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Hey TechBuzzers,

What an insane year it’s been. In only 6 months since our launch in July, we've churned out ~50 stories covering the most important stories in tech, AI, politics, startups, and more.

As a Holiday bonus, we've decided to share the 10 stories that you, our audience, found most interesting. If you’re new here, some of these may be new to you, but either way we hope they prompt you to think about what matters most in tech over the break. And, to know what to watch for in 2024.

Finally, if you have a friend who would enjoy our work, this is a great introduction! Make the referral or even gift them a membership for 2024 so they can take advantage of premium insights next year. Also Fantasy Buzz…coming soon! (With preview questions at the bottom) and more.

1. OpenAI Looks Beyond Nvidia Chips (Oct 10th)

In October, we covered how AI pioneers were scrambling to produce their own AI chips as the increased demand caused by AI impacted the availability and cost of GPUs. We discussed how Nvidia had a near-monopoly on the GPU market with ~80% market share at the time, enabling them to avoid cost and supply shortages and hold massive leverage over other market players. As a result, Open AI was reportedly prioritizing diversifying suppliers and even acquiring a chip firm. (As it turned out OpenAI did sign a deal for $51M of brain-inspired chips developed by startup Rain in December.) Microsoft was also planning to launch its own ‘data center server’ AI chip to reduce its reliance on Nvidia. (In November, Microsoft unveiled its Maia and Cobalt custom silicon chips built for the era of AI). This trend is likely to accelerate in 2024. Watch out for startups like Cerebras, Graphcore, Groq, Lightmatter and Lambda Labs, which competes with AWS by renting out Nvidia Chip servers.

2. Humane's AI Pin Could be a Giant Leap in Wearable AI (Jul 6th)

In July we covered how Humane was potentially shattering the status quo in wearable AI with the unveiling of its AI Pin. The AI pin promised to transform human-technology interactions, with ambient and contextual technology seamlessly integrating AI into our daily lives. The vision of Humane’s wearable is to morph the whole world into your personal operating system. As described by co-founder it is: “A new kind of wearable device built entirely for AI…completely fading into the background of your life…screenless, seamless, and sensing.” We look forward to seeing what 2024 will bring for devices like the AI Pin, and AI wearables more broadly, as this is likely to be a major area of development as smaller language models make their way onto edge devices starting with Google, Apple and Samsung phones, as well as the Meta Raybans with OpenAI and likely some other surprises yet to come.

3. How AI Can Turbocharge Customer Engagement (Dec 19th)

Earlier this week we covered how the enterprise giant Salesforce was tapping AI to compete with the tech giants. The Einstein Copilot, its new all-purpose conversational AI assistant for the office aims to enhance users’ customer service options and bring a new level of efficiency to sales and marketing efforts via a new interface and customizable AI models. There is nothing particularly novel about this AI solution, but as we said, it points to a wider ‘adapt or die’ trend in the fast-moving world of Customer Engagement where incumbents are forced to adopt AI to offer more personalized, efficient, and interactive experiences in order to survive and thrive. This seems to be especially important for data-aggregator businesses like Salesforce, and it is another trend we will likely see continue to accelerate in 2024.

4. Tesla's Cybertruck Is Here... Worth The Wait? (Dec 1st)

At the start of the month, we wrote about the long-awaited launch of the Tesla Cybertruck with its apocalypse-ready bulletproof body as proven by firing .45” & 9mm rounds at it from a Tommy Gun, Glock, and MP5-SD. We were blown away by the truck’s epic towing and offroad capacity with a video of it beating a Porsche 911 in a drag race while towing another 911 and beating an F-350 Diesel in a truck pull. However, beyond all the hype, was it worth the wait? Many in the media didn’t seem to think so, raising the “odd design” and suggesting it’s not a “serious working vehicle” as there isn’t a market for commercial add-ons. However, we noted the list of features other trucks don’t have like: bi-directional charging, multiple engines optional, Full Self Drive capacity, corrosion and chip-proof, and up to 440-mile range in the premium “Cyberbeast” mode. Call us Elon fanboys if you will, but to us, it’s truly a beast and will be a game-changer in the auto industry regardless of sales.

5. Biden's Chips Plan Faces Hurdles (Jul 21st)

In July we noted that microchip capacity was a potential chokepoint on further AI expansion as demand for GPU servers in the US outpaced supply. This presented a hurdle to the Biden administration's semiconductor production ramp-up plans. At the time, Taiwan’s TSMC was predicting a sales drop and had just delayed its Arizona production facility launch till 2025 due to a skilled labor shortage. Meanwhile, Tesla demand was pushing Nvidia to its limits, leading Musk to make a $1 Billion investment in a custom supercomputer, 'Dojo' to enhance the Full Self Driving (FSD) feature by training ML models on vehicle video data. NVIDIA was also chipping in with investment splurges on Adept's $350M Series B, CoreWeave's $221B Series B and Cohere's $270M Series C and were in talks to make a major equity investment in Lambda Labs, a startup that leases out GPU chips

6. Apple's New Patent Is Mind-Blowing (Jul 25th)

In July we covered how AirPods may soon be able to read your mind as Apple filed a patent for a brain-analyzing device. The patent enabled Apple to integrate electrodes into AirPods to enable EEG brain activity monitoring for applications like sleep tracking, stress response, and neurofeedback therapy. This bidirectional brain-computer integration was intended to enable transformative applications from adaptive augmented realities to intuitive device control. This technology could enable Apple products like augmented reality glasses to react to users' cognitive states for customized experiences. However, Apple is currently mired by IP disputes over the health tracking devices in the latest Apple Watch, so it will likely want to resolve those uncertainties before pushing ahead on this new project. Regardless, we do expect to see a spread of similar brain-sensing wearables in 2024 as surging interest in neurotech and ambient computing combine to advance human-AI symbiosis through products we already use daily.

7. Now You Can Chat With ChatGPT Voice (Sep 26th)

In September OpenAI released another major update making ChatGPT “multimodal” by enabling voice conversations with users and interaction with images by tapping GPT-4 LLMs for content. We noted at the time that this moved ChatGPT closer to AI assistants like Siri or Alexa and made it substantially easier to have natural conversations with GPT4 to achieve exactly the outputs desired. This news coincided with Amazon announcing a $4B investment in OpenAI rival Anthropic, maker of the Claude 2 chatbot, and news last week on work to enhance the Alexa digital assistant and Echo smart devices with GenAI meaning this multimodal AI battle was heating up and will continue into 2024. Who do you back to own the multimodal and interactive AI future?

8. AI Art and Copyright (Aug 22nd)

In August we featured a couple of stories about the growing battlefield of AI copyright. Firstly we wrote about how a US District Court Judge had just ruled that AI-generated artwork cannot be copyrighted stating that human authorship is a “bedrock requirement”. We then discussed how YouTube and Universal had taken action to ensure rights for original works on its platform with the announcement of an AI Incubator. The incubator partnership brought in prominent artists including Sinatra's estate and rapper, Yo Gotti to back it. Artists in the YouTube program were to get early access to the latest AI products. There are concerns regarding the training data they use to create music, and it is still unclear whether those using AI models trained on music without permission can be liable for this. 2024 will likely see a number of important lawsuits in this arena which provide more clarity.

9. IBM’s Quantum Computing Leap Forward (Dec 5th)

In the first week of December, we discussed how IBM had just unveiled major advances toward quantum supercomputing with “a machine unlike anything we have ever built.” The importance of this advancement is that hardware is the only thing preventing AI from being both cheap & super intelligent, a problem that many believe Quantum Computing can solve. Researchers are already developing new quantum algorithms that could lead to breakthroughs in how we approach ML and data analysis. Many believe Large-scale quantum computing is likely not going to be ready for five or six years, but not many predicted AI would explode in 2023 like it did, so they may be proven wrong.   This makes it an attractive area for long-term investment and research alike, which is motivating pioneers like IBM, Google and Nvidia to throw their significant resources at the problem. Expect to see more investment and breakthroughs in 2024.

10. Why Grok Will be the Most Powerful AI Chat Bot (Nov 28th)

In November Elon Musk announced that xAI’s Chatbot was ready to launch to 𝕏 Premium Plus users and would be integrated into the 𝕏 platform via a dedicated Grok tab. As we pointed out, many Elon haters were missing the fact that Grok is the tip of the iceberg in xAI’s ambitions. It was trained on billions of tweets and has real-time access to 𝕏 data, so can provide up-to-date info on current issues. New use cases that opens up include analyzing trending topics, content coaching, and social media sentiment analysis. We pointed out that if you are a content creator, Grok could just be about to become your best friend. xAI is moving super fast on Grok launching after only 3 months, so we can only expect it to get better and faster over the next few months leading up to wider public access. For example, xAI has also stated it will add multimodal audio and visual elements over time, an API is planned apparently, and Musk has even confirmed that 𝕏 Corp investors will own 25% of xAI. xAI is definitely a company to watch in 2024 as these plans unfold.

Make your Predictions for 2024!

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The Tech Buzz Team