Friday, January 31, 2025

31 Jan 2025

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Hi, it’s Chad. Every Friday, I serve as your AI guide to help you navigate a rapidly evolving landscape, discern signals from noise and transform cutting-edge insights into practical leadership wisdom. Here’s what you need to know:

1. Code & Law: Three Pathways to Copyright Protection in AI-Assisted Works

One question that frequently arises during my AI workshops is the question of whether “something” developed with AI may be protected by copyright. Clear guidance has now emerged and, in a report released January 17, 2025, the U.S. Copyright Office has outlined how creators can obtain copyright protection when working with artificial intelligence.  While the report emphasizes that AI-generated content alone cannot be copyrighted, it does outline three distinct pathways for protecting human creativity in works that involve AI. A full analysis in easily understandable, non-legalese language is now available for our platform subscribers at aiforthecsuite.com.

2. Paper Trail: AI Research Decoded

Reshaping Industry Classification: New Approaches to Measuring AI’s Economic Impact

Calling HR: are you ready to ride the wave of change? 2025 is the year many organizations will begin to feel the change within their employee base as AI reshapes workforce skills and industry classification. Here are a few key takeaways from a collaboration between AEI, Stanford University’s Digital Economy Lab, and New York University:

  • Core job skills are evolving rapidly, with up to 65% change projected by 2030
  • Traditional industry classifications are insufficient for measuring AI’s impact
  • 84% of employees are in occupations where at least 25% of core skills could be affected by AI

Read our full analysis of each of these research papers at AI for the C Suite

3. Sound Waves: Podcast Highlights

Our latest episode featuring Rebecca Sykes from The Brandtech Group drops this coming Monday, February 3, 2025. Tune in as Rebecca and I discuss branding’s new rules of the road and the innovative approach The Brandtech Group is taking for its clients. Subscribe for free today on your listening platform of choice to ensure you never miss a beat.

Apple | Spotify | iHeart

Amazon / Audible | YouTube

New episodes release every two weeks.

4. AI Buzz: Fresh Bytes

Here are two key articles that caught my eye this week.

5. Algorithmic Musings: DeepSeek and Deep Breaths… Why AI’s Latest Sensation Isn’t Your Next Sputnik Moment

This past week the markets went crazy with the announcement of DeepSeek AI. Now that we’ve all had time to get excited and speculate breathlessly about what it all might mean, it’s time to take a deep breath and CHILL OUT. DeepSeek, while an important development in AI-land, wasn’t the big deal the markets (and media) made it out to be. This is not a “Sputnik moment” as some said or “notice” that the U.S. and the tech sector have fallen behind China.

Let’s break this down.

DeepSeek’s emergence represents an important but measured advance in AI development, not the technological earthquake that recent market reactions might suggest. The system’s core innovation lies in its “emergent behavior network,” which develops reasoning capabilities organically during training. This architecture is paired with selective neural network activation, significantly reducing computational overhead. This architectural approach allowed DeepSeek to achieve results comparable to traditional large language models at a fraction of the cost – under $6 million compared to the hundreds of millions typically required.

Open AI has also alleged that DeepSeek made unauthorized use of OpenAI’s intellectual property through a technique called knowledge distillation. In brief, this involves training a smaller AI model to mimic the outputs of a larger, more sophisticated model. Think of it like a student mimicking a teacher until the student can stand on their own.

The above allegation aside, to properly contextualize DeepSeek’s achievement, we need to understand Jevons Paradox, an economic principle first observed during the Industrial Revolution. The paradox tells us that when we make a resource more efficient to use, we often end up using more of it overall, not less. This happens because improved efficiency makes something more accessible and affordable, leading to new applications and broader adoption that ultimately increase total resource consumption.

It’s also important to note that while China excels at iterating and improving upon technologies developed elsewhere, they often lag at developing their own IP. A perfect example of this is the high-end semiconductor industry. While Chinese companies like SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation) have advanced in producing mid-range chips, they lag behind global leaders such as TSMC and Intel in manufacturing cutting-edge semiconductors. (Please note that this is not a jingoistic or ethnocentric observation).

DeepSeek’s innovation perfectly illustrates both Jevons Paradox and typical patterns in technological development. While their technology makes individual AI models more efficient and accessible, this very efficiency is likely to drive a massive expansion in AI applications – much like how energy-efficient LED bulbs led to more widespread lighting applications rather than reduced total energy use. When viewed alongside China’s historical strength in iterative improvement rather than breakthrough innovation, we can better understand DeepSeek not as a “Sputnik moment,” but as part of technology’s natural evolution. The real challenge ahead lies not in any perceived technological race, but in thoughtfully managing the tension between democratized access and sustainable resource use as AI adoption accelerates across the globe.

6. Elevate Your Leadership with AI for the C Suite

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As we navigate this unprecedented fusion of human and machine intelligence, remember: the best leaders aren’t just adapting to change – they’re actively shaping it. Until next week, keep pushing boundaries.

Chad