CES 2024: Day 1 (well, Day ½ to be exact)
9th January 2024
Welcome to AI Collision 💥,
***Note: I had scheduled to send this at 9am UK time, but Substack didn’t send it! I’m not sure why, but I can only guess that Substack has time-travelled with me and adjusted to the Las Vegas time zone, now coming to you at 9am “Vegas Time” which is 5pm UK time. As I’m not sure how to change that, this week’s AI Collision 💥 will all be at 5pm UK time.
In today’s collision between AI and our world:
Timezone killer
Bezos’s Google 2.0
Smoking pigeons
If that’s enough to get the feet crossing the conference floor, read on…
AI Collision 💥 Las Vegas is cold and 8 hours behind 🥶
Last week, I promised live coverage from CES in Las Vegas. And I still plan to do that.
The only problem is that to send this to you in the regular timeslot was probably a little adventurous on my part.
I am writing this from Las Vegas after a long transit over, having almost missed a connecting flight in Newark. But I am actually here.
The only thing is that by the time you get this, I’ll only be in the middle of day one, which is predominately a media day – so no wild new tech (for now).
What that means is… well… there’s nothing to report yet, as I’ve only just started. Albeit I’ve been in a few conference sessions and it’s all about AI, but also an interesting tilt towards Web3, the metaverse and the next evolution of content and creation.
So, sorry there’s not more, but Las Vegas is many, many time zones away. There will be more live from CES, just a slightly longer wait than first anticipated.
There’s one thing that I forgot, though: in January, Las Vegas is bloody cold!
Although I will show you one (two) things…
On my way into the hotel last night,
A bonus to look forward to (and to report on) after all the Sphere is a publicly listed company (NYSE:SPHR) using AI and machine learning in its “experience”.
More on that later too…
AI gone wild 🤪
Remember that time Jeff Bezos invested in Google before it actually did anything?
You might not. So, here’s what happened…
In 1998, two Stanford PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, were working on a research project that would eventually become Google. They had developed a new way of analysing the relationships between websites, leading to far more effective search results. This innovation caught the attention of several tech entrepreneurs and investors, including Bezos.
It is worth noting that at the time, web search already existed and was dominated by players like Yahoo! AltaVista and Ask Jeeves. So Google didn’t invent “search” but it certainly made it easier.
At that time, Bezos had already established Amazon.com and was becoming hugely successful in his own right. In fact, he was already a billionaire thanks to the initial public offering (IPO) of Amazon.
Recognising the potential of Page and Brin's technology, he decided to invest in Google. Bezos was among a handful of early investors. His investment was reported to be around $250,000.
This investment turned out to be extraordinary. When Google went public in 2004, its IPO was one of the biggest in the tech industry, and the value of early investments like Bezos’s soared.
It’s not known exactly how much he made, but estimates are that it was at least in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
So, why is Bezos’s early investment in Google noteworthy today?
Well, Bezos has made another investment recently into an AI company that may very well upend Google’s business. Or it may very well end up as a potential takeover target of Google.
Also, Bezos isn’t the only one that has just kicked in a chunk of change to an AI company called Perplexity.ai.
Bezos, Nvidia and a bunch of other notable investors just added $73.6 million to Perplexity, giving them an implied value somewhere in the region of $500 million.
But what is Perplexity? Well, it’s search, but with AI, and not just one AI model, but many. It really is a bit like the Google of AI models.
I could try to explain it more, but I think you should just go see it for yourself and test it out below.
It’s got a paid version, but the free one does enough to show you how this might be another stroke of investing foresight from Bezos.
Oh, and it’s further proof of the capital doors opening wide for AI in 2024 already!
Boomers & Busters 💰
AI and AI-related stocks moving and shaking up the markets this week. (All performance data below over the rolling week).
Boom 📈
Wearable Devices (NASDAQ:WLDS) up 44%
WISeKey International (NASDAQ:WKEY) up 4%
Amesite (NASDAQ:AMST) up 13%
Bust 📉
BigBear.ai (NASDAQ:BBAI) down 9%
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) down 4%
Symbotic (NASDAQ:SYM) down 15%
From the hive mind 🧠
Bill Ackman has been in a heated spat with the universities in the US. He’s now suggesting using AI to plagiarise check every published paper from anyone in a position of power.
Samsung always has a massive CES stand, lots of gear and lots of tellies. Now lots of AI too.
I’ve already prepared you for CES 2024 and it’s AI-city. Here’s what CNN thinks about it all too with its preview.
Artificial Pollteligence 🗳️ the results show
Last week, I asked if you think by the end of 2024 you’d own an AI-enabled consumer device, like a fridge that talks back to you.
It’s an interesting result.
The winner is…
No.
Interesting. I reckon that come Christmas 2024, you might be surprised at how ubiquitous “AI-enabled” devices are in the market.
Time will tell.
Weirdest AI image of the day
Pigeons in a smokey Saloon. Holding whisky and pipes – r/Weirddallee
ChatGPT’s random quote of the day
“A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human.”
– Alan Turing
Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to leave comments and questions below,
Sam Volkering
Editor-in-Chief
AI Collision
I would certainly have voted yes in the poll questioning likelihood of AI in household appliances by the end of this year and surprised by the degree of doubt. I also know that my mother of Hut 6 Bletchley would have been fascinated by the advances and scope of AI. The conversation about the question of ethics would also have much engaged her in the endless internal discussion that she had with herself after a strong religious upbringing.
Fingers crossed it improves significantly soon and delivers real life useful output.
Thanks for the content you produce Sam. It is appreciated and very insightful. Keep up the great work