover, this approach could be particularly valuable in situations where data is scarce or difficult to collect. Many industrial processes involve rare events or unique conditions that are challenging to model with traditional AI approaches. A system like Newton, which can generalize from a broad base of physical knowledge, might be able to make accurate predictions even in these challenging scenarios. Expanding human perception: AI as a new sense The implications of Newton extend beyond industrial applications. By learning to interpret unfamiliar sensor data, AI systems like Newton could expand human perceptual capabilities in new ways. “We have sensors now that can detect aspects of the world humans can’t naturally perceive,” Poupyrev told VentureBeat. “Now we can start seeing the world through sensory modalities which humans don’t have. We can enhance our perception in unprecedented ways.” This capability could have profound implications across a range of fields. In medicine, for example, AI models could help interpret complex diagnostic data, potentially identifying patterns or anomalies that human doctors might miss. In environmental science, these models could help analyze vast amounts of sensor data to better understand and predict climate patterns or ecological changes. The technology also raises intriguing possibilities for human-computer interaction. As AI systems become better at interpreting diverse types of sensor data, we might see new interfaces that allow humans to “sense” aspects of the world that were previously imperceptible. This could lead to new tools for everything from scientific research to artistic expression. Archetype AI, a Palo Alto-based startup founded by former Google researchers, has raised $13 million in venture funding to date. The company is in discussions with potential customers about real-world deployments, focusing on areas such as predictive maintenance for industrial equipment, energy demand forecasting, and traffic management systems. The approach also shows promise for accelerating scientific research by uncovering hidden patterns in experimental data. “Can we discover new physical laws?” Poupyrev mused. “It’s an exciting possibility.” “Our main goal at Archetype AI is to make sense of the physical world,” Poupyrev told VentureBeat. “To figure out what the physical world means.” As AI systems become increasingly adept at interpreting the patterns underlying physical reality, that goal may be within reach. The research opens new possibilities – from more efficient industrial processes to scientific breakthroughs and novel human-computer interfaces that expand our understanding of the physical world. For now, Newton remains a research prototype. But if Archetype AI can successfully bring the technology to market, it could usher in a new era of AI-powered insight into the physical world around us. The challenge now will be to move from promising research results to practical, reliable systems that can be deployed in real-world settings. This will require not only further technical development, but also careful consideration of issues like data privacy, system reliability, and the ethical implications of AI systems that can interpret and predict physical phenomena in ways that might surpass human capabilities. source

Adults in Turkey hold generally negative views of international powers and their respective leaders. But of the countries and organizations we asked about, Turks express the most positive attitudes toward the European Union – and a majority now support Turkey becoming an EU member, a change from 2017. As with many aspects of Turkish society, views are shaped by age, education, and opinions of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Views of the U.S., China and other world powers None of the six major world powers we asked about receive majority-positive ratings from the Turkish public. The European Union (46% favorable) and NATO (42%) receive the most positive assessments. Still, more Turks have unfavorable than favorable opinions of both organizations. Only a third of Turks have a positive view of the United Nations, and just three-in-ten see Russia favorably. Fewer still have a positive view of China (26%) and just 18% express a favorable opinion of the U.S. Demographic differences Younger Turks generally express more favorable views of several world powers than their older counterparts. For example, 29% of adults under 35 have a positive view of the U.S., compared with only 7% of those ages 50 and older. Age differences only appear when looking at Turks’ views of the U.S., the EU, NATO and the UN. There are no significant age differences in attitudes toward China and Russia. Similarly, Turkish adults with more education are more likely than those with less education to have a positive view of some world powers we asked about, including the U.S. and the EU. Assessments of these powers also differ by views of Erdoğan. Turks who support the president are more likely than nonsupporters to express favorable views of Russia and China – and less likely to have favorable views of the EU, U.S. and UN. Views over time Since 2002, the first year Pew Research Center surveyed Turkey, there have been large changes in Turks’ attitudes toward some countries and multilateral organizations. For example, Turks have become more positive in their views of NATO, which Turkey has been a member of since 1953. Attitudes toward NATO have especially improved since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Between 2011 and 2019, no more than a quarter of Turks had a favorable view of the defense alliance; today, 42% do. Related: NATO Seen Favorably in Member States; Confidence in Zelenskyy Down in Europe, U.S. Views of Russia have also fluctuated, ranging from 15% favorable in 2015 – after Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula – to 39% favorable in 2019, before the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Currently, three-in-ten Turks have a positive view of Russia. Attitudes toward China have also seen some ups and downs, from 40% favorable in 2005 to as low as 16% in 2009. The share is now back up to 26%. Attitudes toward the UN are more negative today than in 2004, when more than half of Turks held favorable views of the international organization. Now, only a third do. Turks have often given the EU the highest ratings of the world powers surveyed, but there have been significant downward and upward shifts in that sentiment. A 58% majority of Turks had a favorable view of the EU in 2004, shortly after the start of formal EU accession discussions. But attitudes had changed just a few years later and this year are about evenly split, with 46% favorable. Views on Turkey joining the EU A majority of adults (56%) favor Turkey becoming a member of the EU, while 36% oppose membership. This represents a big change from 2017, when only 40% of Turks supported joining the EU and 51% opposed. (It should be noted our 2017 survey in Turkey was conducted eight months after a failed coup attempt, which had a large influence on public opinion in the country.) Prior to 2017, half or more Turks routinely favored EU accession. Related: How exactly do countries join the EU? Demographic and political differences Younger Turks are especially supportive of joining the EU. Roughly two-thirds (66%) of adults under 35 support accession, while 28% oppose it. There is more tepid support for EU membership among older Turks. Turks with a postsecondary education or more are also far more likely than those with less education to want to join the EU. Turkish Muslims who pray less than five times per day are more likely to support EU membership compared with those who pray salah time fives daily. Turks who support Erdoğan, meanwhile, are far less likely than other Turks to support EU accession. Among those with a favorable opinion of the Turkish leader, views evenly split between supporting EU membership and not (45% vs. 45%). Among those who have an unfavorable view of Erdoğan, 66% support joining the EU. Views of international leaders People in Turkey have little confidence in the six current and former foreign leaders we asked about in this survey. In fact, at least 60% of Turks have little or no confidence in each of these leaders. Confidence is highest for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Still, only about three-in ten Turks have confidence in each of these leaders. Ratings of Chinese President Xi Jinping are even lower, with only 15% saying they have confidence in him. Related: Do people think China’s economic influence is positive or negative? Turks also express negative opinions of French President Emmanuel Macron. There’s been little change in Turks’ overall confidence in Macron since we first asked about him in 2019. People in Turkey have very negative views of both the U.S. leaders included in the survey: Only around one-in-ten Turks today express confidence in President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump. Of the four U.S. presidents we’ve asked about in Turkey in the last 20 years, Barack Obama received the best evaluations – 45% of Turks said they had confidence in him in 2015, the last year of his presidency. George W. Bush never saw his confidence rating in Turkey

The Forrester Enterprise Architecture Awards has been the only global awards program dedicated to recognizing excellence in enterprise architecture since 2010. We continue our partnership with The Open Group to co-judge the EA Awards this year and are delighted to announce that the EA Awards program for 2024 is in full swing. Enterprise architecture (EA) has evolved from a group plagued by ivory-tower thinking to a pragmatic discipline that drives business outcomes with measurable value. Effective EA begins with six priorities: It must be valuable to the business; accountable for the outcomes it promises to deliver; influential in order to have an impact while empowering team autonomy; collaborative to build trust and partnership; agile to keep pace with change; and innovative to steer toward the future. We congratulate Contact Energy, this year’s winner, and finalists Bank of Singapore and FWD Group. They all demonstrate how excellent EA practices contribute to the high performance of their business and drive both internal and external value. Winner: Contact Energy Contact Energy, a New Zealand electricity generator and retailer providing energy, broadband, and mobile services, embarked on a new transformation and growth journey to drive the decarbonization of New Zealand for a renewable energy future. In the past few years, Contact has succeeded in transforming its retail, corporate, and generation businesses. A superior EA foundation, a strategic pillar of its technology strategy, has been a key enabler for Contact to achieve its enterprise transformation objectives and deliver business outcomes. As part of Contact’s digital transformation, EA plays a crucial role in: Managing risks through seamless business collaboration. Contact worked closely with the business to address key risks. Representative initiatives include identifying and treating the latest and most significant cybersecurity risks, the upgrade of risk and management of change solutions, the amendment of information and data policy to include AI, proactive management of IT asset lifecycle information, an information and knowledge management program, and a digital solution architecture aligned to EA principles. Driving cost reduction through migration, optimization, and modernization. Contact’s EA approach also focused on maximizing technology efficiency, highlighting the substantial benefits of cloud migration. Through the SAP cloud optimization program, the company cut infrastructure costs by over $1.3 million using several targeted methods. Additionally, automating system test execution, replacing outdated platforms with modern iPaaS solutions, and consolidating systems are expected to drive further cost reductions in the near future. Improving customer and employee experiences through architecture principles. Contact prioritizes usability and interoperability as core architecture principles. The move to a new risk management platform and subsequent launch of a health and safety management mobile app empowered users to submit observations directly from their phones, resulting in a 50% increase in submissions within the first year. Additionally, the ERP upgrade enabled mobile access to applications from any location, while enhancements to core networks and infrastructure ensured seamless connectivity across all generation sites. Increasing revenue through EA co-design. Contact identified several opportunities, or pain points, and created initiative briefs to address them. For example, transforming from spreadsheets and manual processes to a modern automated platform for its trading business led to a revenue increase of $221,000 in Q4 FY’24, and the adoption of digital engineering improved data and documentation for operationalization and decision-making. Finalist: Bank of Singapore Bank of Singapore (BOS) is a wholly owned private banking arm of OCBC, the longest-established Singapore bank and the second-largest financial services group in Southeast Asia by assets, and it offers wealth management services to wealthy individuals, families, and financial intermediaries worldwide. The EA practice of BOS is the cornerstone of its digital transformation journey, driving significant business outcomes across multiple dimensions and aligning closely with its business and tech leaders to meet challenges. BOS scored the highest in the AI bonus category. BOS’s EA practice focuses on the following practices: Contributing to revenue growth through architecture transformation. EA adopted API-first open architecture and created new revenue streams through partnerships with financial intermediaries, contributing to an overall increase in nontraditional revenue. It also led transformation of the Group Wealth Platform. In addition, its enterprise data architecture drives decision-making, improving investment performance by a significant amount, and the implementation of a modular, composable digital-core architecture leveraging group platforms for agile product development and governance reduced time to market for new products. Driving cost savings through rationalization and modernization. The EA practice consolidated its application portfolio after a systematic review, resulting in annual cost savings. It also guided BOS’s hybrid multicloud strategy, which enabled improved application scalability and performance, as well as promoted technological innovation. The reusable microservices and APIs also reduced development time and costs for new projects. Managing risks through comprehensive EA-led frameworks. The EA team not only implemented a robust enterprise architecture framework governed tightly by its Architecture Review Committee, but it also developed a “compliance by design” approach, integrating Zero Trust into architectural blueprints. In addition, EA established a comprehensive vendor assessment framework to reduce its exposure to third-party risks and a “build vs. buy” framework to make informed decisions about technology solutions with careful evaluation of specific needs, resources, and goals. Enhancing CX and employee satisfaction through architected tech adoption. The EA team architected an omnichannel platform with improved customer experience (CX) in the bank’s Digital Services and Relationship Manager front-end application. In addition, the EA team designed and launched an internal OCBC GPT (generative AI) chatbot that improved productivity by up to 50% for daily tasks, a first for a local bank in Singapore. Finalist: FWD Group FWD Group (FWD) is a Pan-Asian life and health insurance business with more than 12 million customers across 10 markets. FWD not only adopted a customer-led strategy designed to champion customer needs and create a desirable customer journey but also built a standardized digital architecture across the group, powered by cloud-based data analytics and technology. FWD’s Group EA team is a crucial component across all technological and digital operations, acting as the pivotal link between business objectives and technological execution. In this year’s EA Awards, FWD scored the

I just completed over seven months of research on the subject of sales and marketing alignment in B2B organizations with my colleague Rick Bradberry, and we uncovered some huge concerns that amount to a precarious future for alignment between these two functions. Our research found high perceptions of alignment but a low degree of actual alignment. We heard quite a few tales of trust, respect, and coordination, and we heard just as many tales of friction, exclusion, credit-stealing, slandering, name-calling, and undermining. So What’s The Truth About Sales And Marketing Alignment? Ultimately, we uncovered three hard truths about alignment that marketing and sales leaders must face as soon as possible to avoid an inevitable derailment in the near future: Truth #1: Sales and marketing are not aligned, even though most leaders think that they are. We found that C-suite executives have sky-high perceptions of alignment (for example, Forrester’s Priorities Survey, 2024, found that an astounding 82% of C-level B2B business and technology professionals say that their product, sales, and marketing teams are aligned, with 41% describing those teams as highly aligned). But Forrester’s Q2 2024 Sales And Marketing Alignment Survey found that 65% of sales and marketing professionals believe there is a lack of alignment between the sales and marketing leaders in their organizations. Our research also found a significant lack of communication, teamwork, trust, and other needed qualities for true alignment. Truth #2: Traditional sales and marketing alignment is going to be derailed due to mounting pressures. The landscape of B2B marketing and sales is being reshaped by technological advancements, changing buyer behaviors, and evolving business models. Traditional alignment efforts are being challenged by these external forces, threatening to exacerbate existing dysfunctions and introduce new ones. Truth #3: The future of sales and marketing alignment is not alignment. Our research unveiled four future paradigms (siloed, assimilated, subservient, and proportionate) that will govern the relationship between marketing and sales functions within B2B organizations. Each of the paradigms have pros and cons. Sales and marketing leaders should consider deliberately choosing among the paradigms, or else they will find themselves losing control over them. Get The New Report And Start Improving Your Partnership Between Sales And Marketing If you are a Forrester client, you can read the full report, The Future Of Marketing And Sales Alignment, and schedule a guidance session to discuss your plans to build a customer-obsessed partnership between marketing and sales in your organization. source

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Google will soon offer a paid version of its AI research tool NotebookLM, specifically targeting businesses.  NotebookLM Business will have “enhanced features for businesses, universities, and organizations.” For now, access to NotebookLM Business is through a pilot program for early access to its features, training and email support.  Google told VentureBeat in an email that participants in the NotebookLM Business pilot “will gain a significant advantage with enhanced capabilities designed to boost productivity and collaboration.” These capabilities include higher usage limits and new features such as customization and sharing notebooks with team members. The company said these features could unlock new use cases for businesses using the tool. “We’ve seen this early feature streamline onboarding, shared understanding of complex projects, and building a centralized repository of your team’s collective intelligence all within a collaborative notebook environment,” a spokesperson said.  Another feature that will be part of NotebookLM Business is Audio Overview, which lets users create a narrated study guide. Google said the paid version will continue to have robust data privacy and security.  NotebookLM, built with Gemini 1.5, lets people upload source material to “notebooks” to gather information and ask the Gemini chatbot questions about the research. First announced in July last year, NotebookLM became generally available in December.  Google will also remove the “experimental” tag on the tool.  NotebookLM product manager Raiza Martin previously told VentureBeat that the team saw many different uses for the platform, including some for enterprises. While NotebookLM was never intended for a specific audience, Martin said many researchers and students embraced the product. Many businesses have also begun using NotebookLM as a repository of information for teams.  Google will announce general availability and pricing for NotebookLM Business later this year.  Additional control over audio  Along with announcing NotebookLM Business, Google updated the Audio Overview feature of NotebookLM. Audio Overview lets people generate podcasts about their research. Google characterized Audio Overview as a spoken research or study guide rather than a podcast. However, its first version featured two voices (one male, one female) conversing about the information in the notebook, reminding many of podcasts.  Audio Overview proved popular among some users, with many posting their generated audio on social media. Martin had previously promised additional controls over Audio Overview and said the company’s research showed conversations helped people retain more information. Users can now guide more of the conversation of Audio Overview, including prompting the model to focus on specific topics or levels of expertise. Audio Overviews will also continue to play while users query their sources or ask questions with its chat feature.  I got to explore the updated capabilities of Audio Overviews early. In a notebook with sources around AI Orchestration, I told it to focus on the definition of orchestration and how different frameworks like LangChain work. The final product did talk about AI orchestration based on the different blog posts and YouTube videos I had uploaded. The two “hosts,” however, spoke about frameworks as if LangChain was the only orchestration framework out there. This might be a misunderstanding of my prompt where I specifically named LangChain because the source documents definitely talk about available tools.  Google does point out that Audio Overviews “are generated discussions and are not a comprehensive or objective view of a topic.” It only takes into account information found in the uploaded source materials.  Open NotebookLM, an open-source competitor to NotebookLM, launched last month and included an audio recap function. While Open NotebookLM does not have the same fact-checking capabilities as NotebookLM, it represents a shift in the ease of deploying complex AI-driven platforms.  source

Turkish adults see various conflicts among different groups in their society. Majorities say there are conflicts between people who support different political parties (77%) and between people with different ethnic backgrounds (59%). Opinions are more mixed in the majority-Muslim nation when it comes to conflicts between people who practice different religions, with 47% saying there are strong religious conflicts and 51% saying there are generally not. Notably, Turkish Muslims who pray less than weekly are somewhat more likely than those who pray five salah daily to say there are conflicts between people of different religions. Fewer see conflicts between people who live in cities and people who live in rural areas. Only about a quarter of Turkish adults (26%) say there are strong conflicts of this nature. Turkish adults with lower incomes are more likely than those with higher incomes to say there are strong urban-rural conflicts in Turkey (+22 points, though higher-income adults were less likely to respond to the question). Those with lower incomes are also more likely to see strong religious conflicts (+18) and ethnic conflicts (+13). Turkish adults who hold a favorable opinion of Erdoğan are less likely than Turks with an unfavorable view of the president to report strong religious (-12), political (-11) and ethnic (-9) conflicts in their society. Views of institutions Majorities of Turkish adults say the police (78%) and the military (62%) have a good influence in the country, making these the only two institutions or organizations we asked about that at least half of the public sees positively. Most Turks say the court system, religious leaders and the media (including television, newspapers and magazines) have a bad influence in the country. About a quarter or more, in fact, say the influence of each of these is very bad. Large companies from other countries, as well as banks and other financial institutions, get the most negative ratings. For example, around three-quarters of Turks (73%) say banks have a bad influence on the country. Related: 83% of Turks say their country’s current economic situation is bad Views over time We last asked about many of these institutions in 2017. Compared with seven years ago, fewer Turks now believe the media (-24 points), religious leaders (-20), the court system (-16) and the military (-15) have a good influence in Turkey. Political and demographic differences Turkish adults who have a positive view of Erdoğan are more likely than those with an unfavorable view of him to say various institutions have a good influence in the country. For example, those who think positively of Erdoğan are 50 points more likely than those with an unfavorable view of the president to say that religious leaders have a good influence in Turkey (67% vs. 17%). Erdoğan supporters are also more likely than nonsupporters to have a positive view of the influence of the court system, the police, the media and the military. On the other hand, Turks who have a favorable opinion of former opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu – Erdoğan’s opponent in the May 2023 presidential election – see a number of institutions differently. For instance, Kilicdaroglu supporters are 31 points less likely than those who see him unfavorably to say that religious leaders have a good influence in the country. They are also less likely to have a positive view of the influence of the court system (-15 points) and the police (-9). There are no significant differences between Erdoğan or Kılıçdaroğlu supporters when it comes to the influence of banks and foreign companies, but there are differences by age. Turkish adults under 35 are more likely than those ages 50 and older to say that large companies from other countries (35% vs. 23%) and banks and other financial institutions (26% vs. 17%) have a positive influence in Turkey. source