Happy New Year! This is The Neuron, where we enjoy cat toys and neural networks.

Today in AI:

• 9 Things to Watch in 2023

• Finally, Excel Might Not Suck Anymore

• Around the Horn

• Leo Sends His Regards

9 Things to Watch in 2023

You thought 2022 was crazy? Well, buckle up.

2023 in AI is about to bring the HEAT.

Here's what to watch:

1/ Models hit the gym - Every model comes back with an even bigger, beefier, stronger version. They all hit PRs and blow our minds.

2/ Multimodal models - Meta was the first to release a model that spits out both images and text. What about images and sound? How about text and 3D?

3/ Institutions grapple with AI-generated content - Who bans/embraces it? What do schools do? Will colleges comment on using AI tools for application essays?

4/ Tinkerers' and hackers' delight - Thousands of developers spent their holiday breaks poring over open-source AI. They're gonna be releasing cool stuff all year. We're ready.

5/ Every app gives AI a shot - Notion has over 1 million signups; Canva's AI tools also likely over a million users.

Every SaaS app in 2023:

Once an AI company figures out a pattern, SaaS apps will embed them. Text-to-X and chats are first in line.

6/ Language models for every research field - AI's exciting, but AI accelerating science is even cooler. Optimism is back, baby.

7/ The first breakout AI-driven social app - Forget Lensa. Solo avatars are boring. The future is generating AI with you and your friends.

8/ Big Tech in the spotlight - ChatGPT got people chattering about Google. But Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple all have tricks up their sleeves.

9/ Everyone gets scared for their jobs - It can't just be me, right? Right?!

Our take: Talking about AI isn't just about cool new projects. The world is bigger than that.

It's also important to talk business, policy, economics, all the different ways the world changes because of AI.

That's what we'll cover here at The Neuron.

Finally, Excel Might Not Suck Anymore

We found the best AI assistant made for spreadsheets so far.

We've seen many people try their hand, but Mehran Jalali finally created one that can do the full spread:

1/ Smart autofill - fills in a column based on context only

2/ Factual autofill - do your research without leaving Excel

3/ Generate formulas - describe the output, get the formula

4/ Filtering - use plain English to describe the filter

5/ GPT prompts and inference - write GPT prompts using your Excel data or give it a few examples to learn what to do.

We're pretty good at Excel, if we can toot our own horns.

But after all those years of copying and pasting, our C and V keys are completely rubbed out and we've Googled "do i have carpal tunnel" a few too many times.

That's sad. No more of that. Here's the signup for Mehran's plugin.

Around the Horn

Crypto too scary for you? Use ChatGPT to build a crypto trading game. All the trading, none of the, you know, money stealing.

Congressman Don Beyer is 72 and headed back to school to study math, CS and eventually, AI. Good on you, Congressman!

GPT-3 is pretty good at a lot of things, including detecting Alzheimer's!

Want to go deep on AI? Here's an a16z investor's AI reading list.

Leo Sends His Regards

That's the first one in the books, folks! See you cool cats on Twitter if you're there: @nonmayorpete and @TheNeuronDaily