You’re invited to:

Playing
Business           

An Exclusive
                                           ON_Discourse
                                                                 Members-Only Dinner
           (and After Party)

June 22nd, 2023
Le Maschou, Cannes

7:00 pm- 2:00 am

During Cannes Lions, ON_Discourse will host a week of programming in partnership with Stagwell’s Sport Beach under the theme ‘Playing Business’, and will ask the question: can an athlete be a brand and a business? The week culminates in a private, members-only dinner hosted at Le Maschou, with music performances, and deep discussions with business leaders, celebrity athletes and brands.

What?

ON_Discourse is a new membership media company focused on the business of technology, raising the level of discourse with expert-driven perspectives.

We provide member-only content for those that crave substance and closed-door events where you can ditch the small talk.

During Cannes Lions, Stagwell’s Sport Beach will bring together creatives, brands, marketers, athletes, coaches and leagues to discuss the future of fandom, and celebrate the impact sport has on shaping global culture.

Why
         Attend?

We are Surrounded
by Fake-experts
_______Lacking Depth
in their Thinking

Ideas in our Industry are
_______Trapped within
Conventional
Boundaries

The People
_______in our Industry
Often Think
_______the Same

Unintended Consequences
_______in Tech Lead to
Costly Mistakes
_______in Business

Can I
     Join?


The ‘Playing Business’ dinner is exclusively for ON_Discourse members. Members receive an invite to the dinner, the daily closed-door sessions, and will receive complimentary return helicopter flights from Nice to Cannes with our partners BLADE.

Your Membership
               has been
Pre-approved

This link will expire in 48 hours

You have been sent this link by our team to skip the member approval process.

ON_Discourse is a new Member-Driven media company at the intersection of business and technology focused on using discourse to drive perspective.

There are very few things worthy of your time but we ask that you to complete this step within 48hrs of receiving this link or it will expire. We cannot guarantee your place otherwise.

Why?

Ideas Are
Trapped Within
          Conventional Boundaries

We Are Surrounded by Fake-Experts Lacking Depth in Their Thinking

The People
           in Our Industry
Often Sound the Same

Unintended Consequences in
Tech Lead to Costly Mistakes
    in Business

Sneak Peek
Members-Only
Featured
Perspectives &     Events

Is AI a Force for Good or Evil?

Against AI
Artificial “Art

Molly Crabapple
Artist and writer in New York City. 
or

A Shift from Knowledge to Direction Work

Toby Daniels
Toby Daniels
ON_Discourse Co-Founder

What is happening
at ON_Cannes
in 2023?

Every June, Cannes’ beaches fill with 15,000 of the world’s most influential brands and marketing executives.

Sport Beach at Cannes will bring together creatives, brands, marketers, athletes, coaches and leagues to discuss the future of fandom, and celebrate the impact sport has on shaping global culture.

Together with The Stagwell Group, ON_Discourse will bring its unique approach to driving discourse to the Sport Beach experience.

In Partnership with


Activate Your
               Pre-approved
Membership


Before starting,
we need your eyes on this…

  • I hereby apply for membership ON_Discourse. I agree to be bound by the rules of membership.
  • All information shall be treated in confidence.
  • Membership fees are subject to applicable taxes and services fees.
  • While we are exclusive, we are not exclusionary. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender expression, age, sexual orientation, religion, or disability, but we are committed to ensuring that our members are aligned with our values.

The Open Source AI Revolution: How History Repeats Itself

Dylan Patel
Semiconductor Analyst
Religion and politics both have a tendency towards polarization, 2023

In the late 20th century, the technology world witnessed a seismic shift as open-source Linux rose to prominence, challenging the dominance of proprietary operating systems from the era’s tech giants. Today, we are on the cusp of a similar revolution in the realm of AI, as open-source language models gain ground on their closed-source counterparts, such as those developed by Google and OpenAI.

In the 1990s, the UNIX ecosystem was dominated by proprietary solutions from major players like Sun Microsystems, IBM, and HP. These companies had developed sophisticated, high-performance systems tailored to the needs of their customers, and they maintained tight control over the source code and licensing. However, Linux, an open-source operating system created by Linus Torvalds, started gaining traction, ultimately disrupting the market.

The Linux revolution was propelled by three key factors: rapid community-driven innovation, cost-effectiveness, and adaptability. By embracing a decentralized development model built off the x86 personal computer, Linux empowered developers worldwide to contribute to its growth. This allowed it to evolve more quickly than its rivals and adapt to a diverse range of applications. Furthermore, Linux’s open-source nature made it significantly more cost-effective than proprietary alternatives, which relied on expensive licensing fees.

Fast-forward to the present day, and we are witnessing a similar upheaval in the AI landscape. The past two months have seen open-source AI projects such as EleutherAI GPT, Stanford Alpaca, Berkeley Koala, and Vicuna GPT, make rapid strides, closing the gap with closed-source solutions from giants like Google and OpenAI. Open-source AI models have become more customizable, more private, and pound-for-pound more capable than their proprietary counterparts. Their adoption has been fueled by the advent of powerful foundation models like Meta’s LLaMA, which was leaked to the public and triggered a wave of innovation. 

The Linux saga offers important lessons for the AI community, as the similarities between the rise of Linux and the current open-source AI renaissance are striking. Just as Linux thrived on rapid community-driven innovation built off the backs of the x86 PC, open-source AI benefits from a global pool of developers and researchers who build upon each other’s work in a collaborative manner off the backs of gaming GPUs. This results in a breadth-first exploration of the solution space that far outpaces the capabilities of closed-source organizations.

Another parallel is the cost-effectiveness of open-source AI. Techniques such as low-rank adaptation (LoRA) have made it possible to fine-tune models at a fraction of the cost and time previously required. This has lowered the barrier to entry for AI experimentation, allowing individuals with powerful laptops to participate, driving further innovation.

Moreover, open-source AI models are highly adaptable. The same factors that make them cost-effective also make them easy to iterate upon and customize for specific use cases. This flexibility enables open-source AI to cater to niche markets and stay abreast of the latest developments in the field, much like Linux did with diverse applications.

Lorem FPO

The implications of this open-source AI revolution are profound, especially for closed-source organizations like Google and OpenAI. As the quality gap between proprietary and open-source models continues to shrink, customers will increasingly opt for free, unrestricted alternatives. The experience of proprietary UNIX-based systems in the face of Linux’s rise serves as a stark reminder of the perils of ignoring this trend. In fact, with image generation bots, OpenAI’s Dall-E and Google’s various closed models are barely a point of discussion as the world flocked to open Stable Diffusion models.

To avoid being left behind, closed-source AI organizations must adapt their strategies. Embracing the open-source ecosystem, collaborating with the community, and facilitating third-party integrations are crucial steps. By doing so, these organizations can position themselves as leaders in the AI space, shaping the narrative on cutting-edge ideas and technologies. Companies like Replit, MosaicML, Together.xyz, and Cerebras are doing just that, releasing open-source models, but offering services, finetuning, or operations as a service instead.

The implications of this open-source AI revolution are profound, especially for closed-source organizations like Google and OpenAI. As the quality gap between proprietary and open-source models continues to shrink, customers will increasingly opt for free, unrestricted alternatives.

The flip side of the argument is that this is only possible for a certain model size. There are many emergent behaviors that have only been witnessed on the largest models. While open-source AIs that are an order of magnitude smaller than GPT-3 have already surpassed GPT-3’s quality, this does not necessarily apply to models of the scale of GPT-4 and beyond. With continued scaling in sequence length, parameter count, and training data set sizes, it is possible the gap between open-source and closed-source widens again.

Furthermore, while models are free to use, services that are built on top will still require significant investments. Google, Microsoft, and Meta are able to build these closed-source services for use in people’s everyday lives due to the moat of their platforms. Lastly, the cost of inference is a significant barrier given most consumer devices do not have the horsepower required for models larger than 7 billion parameters (GPT-3 is 175 billion parameters, GPT-4 is over 1 trillion), and it is possible that only the largest organizations can afford to scale their model out to billions of users.

COUNTER/PARTIES

Against AI
Artificial “Art

Molly Crabapple
Artist and writer in New York City. 

Sure, generative AI threatens mass unemployment for millions of people, far beyond the illustration field, but appeals to ethics and solidarity won’t stop you from using it any more than you from using stopped Amazon or Uber or AirBnB.

You need stronger stuff.

or

The Shift from Knowledge to Direction Work

Toby Daniels
Toby Daniels
ON_Discourse Co-Founder

Shifts in many job sectors do not just show AI replacing human skills. They show a need for a new kind of human skill set. This is where the direction worker comes in.

Your Membership
               has been
Pre-approved

This link will expire in 48 hours

You have been sent this link by our team to skip the member approval process.

ON_Discourse is a new Member-Driven media company at the intersection of business and technology focused on using discourse to drive perspective.

There are very few things worthy of your time but we ask that you to complete this step within 48hrs of receiving this link or it will expire. We cannot guarantee your place otherwise.

Why?

Ideas Are
Trapped Within
          Conventional Boundaries

We Are Surrounded by Fake-Experts Lacking Depth in Their Thinking

The People
           in Our Industry
Often Sound the Same

Unintended Consequences in
Tech Lead to Costly Mistakes
    in Business

Sneak Peek
Members-Only
Featured
Perspectives &     Events

Is AI a Force for Good or Evil?

Against AI
Artificial “Art

Molly Crabapple
Artist and writer in New York City. 
or

A Shift from Knowledge to Direction Work

Toby Daniels
Toby Daniels
ON_Discourse Co-Founder

What is happening
at ON_Cannes
in 2023?

Every June, Cannes’ beaches fill with 15,000 of the world’s most influential brands and marketing executives.

Sport Beach at Cannes will bring together creatives, brands, marketers, athletes, coaches and leagues to discuss the future of fandom, and celebrate the impact sport has on shaping global culture.

Together with The Stagwell Group, ON_Discourse will bring its unique approach to driving discourse to the Sport Beach experience.

In Partnership with


Activate Your
               Pre-approved
Membership


Before starting,
we need your eyes on this…

  • I hereby apply for membership ON_Discourse. I agree to be bound by the rules of membership.
  • All information shall be treated in confidence.
  • Membership fees are subject to applicable taxes and services fees.
  • While we are exclusive, we are not exclusionary. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender expression, age, sexual orientation, religion, or disability, but we are committed to ensuring that our members are aligned with our values.

Perspective
              is Everything.

ON_Discourse is a new membership media
company focused on the business of technology, prioritizing expert-driven discourse to drive perspectives.

                    Why should
you care?

We are Surrounded
           by Fake-experts
Lacking Depth
in their Thinking

                   Ideas are
Trapped within
Conventional boundaries

The People
                 in our Industry
               Often Think
          the Same

Unintended
Consequences
           in Tech Lead to
          Costly Mistakes
     in Business

What to
           expect.

Member-only Content, Featuring Articles, Newsletters, and Podcasts for Those That Crave Substance.

Closed-door Events Including Off-the-record Conversations and Private Dinners Where You Can Ditch the Small Talk.

But why do we
Need more Content
                      & Events?

Because when you apply the discipline of discourse to these experiences, your perspective will change. And let’s be honest, where do you get this now? We’ve all become too comfortable with the status quo of agreement.

Apply for
        Membership

Once you have completed the membership application, our membership team will review it against our criteria and values and make a decision in regard to your acceptance.

Your credit card will not be charged until your application is approved.

Our values.

  • Diversity of perspective.
  • Empathy to opposing ideas.
  • Disagreement encouraged.
  • Curiosity to go deeper.

Sneak Peek
Members-Only
Featured
Perspectives & Events

Is AI a Force for Good or Evil?

Against AI
Artificial “Art

Molly Crabapple
Artist and writer in New York City. 
or

A Shift from Knowledge to Direction Work

Toby Daniels
Toby Daniels
ON_Discourse Co-Founder

What is happening
          at ON_Cannes
          in 2023?

Every June, Cannes’ beaches fill with 15,000 of the world’s most influential brands and marketing executives.

Sport Beach at Cannes will bring together creatives, brands, marketers, athletes, coaches and leagues to discuss the future of fandom, and celebrate the impact sport has on shaping global culture.

Together with The Stagwell Group, ON_Discourse will bring its unique approach to driving discourse to the Sport Beach experience.

In Partnership with


Apply for
        Membership

Once you have completed the membership application, our membership team will review it against our criteria and values and make a decision in regard to your acceptance.

Your credit card will not be charged until your application is approved.

Our values.

  • Diversity of perspective.
  • Empathy to opposing ideas.
  • Disagreement encouraged.
  • Curiosity to go deeper.

We’re talking about the Metaverse in the wrong way.

Let’s start at the beginning.

When Neal Stephenson first used “Metaverse” in his 1992 novel, Snow Crash, the Internet as we know it today was very much in its infancy. The concept of the Metaverse was literally Science Fiction.

The term Web1 was not being used; instead, we talked about the Internet as a worldwide network and, later, the World Wide Web. We entered Cyberspace, surfed the Web, and rode the Information Superhighway.

Since the 90’s we’ve gone through multiple iterations of the Internet, defined by the meteoric rise and fall of Netscape, AOL’s dominance as one of the only Internet Providers, and the emergence of social networking sites like Friendster, Myspace and later, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

We’re at the beginning now of a really important shift in how we use technology in business and society. This shift can be defined in a number of ways, but as the term Web3 gets thrown around a lot at the moment, so do other related concepts which feel enormously abstract and complex to the everyday professional.

We are, however, becoming familiar with terms like blockchain, NFTs, airdrops, crypto, decentralization, tokenization, virtual currencies, DAOs and, of course, the Metaverse, which itself is awash with technical terms like VR, XR and AR.

All of these are being used to define how we talk about both the ideological and technological concepts related to the space, but what do they really mean, how are we defining the Metaverse, why do some people believe it’s the new Internet, and is there, in fact, a more helpful way of talking about it?

As we’ve said, the term Metaverse has been around for a couple of decades, but it was not being used in the mainstream until October 2021, when, as we all know, Facebook made the decision to change its company name to Meta and announced that it would be investing all of its R&D efforts to bring the Metaverse to mainstream users.

Suddenly, people were asking the question, what is the Metaverse? Literally. During that month there were about 2.62 million Google searches on the term ‘metaverse’, a massive increase from the previous month.

So what is it? Or at least, how are people defining it today?

Here are three definitions from the people who are probably most qualified to talk about the subject and who are also outspoken in their beliefs that it represents the future of the Internet.

The Metaverse is a convergence of physical and digital. Think of it as the successor of what comes next on the internet. It’s like your digital lifestyle catching up to your physical life. – Cathy Hackl, Chief Metaverse Officer, Futures Group

The metaverse is a parallel virtual plane of existence that spans all digital technologies and will even come to control much of the physical world. This construct helps explain another common description of the metaverse as a 3D internet – Matthew Ball
Author of The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything

The [Metaverse] will be a wild, organic, and amazing outgrowth of what we think of today as the internet and web. When you see images and diagrams of the internet today, it looks like a biologic construct, full of neuron-like connections and the emergence of proto life. – Rony Abovitz, Founder, Magic Leap

So based on what we’ve heard so far, do we think this is the new Internet?

Honestly, it’s really hard to say, and it’s important that we don’t get ahead of ourselves or get too caught up in the hype. If you were to ask Elon Musk or Jack Dorsey, they would say that the Metaverse is nothing more than a marketing buzzword. However, it’s hard to believe that an industry which is predicted to grow to over $600B by 2030 is just a buzzword.

Also, Tech CEOs like Satya Nadella from Microsoft are bullish on the Metaverse, as evidenced by the fact that they just acquired Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion.
My advice to all of us during this time is to listen to all these different perspectives. Hype cycles come and go, but if the Metaverse can provide meaningful value, it will be here to stay.

I believe, however, there is a more helpful way to talk about the Metaverse. A way for us business and marketing people to talk about it without getting caught up in utopian (or dystopian) fantasies and technological jargon.

I believe we need to talk much less about VR and whether we’re headed for a future that plays out like that in Spielberg’s adaptation of the book Ready Player One. Instead, I think we need to zag a little, while the futurists zig.

Let’s listen to the rhythms of the past so we can understand our present and future.

Let’s think back to when Facebook made another huge announcement and shift in their business: the shift to mobile.

It was 2012, the iPhone had been around for six years, and most of us already had a smartphone. Adoption of Facebook’s mobile first user experience was relatively seamless. It also catapulted them from $18 to $75 per share in less than six months.

This is what Mark Zuckerberg said at the time…

“Today, our society has reached a tipping point. We live at a moment when the majority of people in the world have access to the internet or mobile phones — the raw tools necessary to start sharing what they’re thinking, feeling and doing with whomever they want. Facebook aspires to build the services that give people the power to share and help them once again transform many of our core institutions and industries.” – Mark Zuckerberg, 2012

Now, let’s go back to last year when he announced Facebook’s re-brand and their commitment to the Metaverse. This is what Mark said then:

“When I started Facebook, we mostly typed text on websites. When we got phones with cameras, the internet became more visual and mobile. As connections got faster, video became a richer way to share experiences. We’ve gone from desktop to web to mobile; from text to photos to video. But this isn’t the end of the line. The next platform will be even more immersive — an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it. We call this the metaverse, and it will touch every product we build.
– Mark Zuckerberg, 2021

This feels fairly iterative right? This feels like a natural evolutionary step. However, there’s a big difference in these two moments in time.

When Meta rebranded Facebook and Mark made his very public bet that this was going to be centrally important to their business, almost no one was in the Metaverse, at least not as the term is defined by most people, whereas years earlier when he announced the shift to mobile, almost everyone at that time was already using their smartphones to access the Internet.

This is why talking about the Metaverse as something that we have yet to realize or as something that sounds futuristic is so problematic, because how can we talk about the Metaverse, especially as marketers, if we’re not actually in it yet?

Our entire experience of the Internet to date–how we use it, how it has become centrally important to our lives, and how it has impacted society and technology–has been the result of small incremental steps over an almost 30-year period.

There have been major innovations, to be sure, but adoption has actually been smoother and more gradual than you might think. That was, of course, until 2020 and the global pandemic.

During the first three months of the Pandemic, we saw the single biggest shifts in human behavior since the Internet first went mainstream. Literally billions of people were forced to work from home and use video communication tools like Zoom, Google Hangouts and Microsoft Teams to communicate with their colleagues, friends and family.

We went from spending 6-8 hours a day interacting with people in-person, or via a blend of email and conference calls, to spending almost all of our time communicating through live video.

To me, this shift in behavior was a giant leap towards a future in which we will spend most of our lives communicating in and between both digital and physical spaces, characterized today by the familiar Zoom-like experience.

But if we continue along this path of adoption and technological iteration, it’s not hard to imagine that at some point in the near future, the Zoom experience will be better, richer, and perhaps even 3D.

So, rather than go with Matthew Ball’s or Cathy Hackl’s definition, I would prefer to describe the Metaverse in this way:

“The Metaverse is the seamless movement between the digital and physical spaces where we spend time interacting, engaging, and communicating in synchronous and asynchronous experiences.”

If the Metaverse is the next iteration of how we connect and engage, then guess what? We’re already in it. It’s not predominantly 3D or virtual reality yet, but it is here, and it’s being used by billions of people.

So, if I’m right, then the bet that Mark and others should be making–or at least the way to communicate what the Metaverse is–should be grounded in what we are using today and how it will evolve, not in something that feels dystopian and more like a Sci-Fi movie.