What’s going on, friends - happy Thursday. Or should I say happy National Pizza Day?
That’s right fellas, tell your bosses it’s a holiday. It’s time to mosey on over to Pizza Hut!!
Alright, enough of the funny business, let’s dive in.
In the oven this week:
- 🤖 Google joins the battle of the bots
- 🍪 Cookie crumbs: 5 bite-sized headlines
- 🗳️ Poll of the week: recession???
- 💬 Tweet of the week: crypto corner
- 🍫 Chocolate chips: our 4 favorite finds of the week
- 😂 Snickerdoodles: Thursday memes
FRESHLY BAKED
GOOGLE JOINS THE BATTLE OF THE BOTS
Ding ding ding! A new player has entered the AI ring.
And it’s none other than our reigning heavyweight champ, Google.
But first, let me rewind.
Earlier this week, Microsoft held an event to show off the new version of Bing with ChatGPT built into the homepage.
Remember Bing? That ol’ search engine that never took off?
It’s currently got a 9% market share in search but is looking to steal some more of the pie from Google.
AI-powered Bing can do pretty much what you’d expect: summarize search results, answer questions and follow ups about them, etc.
But Microsoft also announced a new AI powered Edge, it’s web browser that competes with Google Chrome.
You can open a right hand pane on any website you visit and use their version of ChatGPT within the context of the web page.
The new Edge can:
- Compare/contrast web pages (e.g. “compare Gap’s Q2 financial statements with Lululemon’s”)
- Summarize content on webpages
- Compose cringey LinkedIn posts
- Write and translate code from one language to another
We gotta admit, it’s pretty slick.
And just when we thought there couldn’t be more, Microsoft hit us with plans to release technology to help big companies launch their own versions of ChatGPT chatbots.
Wanna know when performance reviews start?
Don’t know where the company coffee bar is on campus?
Need to know if the toilet paper in the all gender bathroom is 1 or 2 ply?
Can’t figure out if the engineer next to you will ever put on his shoes in the office?
Ask the company chat bot.
All we know is, it's gonna be a killer enterprise money maker.
Seeing all the ooohs and ahhhs, Google decides it’s finally had enough. So what does it announce?
Its own version of ChatGPT: Bard.
But they were pretty mum on the details.
Bard is slated to come out "in the coming weeks" and will be integrated with search. Right now, it’s only available to "trusted testers."
Google has a lot more on the line, with a reputation for being the AI frontrunner. Let's just say, Bard’s gotta impress.
No pressure Google, we’ll be waiting...
COOKIE CRUMBS
BITE SIZED TREATS
What happened in tech this week:
FTX to politicians: “Give back our donations or we’ll sue you.” Still tryna claw back customer funds SBF used for political donations. 🤦🏻♀️
The AI wars rage on. Getty Images is suing Stability AI for using 12m+ copyrighted photos to train Stable Diffusion, its famous AI art generator Stable Diffusion.
Zuck just ended the recession. Meta stock is up 30% this week after he called 2023 the “year of efficiency” in their earnings report and vowed to get rid of middle management. He’s giving managers 2 fun options this week: become an individual contributor again or get out.
Remember way back when Elon said he might take Tesla private for $420 a share? Funding secured? Well, a bunch of Tesla shareholders sued Elon for the crazy roller coaster ride the stock took around that same time, and this week, the jury found him not liable for their losses. Score one for Elon - the guy needs a win.
Janet Yellen (Treasury Secretary) says the economy might just might be out of the woods. In a surprise twist of events, the Labor Department reported that the U.S. economy unexpectedly added 517K jobs in January when economists were expecting 185K. The unemployment rate dropped to 3.4%, lowest since 1969!
POLL OF THE WEEK
POLL OF THE WEEK 💸
Some people rely on the experts to guide their money moves, but what about us? We listen to the thousands of smart folk reading this newsletter.
Sound off - what do we think about the recession?
Tell us what ya think 👇🏽 |
FROM THE COOKIE JAR
TWEET OF THE WEEK
📈 #Bitcoin $BTC Percent Supply Last Active 2+ Years just reached an ATH of 49.049%
View metric:
studio.glassnode.com/metrics?a=BTC&…— glassnode alerts (@glassnodealerts)
Feb 4, 2023
49% of the total bitcoin supply has remained in the same wallets for more than two years, according to data from Glassnode.
Ok, people are still HODLing. So what?
Wellll it’s kind of a crypto winter. And with investors hanging on, it indicates a whole lotta confidence in bitcoin’s future. 👀
CHOCOLATE CHIPS
OUR FAVORITE FINDS
- What your savings looks like at different levels of wealth, and why you need to start taking more risk now. Long read but worth it.
- Why the best things in life must be let go.
- How much you have to make in order to be in the top 1% in every U.S. state.
- Niche but cool: a website that shows you all the marketing/sales emails from your favorite brands so you don’t have to subscribe yourself.
SNICKERDOODLES
THURSDAY MEMERY
I hope Sundar calls theirs ChaatGPT.
— Suhail (@Suhail)
Feb 5, 2023
😂
That's all we got for ya this week, folks. See ya next Thursday!
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