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😺 Stonks

😺 Stonks

PLUS: This genius isn't concerned about hallucinations

Noah Edelman & Pete Huang
February 01, 2024

Welcome, humans.

Over 100 US congressional offices are now using AI for tasks like drafting legislation. As GPT-5 looms on the horizon, our optimism isn't just about AI writing policy, but shaping it with insights from centuries of data and outcomes. In the meantime, here’s an idea…

Here’s what you need to know about AI today:

Investors increasingly want AI results, not AI roadmaps.
Tyler Cowen, an enthusiastic ChatGPT user, shares some valuable insights.
OpenAI is developing an alert system for AI-assisted biological threats
We've just demoed Riffusion, an incredible AI song-creation tool!

The era of "just investing in AI" is over for Big Tech.

In 2023, mere mentions of AI sent stock market investors drooling, with the “Magnificent Seven” (Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Tesla, & Meta) enjoying an average 92% ROI.

magnificent for our 401ks indeed…

But now, investors are craving real results.

Microsoft and Google stocks both dropped yesterday, despite seeing higher profits in their cloud businesses.

The culprit? Not enough profit. In particular, not enough AI profit.

$GOOGL on Google Finance

Sure, customers are lining up to try their AI services in Office and Workspace, but interest ≠ profit.

Higher costs = lower profit, and investors are worried about the soaring infrastructure and server costs it’s taking Big Tech to bake AI into its products.

Yet, there’s a glimmer of hope for the pitiful shareholders, particularly from Microsoft:

Azure services grew 30% annually, with 6% coming from “AI services.”
GitHub Copilot has 1.3M paying users, up from 1M just three months ago.
- Goldman Sachs is one such customer—it just bought Copilot seats for its >10,000 software devs!

BTW, here’s our advice for using Microsoft’s new AI services.

Bottom line: Q2 earnings will be a crucial indicator, showing whether AI demand truly meets the hype, especially for Google, which is yet to release its much-anticipated ChatGPT rival, Gemini Ultra.

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Here’s how one economist uses AI…

Most guys watch football. We binge 67-minute podcasts with economists talking about the future of AI. We’re not the same.

And this session with Tyler Cowen is an absolute banger. ↓

Tyler, a ChatGPT power user, uses AI in two ways:

On his phone, for stuff like translating convos/menus while abroad. Insider tip: Add ChatGPT as a phone widget for quick access.
On his laptop, for deeper dives into research and history. He uses ChatGPT Playground for enhanced control over the outputs (hot tip: crank up the temperature setting for more creative responses).

Interestingly, he’s not too concerned about hallucinations (i.e. AI making sh*t up)—he found that simply asking ChatGPT to "correct any hallucinations" resolves inaccuracies about 80-90% of the time.

For fact-checking and deeper research, he turns to Perplexity and occasionally reverts to the good old Google Search for articles.

Tune into the whole pod here!

Around the Horn.

Humanoid robot startup Figure AI might raise a $500M round led by Microsoft and OpenAI.
OpenAI: “GPT-4 provides at most a mild uplift in biological threat creation accuracy”.
Perplexity engaged in talks with potential acquirers before raising its last round.
The FCC proposed banning AI-powered robocalls.
Someone leaked a new model from French AI rockstars Mistral, and it’s close to matching GPT-4 on performance benchmarks.