No. 159: 🌇 Big Tech's Golden Age Fades
Discover more from hi, tech.
No. 159: 🌇 Big Tech's Golden Age Fades
+ 🤯 Is this what ChatGPT Bing will look like?
Hi,
️⚽️ There is an old story - possibly apocryphal - about the legendary Brazilian footballer Zico.
He made an unexpected transfer to the unfashionable Italian team Udinese in the 1980s. In his first training session at his new club, Zico hit a series of free kicks.
Every one of them hit the crossbar. Every single one, in the exact same spot.
His teammates were impressed with his consistency, even if they didn’t quite go in the goal.
But Zico was not satisfied. He suspected foul play.
He called the team’s manager and asked him to send someone to measure the goal frame. If Zico was missing free kicks, Zico was not to blame.
Sure enough, they measured the goals and they were 5cm too low. After an adjustment, Zico went back to nestling free kicks in the top corner, just below the crossbar. Normal service resumed.
Why am I telling you this? Well, when we operate at the very outer peripheries of the possible, millimetres matter. The slightest deviation can knock us off the stride we spent decades perfecting into pure art.
In other news, I got a new keyboard this week and it’s thrown me all out of whack.
The spacebar ends below the comma and I’ve been all fingers and thumbs all week.
Zico, I know your pain.
With that, over to this week’s typo-fuelled hi, tech.
In this free edition, we’ve got:
Google invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Anthropic AI in Q4 2022
Big Tech's earnings reports show slower growth than in the past, with an emphasis on cost-cutting
Google will announce a new chatbot search experience soon, rivaling Microsoft's ChatGPT search (which is already in testing!)
Twitch remains the top platform for game streaming
Introduction of Salesforce CausalAI Library
Playing with Rose.ai, a data tool for finance data (but I think it can be used elsewhere)
Spotify's founder is developing an AI-powered body health scanner, Neko Health
Remember the hi, tech. special about Anthropic AI, the ChatGPT rival started by ex-OpenAI employees?
Well, turns out Google invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Anthropic in Q4 2022. There’s no such thing as an underdog story in generative AI.
Here’s the story on Bloomberg.
Lackluster earnings reports show Big Tech’s golden age is fading - Washington Post
Alphabet and Amazon are both still growing, but at much slower rates than they have in the past. Apple’s revenue was 5 percent lower than the same time last year. In conference calls and comments posted online, Amazon and Alphabet’s chief executives both stressed that their companies are still working to cut costs.
“Cost-cutting” is clearly the message the markets want to hear right now, too. If we set this against the ongoing, huge investments in generative AI we get a sense of how important this emerging technology is.
Apple is reportedly working on a way to make AR apps that’s as simple as talking to Siri
The aim is to build this developer kit for the upcoming mixed reality headset. Nobody really talks to Siri, so I’m not sure this is the selling point they think it is.
Either way, I’m looking forward to Apple trying to make an aesthetically acceptable headset.
Google to announce new chatbot search experience this week? 9 to 5 Google
I reckon that’s what will happen, anyway - this event has been announced for Wednesday afternoon:
Sundar Pichai said, “In terms of Search too, now that we can integrate more direct LLM type experiences in Search, I think it will help us expand and serve new types of use cases, generative use cases. And so I think I see this as a chance to rethink and re-imagine and drive Search to solve more use cases for our users as well.”
Google would be wise to announce something this week, because the word on the street is that Microsoft’s ChatGPT search is already in testing.
Some users have spotted screens like this out in the wild:
I’m actually going to use Bing this week to see if the changes go live. Imagine that!
Twitch is still the go-to games streaming platform
Check out my guide to Twitch Advertising, if you want to get involved.
CausalAI: Answering Causality Questions Using Observational Data
We introduce the Salesforce CausalAI Library, an open source library for causal analysis of time series and tabular data. The Salesforce CausalAI Library aims to provide a one-stop solution to the various needs in causal analysis including handling different data types, data generation, multi-processing for speed-up, utilizing domain knowledge and providing a user-friendly code-free interface.
This is asking for a hi, tech. investigation. 😅
Rose.ai
I’ve been playing with a new data tool called Rose.ai this week. It’s mainly for finance data right now, but the idea is to make it easier for teams to analyse and visualise their information. It also helps investigate the causal (or otherwise) nature of data patterns.
Spotify’s founder helped develop an AI-powered body health scanner
As revealed by Mimi Billing at Sifted a few months ago, Daniel Ek is indeed moving into heathcare next.
Neko Health will offer a non-invasive full-body scanner that can detect and measure the growth of birthmarks, rashes, and age spots. It also has a separate scanner to pick up on any abnormalities in heart function, blood pressure, and pulse throughout the body.
It’ll have some sweet playlists to accompany your surgery too, I’d expect.