AI: Weekly Summary
…week ending January 26, 2024
Welcome to the Saturday weekly AI summary here on ‘AI: Reset to Zero’.
FTC focuses on Big Tech AI investments: FTC’s Lina Khan spear heading an investigation into AI investments by big tech companies. The attention is on the competitive dynamics around these acquisitions. This supplements monopoly and antitrust efforts already underway against tech incumbents like Google, Amazon, and others. Certainly a yellow light for incumbent technology companies as they plan out their moves on the AI chessboard this year and beyond.
Apple tweaks App Store on EU mandates: Apple is rolling out an app store overhaul for third party developers, ahead of complying with the EU’s Digital Markets Act going into effect March 7. Early reactions by third parties were mixed given Apple playing both offense and defense with the moves. Separately, Apple delayed its self-driving car plans, not surprising given industry road bumps on the AI technologies. Also separatelym Apple saw strong demand for the Vision Pro, with delivery times now slipping to March. My deeper take on Vision Pro challenges and opportunities here.
Microsoft on ‘balanced’ OpenAI relationship, and independent Large and Small AI models: Satya Nadella highlighted the company’s ongoing partnership and AI Safety focus with OpenAI at Davos. Along with a concurrent effort to build both large and small AI initiatives so that Microsoft ‘can control its destiny’. These efforts include both AI hardware and software initiatives, as well as a laser focus on AI Copilot rollouts across all key Microsoft products and services. The latter include recent focus around Small Language Model (SLM) efforts with Phi-2. Expect similar efforts by all Foundation LLM companies this year, as the focus shifts to both cloud and local AI products and services. A separate take on Microsoft vs Apple around AI here.
Palworld, another scrappy AI startup: Another example an ‘overnight AI success’ story along the lines of Midjourney and others. Pocket Pair in Asia has seen it’s Palworld game, dubbed ‘Pokemon with Guns’, become a global hit with over 8 million sold and rising on gaming distribution platforms everywhere. There are issues of AI copyrights with Nintendo of course, and the potential use of AI ‘deepfakes’ in image generation, which goes against the rules of some major distribution partners. Certainly an important new company to watch in the context of a flurry of issues around AI in 2024.
‘Magnificent 7’ big tech mostly continues AI driven momentum: Microsoft and Google lead the way to newer highs in January on AI optimism. The pattern was similar with others like Nvidia, Meta and others. The only exception this year has been Tesla with non-AI related issues like increased competition from China and sales growth questions. My deeper take on the public market ebbs and flows on the so-called ‘Magnificent 7’ here.
Other AI Readings for weekend:
OpenAI’s new GPT price decreases and model embeddings offer new and better priced options for developers.
Hugging Face partners on open source models with Google Cloud. A win win for both parties bringing more exposure to top-tier AI models with easier Google Cloud integration and pricing.
This week saw the 40th anniversary of the Steve Jobs driven iconic Mac Computer. Separately, I did a piece on Steve Jobs’ reaction to the GUI innovation at Xerox Parc, and Bill Gates’ current reaction to ChatGPT and AI.
Thanks for joining this Saturday with your beverage of choice.
Up next, the Sunday ‘The Bigger Picture’ tomorrow. Stay tuned.
(NOTE: The discussions here are for information purposes only, and not meant as investment advice at any time. Thanks for joining us here)