Welcome to Plaintext, the newsletter that's cheaper than a blue check mark--and guaranteed bot-free! This was the month when Big Tech got smaller. The leader in the shrinkage was a troubled Twitter, led by a new owner who, after trying to weasel out of his $44 billion commitment to buy the firm, has thrown himself into the task of fixing its problems. Job One was getting rid of half the workers behind the money-losing platform. But Twitter was far from alone in stripping employees of their salaries, health plans, and email addresses.

There is a huge amount of fascinating data in this UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) study on the factors influencing investment in Artificial Intelligence. A number of things stood out to me. While the UK is number three in the world for private investment in AI, UK-based applicants only rank sixth in terms of patent activity. There seems to be a clear link between a lack of IP awareness among UK companies and UK PLCs relative weakness in scaling growth beyond the start-up stage. Indeed, participants in the study noted a propensity for investors to require patents to support an investment round.

The data associated with machine learning can be extremely valuable, but, Kimberley Bayliss of Haseltine Lake Kempner writes in this co-edited article, before it can be monetized, there are some major issues to be resolved. One of the things I hear over and over again from inventors is that data is the most valuable asset in machine learning (ML). After all, an ML model is only as good as the quality and quantity of data on which it is trained. If data is really that valuable, the burning question is whether it can be successfully protected and monetized. Just as employees must be aware when they access a trade secret, and the responsibilities that come with it, employees must also be aware of their responsibilities when accessing and using company data.

Here's an educated guess: Among all of the possible things employees are likely to miss from their jobs since they have been asked to stop coming in to the office, their boss is probably not one of them. Because there is an odd tendency across organizations to promote people into leadership roles regardless of their talent, and without giving them much prior training on how to be a good boss. The flawed assumption here is that as soon as employees perform well in their role, or are at least able to persuade others that they have, they should be asked to do something else. Ironically, their reward for being a valuable asset to the organization is to be put in charge of others, have them manage a team, and in effect stop them from doing what they are good at: their job. The common result is that they then become a less valuable asset to the organization.

The end of the 20th century was the moment of peak knowledge worker. The most valuable asset of a 21st-century institution, whether business or non-business, will be its knowledge workers and their productivity. But Drucker got it wrong. Two trends that were barely visible back then are reshaping the 21st century enterprise. Knowledge is still important, but today it has become a commodity. In the 21st century, value is shifting towards experiences and outcomes.

Schneider Electric recently debuted factory upgrades that it claims make its Lexington, KY, factory the first smart factory in the United States. The factory uses technology like augmented reality to give workers live operational data about machines on the floor. And the change resulted in significant improvements in efficiency: a 90% reduction of paperwork and a 20% reduction in the mean repair time. Smart factory owners looking to make the next leap forward in the digital industrial revolution are turning to advanced technology like artificial intelligence and big data. Here are six smart factory developments we're likely to see within the next year.

The upcoming 5G will be a massive accelerator on all the things going on in technology, fueling the development of all forms of AI (artificial intelligence) and IoT (Internet of Things) applications, and the tech sector must figure out how to use AI in a responsible way, according to Michael Dell, chairman and CEO of Dell. Dell made the remarks when delivering a keynote speech at the Dell Technologies World 2018 held April 30-May 2 in Las Vegas with the theme of "Make It Real." This is the first year that all of the firm's seven brands, including VMware, Virtustream, and Dell EMC, were combined into one major event to showcase their latest software, hardware and end-to-end solutions, attracting around 14,000 attendees including Dell's global customers, solution providers, technology partners, and analysts. Dell said that all types of AI applications are happening, and he urged partners and customers to invest in AI as data becomes their most valuable asset. He said that organizations are in danger of losing their competitive edge if they are unable to implement AI and machine learning to use data.

I joined Spotify in 2008 to focus on machine learning and music recommendations. It's easy to forget, but Spotify's key differentiator back then was the low-latency playback. People would say that it felt like they had the music on their own hard drive. In 2009 after a crazy amount of negotiation the music labels agreed to try it out as an experiment. Music distribution is a trivial problem now.