Big Trouble in Little AI Town
21st November 2023
Welcome to AI Collision,
In today’s collision between AI and our world,
He in, he’s out, should we shake him all about?
AI girlfriends all leave at once
AWS teaches machine learning
If that’s enough to get the board members firing, read on…
AI Collision 💥 is Microsoft OpenAI or is OpenAI Microsoft?
If you even have half an eye on the AI world right now then you’ll know it’s all gone a little bonkers over the weekend.
OpenAI is the poster child for the consumer-facing explosion of AI in the last year.
We are as guilty as anyone for covering everything and anything to do with OpenAI.
That’s because if you’re not looking at everything it’s doing, then you’re not really plugged into the AI industry.
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, OpenAI has certainly been a game changer thus far.
That’s why when one of the founders of OpenAI, Sam Altman, was sacked by the OpenAI board over the weekend… well, it seemed like all hell was breaking loose.
But just how wild?
There were people posting “rumours” such as…
Altman had stumbled across a “secret GPU” room where inside were tens of thousands of Malaysian “ChatGPT” farmers who were all responding to ChatGPT requests in real time. His “discovery” meant that he had to go.
Yes, that’s as stupid as it sounds.
But this was the temperature of social media over the weekend… nonsense ideas about why the founder and CEO of the most influential AI company of this decade was all of a sudden ousted by the board.
Then within a day of his sacking, the word was that the board had reconvened and he would be “coming back”.
It seems that the decision was strongly pushed by the part-owner of OpenAI, Microsoft – in particular, the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella.
Ends up Altman wasn’t re-hired. Instead, the former CEO of Twitch (the game streaming service) has been appointed in his place.
Talk about musical chairs!
However…
Altman may be out of OpenAI, but he’s now quite possibly in an even more powerful and influential position… at Microsoft.
Ahhhhhh, the plot thickens.
Altman will be heading up a new “advanced AI research” team at Microsoft, announced by Nadella only mere hours after he announced his congratulations to Australia for winning the Cricket World Cup.
So now you have to wonder, what’s more important to the development of OpenAI and ChatGPT… or advanced generative AI agents?
Is it OpenAI, part owned and funded by Microsoft?
Or is it Microsoft itself, with Altman and his crew leading Microsoft’s Advanced AI Research Team?
Where does OpenAI end and Microsoft begin, and vice-versa?
All of this just as Microsoft releases pricing and public access to its own “Copilot” AI tools… You can only imagine what the corridors and boardrooms at Microsoft are like right now, let alone at OpenAI.
But all this confusion and disruption does still reinforce my view of the one AI stock to avoid. If you haven’t read that report, you might want to do so right now.
AI Gone Wild 🤪
Imagine coming home to find your girlfriend has just packed up everything and left you.
You would be sad.
It hurts to lose someone you love for no apparent reason.
But worse, what if she left you because of another man!
Even worse again, what if it was because of another man, wanted by the police, and in prison?
And what if he was an arsonist!
It just gets worse and worse.
This is exactly what happened this week with all the people who had “AI girlfriends” via the platform Forever Voices.
The premise of Forever Voices was that its users were able to chat to influencers and social media people (the “Instafamous” crowd) but they were really driven by AI, not the actual influencers themselves.
It was aimed at providing somewhat of a “girlfriend experience” for people who so craved that kind of thing.
But like all good tech, it was good for those people… until it wasn’t.
Thanks to the CEO seemingly having some kind of breakdown, setting fire to his apartment, making “terroristic threats”, posting weird conspiracy theories on the Forever Voices X.com account, and getting arrested by the police, the Forever Voices site was taken down.
That meant no access to the “girlfriends” on the site.
As bizarre as this all sounds, it does reinforce one of the problems of a high-tech, AI existence. If it goes down, goes dark or goes offline, you’re screwed.
Boomers & Busters 💰
AI and AI-related stocks moving and shaking up the markets this week. (All performance data below over the rolling week).
Boom 📈
Veritone (NASDAQ:VERI) up 24%
Oddity Tech (NASDAQ:ODD) up 23%
Lantern Pharma (NASDAQ:LTRN) up 22%
Bust 📉
Datametrex AI (TSXV:DM) down 54%
Bigtincan (ASX:BTH) down 25%
Kainos Group (LSE:KNOS) down 18%
From the hive mind 🧠
Do you want to learn about Machine Learning and AI from Amazon? Well now you can, with this in-depth course.
AI is not an overnight success. It’s been decades in the making. Here’s a short movie from 1961 diving into the impact of AI.
Nvidia reports earnings tonight. It will be AI hype fuel, but will it impress of disappoint Wall St.? We’ll find out tonight!
What do Doritos, Walkers and Wotsits have to do with AI? Check out this article to find out.
Artificial Polltelligence 🗳️ : The Results Show
A few weeks back we asked if you have AI stocks in your portfolio. We were surprised by the result.
A lot of people didn’t.
Considering the scope and size of the AI market opportunity, that blindsided me a bit.
That’s why I asked in last week’s Thursday poll if you wanted a AI stock recommendations from a trusted source.
Putting two and two together, I did anticipate the outcome of this poll, and I was right (thank god!).
But the winning result was…
Yes!
This is good, because I’ve got a few things I’ve been working on behind the scenes to deliver exactly that.
It’s not ready yet, but it is in the works. These things take time, as they should, and this is a multi-year long investment opportunity in my view, so there’s no need to rush things too much.
So make sure to keep an eye out for more details on that soon.
Until then, here’s the overwhelming result from Thursday’s poll.
Weirdest AI image of the day
While on the topic of Microsoft…
Forgotten Polaroids from the Windows 95 Launch Party – r/Weirddalle
ChatGPT quote of the day
"AI is not a trend, it's a force of nature, akin to electricity in the 19th century or steam power in the 18th." – Unknown Tech Enthusiast
Thanks for reading, see you on Thursday (and don’t forget to leave your comments below)
Sam Volkering
Editor-in-Chief
AI Collision
