Tag: Bill Gates

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AI invest crypto technology

The big trends of 2024: AI, crypto and carbon removal

There are currently three major trends in technology driven by technological, as well as sociological and political currents: AI, crypto and carbon removal. These groundbreaking developments, like any major innovation, are received with skepticism, a pattern that has been evident for decades.

PC: "too expensive and useless"

In the 1980s, when the personal computer emerged, personal computers were mostly seen as too expensive for a device without many relevant applications. That quickly changed thanks to price reductions and standardization of software, after MS-DOS became the world standard thanks to a sophisticated licensing model by Microsoft. The word processor and spreadsheet quickly made the PC indispensable in the office.

Internet: "too difficult and dangerous"

In the 1990s, this pattern repeated itself with the Internet. The personal computer was seen as a work tool, not a potential mass medium. Bill Gates even declared that the Internet suffered from lack of standards, it was insecure and far too complicated, which is why he did not use the word Internet even ten times in his book The Road Ahead.

Bill preferred to talk about the information super highway, which he was going to build himself with the closed MSN, which we never heard anything more about. Yet within a few years, email, the Web browser and applications such as eBay, Amazon and Google made the Internet accessible to consumers.

In the Netherlands, it took until late 1996 for the NOS Journaal to understand that the Internet was about to become a serious mass medium, although Joop van Zijl still compared computer penetration to that of the microwave oven.

Smartphones: "only for representatives"

When the iPhone hit the market in 2007, the Blackberry reigned supreme in the business market. Although most of the population in developed countries already had a cell phone, often a Nokia, criticism of the iPhone was not muted. "Too expensive, only useful for sales representatives," was the verdict of a friend from the world of IT. Incidentally, the same chap who ten years earlier judged the cell phone as "only useful for drug dealers," a common sentiment.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer laughed off the iPhone in a video in which, as he was taught by PR people, he quickly switched to promoting the company's own Windows Mobile which we also never heard anything more about. It makes CEO Satya Nadella's feat of completely revitalizing Microsoft after Ballmer all the more galling, but about that another time.

AI, crypto and carbon removal on the turn

Right now we are seeing the exact same patterns as before, but now about AI, crypto and carbon removal:

  • AI is often dismissed as useful for work, but without useful applications for consumers.
  • Crypto is criticized with comments like, "Name an application." Meanwhile, the first application lies in something as basic as redesigning the banking system, with each user managing their own account and making banks obsolete. Apparently, the significance of this is missed by many. Tip: Never get into an argument with people who were too lazy to read the Bitcoin white paper but have an opinion.
  • Carbon removal is often characterized as a fraud, referring to familiar examples such as inefficient cooking ovens, without knowing or understanding the complexity and potential of projects that do actually remove carbon from the atmosphere, such as ocean fertilization. This kind of removal of carbon from the atmosphere is the biggest task facing the world in the coming decades. Tip: Never engage in climate change discussions with people who were too lazy to read the summary of recent IPCC reports.

Admittedly, I have a personal fascination with how innovations break through or fail. That's why both my 1993 graduate thesis and my 2001 book were both called "In Search of the Holy Grail," although some weirdo photoshopped the cover of my book which, by the way, is still on sale in large numbers. And not because of its great success.

I learned more from Megamistakes than Megatrends. Everyone knows Rodgers' adoption curve, but it remains mysterious why one innovation catches on and another flops mercilessly. For carbon removal, crypto and AI, there are several key success factors, some of which I want to highlight.

CO2 success was not during COP29

Breakthroughs in carbon removal require political will. All media were focused on the COP29 climate summit in Baku, but in the meantime, successes were being made in Brussels and Washington in the fight against climate change.

In Brussels, the European Council approved the creation of the first EU-wide certification framework for permanent carbon removal, carbon farming and carbon storage in products. This voluntary framework is intended to create a certification system that can quantify, monitor and verify carbon removals and counteract greenwashing; carbon farming. The EU's adoption of the new rules marks the last major legislative step to give the green light to the creation of the new certification framework for carbon removal.

Now in Dutch: standards are being introduced that will allow companies and citizens to actually offset their carbon emissions, and not by planting or preserving flimsy forests, but by measurably reducing CO2 emissions or even better, removing CO2 from the atmosphere.

Democrats and Republicans together for carbon removal

In the United States, a bill was introduced by Senators Lisa Murkowski (Republican, Alaska) and Michael Bennet (Democrat, Colorado) seeking to expand carbon removal subsidies for a wide range of technologies intended to permanently remove carbon dioxide from the air and seas.

The bill is unlikely to be passed by the current Congress yet due to time constraints, but its introduction indicates that subsidies for carbon removal will be expanded even under President Trump. The fact that the bill was introduced by senators from both parties, a rarity these days, is hopeful.

AMCs for CO2

In coming years, watch for the term Advanced Market Commitment (AMC), explained here by the Economist: no matter how the political winds blow, the pressure from society for decarbonization is so great that smarter companies are independently seeking to remove or minimally offset their own carbon footprint, by funding techniques that remove carbon for the long term; preferably forever. Salesforce, Google, Meta and Microsoft are just the first from a long list of companies that will fund AMCs.

As another example, it was announced last week that Planetary Technologies has removed 138 tons of CO2 through "Ocean Alkalanity Enhancement (OAE)," which, by adding minerals or substances, increases alkalinity, the ocean's capacity to absorb CO2e, with the goal of sequestering CO₂ and combating climate change. Buyers of the associated carbon removal credits were Shopify (96 tons) and Stripe (42 tons) under a "pre-purchase agreement. In Scrabble, you don't put it easily, but it really exists and will be used a lot.

Old school tech compared to AI and crypto

Stock market valuations are a reflection of market expectations, and the enthusiasm around AI and crypto shows that investors have confidence in their longer-term potential. I have created four virtual "baskets" that I have posted about before:

  • 'MANAAM': the old school tech companies
  • Spotlight 9: the nine I believe to be leading tech investments
  • AI Spotlight 9: nine companies benefiting from AI
  • Crypto Spotlight 9: the biggest nine cryptos measured by market value

Old school tech MANAAM: +36%

In the broader tech sector, established players continue to dominate. At one time investors were fans of the term FANG (for Facebook, Apple, Netflix and Google, as if Microsoft meant nothing), but let's take the "MANAAM" group consisting of Meta (formerly Facebook), Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet (formerly Google) and Netflix. The average increase in shares of this now classic little club this year is a whopping 35.9%. That's phenomenal from an investment perspective, until you consider that the S&P 500 is also up 27.19% this year.

Spotlight 9: +63%

Microsoft(14%), Alphabet(22.28%) and Apple(27.84%) are not even outperforming the index. While investors buy tech stocks for the higher price appreciation, compensating for the higher risk.

Not a buy recommendation, but indicative: the Spotlight 9 is +63%

However, those who had bought the Spotlight 9, which consists of the major tech companies and the two largest crypto currencies Bitcoin (+119%) and Ethereum (+57%), would have already seen their investment portfolio rise 63.37% this year. Compared to the MANAAM, Netflix is missing from the Spotlight 9, while Nvidia (+187%) has obviously been added as the world's most valuable technology company.

AI Spotlight 9: +76%

The valuation of AI-driven companies such as Nvidia, which play a key role in the development of AI infrastructure, has reached record highs. This shows that the market recognizes the speed at which these AI-powered companies are seeing their results soar.

Despite AMD, Gigabyte and Super Micro, the AI Spotlight 9 does as much as + 76%

Since Nvidia is already included in the Spotlight 9, I left out the market leader in my also completely arbitrary "AI Spotlight 9," consisting of nine companies that I suspect AI will allow them to grow faster than the leading large tech companies (the MANAAM group) and perhaps even faster than the Spotlight 9.

With 76.11% growth, that is certainly the case this year, with it being entirely remarkable that this increase came about despite Super Micro (which saw the auditor go the distance), AMD (-1%) and Gigabyte, hardware parties that did not keep up with the growth of the rest. Software company Palantir (+305%), which I wrote about in early November, more than makes up the difference.

Crypto Spotlight 9: +191%

Since the approval earlier this year of Bitcoin ETFs, tens of billions have already flowed from the traditional investment world toward crypto. The wait was for the moment when the "alt rotation" would begin, the moment when more money flows into other cryptocurrencies than Bitcoin, which counts as the unofficial kickoff of "altcoin season. That moment occurred yesterday, when the Ethereum Spot ETF net inflows, outpaced those to Bitcoin.

Crypto Spotlight 9: +191% and this does not include memecoin.

So the real daredevil is now stepping big into the craziest coins that often have no underlying value at all, but that is as risky as putting everything on red or black in a casino. A less risky strategy, insofar as that is possible in crypto, is to spread out in the biggest cryptocurrencies and take advantage of overall sentiment.

The "Crypto Spotlight 9" consists of the largest crypto currencies measured by market value, excluding stable coins, memecoins (crypto giblets) and tokens linked to crypto exchanges such as BNB.

That group, listed alphabetically as Avalanche, Bitcoin, Cardano, Ethereum, Solana, Stellar, Toncoin, TRON and XRP, achieved a 191% increase so far this year. So is this a buy recommendation? Absolutely not.

What I do recommend to anyone active in technology and innovation is to look into AI, carbon removal technology, blockchain and crypto-currencies. Just like in the 1980s with the personal computer, the Internet in the 1990s and the smartphone 15 years ago, these are developments that are unstoppable worldwide.

A practical way to stay informed is to then invest a bit in those sectors, with my advice being to do so only with money you don't need for rent, mortgage or other daily concerns. Even within technology and crypto, it certainly pays to look closely at what the intended investments actually involve; what does Palantir actually do, is Ethereum threatened by Solana and SUI; and isn't it funny to take a small gamble on memecoins after all?

Anyone who puts in some money will start to inform themselves. The alternative is to write a weekly newsletter about tech and innovations, but that also requires a huge ego.

Warm regards, thanks for your interest and see you next week!

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AI invest technology

Energy consumption of AI helps climate tech make final breakthrough

Last week two developments came together that will shape the global technology picture in the coming years. First, OpenAI launched new products with which it is attacking Google and Microsoft head-on. The AI market is exploding for both consumer and business use, with the adverse consequence of correspondingly increasing energy consumption and carbon emissions.

Perhaps precisely because of these rising carbon emissions, developments in "Climate Tech," the umbrella term for all technology that combats climate change, also seem to be accelerating. Bill Gates even calls 2024 the year when climate tech has finally broken through.

OpenAI now direct competitor of Google

OpenAI last week launched "ChatGPT with Search," a feature that allows users to retrieve real-time, up-to-date information directly in their conversations. This search functionality, integrated into the existing ChatGPT interface, is currently available to paying users and will soon be available to everyone.

Rather than a separate product as in a separate app or separate Web page, the search feature in, for example, the Chrome browser allows ChatGPT to automatically consult Web resources when relevant to the question being asked. Users can also manually activate search themselves to find specific information.

ChatGPT's search feature offers additional interactive features, such as displaying maps with place markers for recommended locations and displaying current stock prices and news articles. With each search, users can open a sidebar with clickable resources to access the original articles or data.

OpenAI states that collaboration with Microsoft Bing and media partners such as the Associated Press and Reuters ensures that the information provided is accurate and reliable. These collaborations also mitigate legal issues surrounding "data scrapping," as OpenAI gains authorized access to data through these partners.

New: ad-free current information 

This new search offering helps OpenAI with a new focus on reliable up-to-date information, which is especially important in sensitive topics such as elections, where reliable information is essential. In doing so, ChatGPT avoids the use of ads or sponsored links, a big difference from Google Search, which, on the contrary, generates most of its revenue through ads.

Instead, OpenAI is focusing on providing an independent user experience that will have to be funded from subscriptions. While it will continue to be possible for free users to take advantage of the search feature, we can expect limits on the number of free searches.

For more details and background on the latest developments in AI, I recommend the weekly newsletter from Michiel Schoonhoven of content marketing specialist NXTLI. On LinkedIn, Michiel has shared more details aboutthe latest updates from ChatGPT.

Gates: 2024 breakthrough of 'climate tech'

In May, Goldman Sachs, surely not known as climate activists weekly on the A12, estimated that the growth of AI will lead to a 160% increase in energy consumption by data centers by 2030. In Europe alone, the modern generation of bankers, dressed in the new uniform of sleeveless body warmers, estimates that 800 billion Euros will be invested in improving the electricity grid.

So Bill Gates enthusiastically headlined in the annual report of his investment company BreakThrough Energy: 'The State of the Transition. Climate tech has arrived.' According to Gates, 2024 will retrospectively prove to be a pivotal moment in the fight against climate change, reminding him of the period around 2000 when large-scale decisions were made to combat infant mortality.

At the time, millions of children in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa were dying annually from preventable diseases, despite the fact that vaccines and drugs often already existed. However, these drugs were difficult for poor countries to access, although they were stockpiled in richer countries. Through the use of a global health network, which produced and made available vaccines and drugs, child mortality fell by 50 percent within 20 years. This progress was possible by scaling up existing innovations and developing new methods, for example, in the fight against HIV and malaria.

Meanwhile, more and more technologies are being developed that are effective in reducing greenhouse gases. The next big challenge, however, according to Gates, lies in implementation: scaling up these technologies within the economy. Although large companies have mastered this scale well, until now they have often been reluctant to invest in clean technologies. They saw them primarily as ways to reduce their carbon footprint and contribute to the environment, without seeing them as a source of value to their own operations. In short, focusing on sustainability did not lead to higher profits. 

According to Gates, however, this has begun to change since 2024 and there has been a major shift in the perspective of investors and companies. Large global investors-such as foundations, sovereign wealth funds and infrastructure investors-are finally starting to invest seriously in climate technology. Top business executives are also increasingly understanding that climate tech offers more than just environmental gains; it can strengthen their companies and use their capital more efficiently. Let's hope Gates is right.

200 grams of yellow powder as effective as a tree

Half a pound of this yellow powder removes as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as a tree does in a year. Source photo: Zihui Zhou, UC Berkeley.

Gates said global fight against man-made climate change. California alone will need to capture or remove about 100 million tons of carbon dioxide annually - roughly equivalent to pollution from 250 gas-fired power plants - to meet its ambitious climate goals, including achieving carbon neutrality by 2045.

It seems as if innovative techniques for this removal of carbon dioxide are now becoming known on a weekly basis. For example, researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, have developed a new covalent organic framework (COF) that significantly improves the direct air capture (DAC) of carbon dioxide.

This material, a deep yellow powder, efficiently absorbs CO₂ from ambient air without degradation by water or other contaminants, a common problem with existing DAC technologies. The COF functions like a sponge, trapping CO₂ until it is saturated.

It can then be regenerated by heating, releasing the CO₂ for storage or reuse, and then reused for further collection cycles. Remarkably, 200 grams of this material can remove about 20 kilograms of CO₂ per year, comparable to the absorption capacity of a mature tree!

Technological tools can reduce CO₂ emissions and even remove existing emissions from the atmosphere. Source: image created with Midjourney.

This kind of innovative technology is many times more effective than planting trees, which appears sympathetic and is more understandable to the layman. The big question is whether the growth in investment in climate tech predicted by Gates will come in time to combat accelerated climate change, as recently predicted by the UN.

Investing in AI or climate tech?

A strange paradox thus arises: how does investing in climate tech compare with investing in AI? It is obvious that the financial results of investing in climate tech will take at least five to 10 years. Only companies whose CEOs look ahead longer than their own annual bonus will structurally try to become carbon neutral or even carbon negative, such as Microsoft.

The average increase this year of these companies propelled upward by AI is a whopping 119%. Even the accountant-less Super Micro is down only 9%.
Source: Google Finance

lucrative. See my completely arbitrary and subjectively compiled AI Spotlight 9, which is not financial advice, but attempts to paint a measurable picture of a visible trend.

The average share price increase this year of these companies propelled upward by AI is a whopping 119%. Interestingly, software company Palantir is experiencing higher share price appreciation than chipmakers such as AMD, Arm and Broadcom. But note that market leader Nvidia is not included in this list because Nvidia is already included in the overall tech-grade gauge Spotlight 9. By comparison, Nvidia shares are already up 181% this year, versus Palantir 153%.

In the short term, only memecoins are more lucrative than AI stocks. It is to be hoped for the world that Bill Gates is right and that there are enough investors who look a little beyond short-term returns. I myself will be at the particularly interesting Business & Philanthropy Forum in Singapore over the next few days, where the very idea of combining for-profit investing with the pursuit of a better world is being attempted. Hopefully I will be able to share some positive news next week. 

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AI crypto technology

Interesting stuff to click, read or watch in January 2024

  • Interesting food for thought: legendary investor Fred Wilson (Twitter, Etsy, Kickstarter, Coinbase) describes a new business model for Web 3 and perhaps AI applications: minting. At its core: shared ownership with users.
  • Sam Altman, the founder and CEO of OpenAI, is seeking billions to build a network of chip factories. The goal is clear: become less dependent on NVIDIA. Remarkable that the man manages to raise billions as a side hustle.
  • Investor and founder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman shares his thoughts on "a plausible reality. Note his description of a search for an oasis rather than a mirage.
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AI crypto technology

Worldcoin proves: people give away their eyeballs for a few coins

The technology industry is increasingly suffering from excessive attention to tech founders. Elon Musk continues to dominate the spotlight, whether he is reviving Twitter or tearing it down, depending on whom you ask. Still, the most significant news of the past week was the unveiling of Worldcoin. This project drew attention because of its shiny "orb," which scans the iris of new users, and because of the involvement of co-founder Sam Altman, also the CEO of OpenAI.

It was the week of Barbie and Oppenheimer, or Barbenheimer, and Worldcoin's Orb. Photo: created with Midjourney

Two months ago I wrote about Worldcoin and the company behind it called Tools for Humanity, which then presented itself on its 1-page website with the slogan "a technology company committed to a more just economic system" and raised as much as $115 million for the Worldcoin project.

The goal, the founders say, is to create a global identification system that will help reliably distinguish between humans and AI, in preparation for when intelligence is no longer a reliable indicator of being human. At Worldcoin, verification of humanity is ensured through the use of an Orb, a sphere: a biometric iris scanner.

Shiny happy orb people. Photo: Worldcoin

But according to Alex Blania, CEO and co-founder of Tools for Humanity and Worldcoin project leader, there is a bigger purpose than just identification as a human being:

'We seek universal access to the global economy, regardless of country or background, and accelerate the transition to an economic future where everyone on earth is welcome and benefits'

The definition of a pyramid scheme?

Who is not moved to tears by this noble endeavor? Who is against being welcome on earth? Coindesk visited Worldcoin's headquarters in Berlin and from this brilliant article, "Inside the Orb," the impression emerges that Altman and Blania possess a unique combination of talent, otherworldliness and opportunism.

So they talk about Worldcoin as a crucial step toward a Universal Basic Income (UBI) for the entire world population, because these men think big. 

But they are particularly vague when the question is asked who should then pay for that universal basic income for our planet. Altman says of this:

"The hope is that when people want to buy this token, because they believe this is the future and there will be an influx into this economy. New token buyers is how it gets paid for, eventually."

Sam Altman, co-founder Worldcoin

Aha, so the influx of new buyers funds the system. That rings a bell, and I asked ChatGPT, the product of Sam Altman's other company, OpenAI, what the definition of a pyramid scheme is. Here it is:

'A pyramid scheme is a business model in which members are recruited through a promise of payments or services for enrolling others in the system, rather than providing investments or selling products. If recruiting multiplies, recruiting soon becomes impossible and most members cannot benefit; pyramid systems are therefore unsustainable and often illegal.'

I'm not saying Worldcoin is a pyramid scheme. Only that ChatGPT says it looks a lot like one.

Free coins for your iris

A cult of personality is emerging around Sam Altman reminiscent of the golden years of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. Entire articles are devoted tothe 400(!) companies in which Altman has invested.

Partly for this reason, people lined up in several places around the world last week to have their eyes scanned by Worldcoin's orb. The media cheerfully helped make the hype as big as possible, with service journalism like this article in India, "Sam Altman's Worldcoin is here: how to get your free coin.

Even the tweet in which Altman jubilates that every eight seconds someone has their iris scanned by Worldcoin was included in the article.

Because the system works stunningly simple: download the free Worldcoin app, scan your eyes at an orb, get a World ID and your Worldcoin app instantly receives 25 free Worldcoins; except in America, as Gizmodo experienced. But it's customer onboarding with a simplism and efficiency that would be the envy of a schoolyard drug dealer.

Critics have a point

Twitter would not be Twitter (oh no, it is also no longer Twitter but is now called X, but more on that later), if it were not for a number of astute critics who have analyzed Worldcoin well, such as here and here.

Ethereum founder and widely acclaimed ethicist within the blockchain industry Vitalik Buterin immediately warned of the possible, unintended, bad consequences of Worldcoin's approach:

'Risks include inevitable privacy breaches, further erosion of people's ability to surf the Internet anonymously, coercion by authoritarian governments and the potential impossibility of being simultaneously secure and decentralized.'

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder Ethereum

For now, let's believe Blania and Altman's promise that iris data will be immediately deleted from the orb and not stored. But how many fake orbs will be used by criminals to defraud consumers of their iris scan?  

In any case, the question is justified whether a centrally run company should undertake this kind of initiative. World ID is effectively a universal passport, why should it be developed by a commercial company?

Remember, for all the fancy promises and goals, this is a commercial organization and the founders and backers own 25% of all Worldcoin. That's a higher tax rate than VAT. Even stranger: from Asia, I cannot see the pages in the white paper that deal with these tokenomics at all, because they are shielded. A problem more people faced. Why are they shielding information from the same people who are allowed to have their eyes scanned?

Decrypt summed up Buterin's objections well, although the schematic objection Buterin shared in his blog post is also illuminating:

Vitalik Buterin's schematic representation of the problem

'Proof of Personhood' is relevant, but not in this way

Cybercrime will only increase in the age of AI, so there is a need for proof that you are dealing with a human being and not a computer program. Just not in the way Worldcoin is tackling the problem. Michael Casey of Coindesk puts it this way:

'The risk is not with the technology per se - we have known for years that AI is capable of destroying us. It is that if we concentrate control of these technologies with a handful of overly powerful companies motivated to use them as proprietary "black box" systems for profit, they will quickly move into dangerous, humanity-harming territory, just as the Web2 platforms did.

Still, there is at least one positive aspect that can emerge from the Worldcoin project. It draws attention to the need for some sort of proof of humanity, which may give impetus to the many interesting projects that seek to give people more control over their identity in the Web3/AI era.

The answer to proving and elevating authentic humanity could lie in capturing the "social graph" of our online connections, relationships, interactions and authorized credentials through decentralized identity models (DID) or initiatives such as the decentralized social networking protocol (DSNP) that is part of Project Liberty.

Or it could still lie in a biometric solution like what Worldcoin is working on, but hopefully with a more decentralized, less corporate structure. What is clear is that we need to do something.

Portable identity and reputation

Casey's line of thinking leads to a system of identification and reputation, where you can use services anonymously, but share your identity and reputation if you wish. My Uber score, for example, is 4.96, but if I want to book a room through Airbnb, I do so as a completely unknown individual.

This is why a landlord is the first to ask for a passport copy, while it would also be valuable for Airbnb and the landlord to know that at least as a passenger in an Uber, I did not demolish or vomit under the cab. Such a system where you as a user carry your online reputation with you and decide for yourself to share at a time you deem appropriate would be extremely useful in the digital economy.

Universal basic income for the world's population is so far-reaching that it should be introduced through normal democratic processes. Let's not leave that kind of major social issue to a few men from Berlin; historically that has not proven to be a happy combination.

Twitter becomes X

It can't have escaped anyone's notice, Elon Musk is turning Twitter into X. What a romantic he is, isn't he, to name his company after his youngest son? He explains that in the coming months "your entire financial world can be orchestrated" from X. Because Musk wants to make Twitter a "super-app," an all-encompassing app that merges information, communication and transactions. Similar to China's highly successful WeChat. Musk wants to get rid of the hated ad model as soon as possible.

Musk will look eagerly at South Asian Grab and GoJek, which will allow users to not only order cabs (on cars or scooters), but also pay their bills and even hire personal shoppers to go to the store of your choice to do your shopping. Of course, with a margin for Grab and GoJek on each transaction.

Every second Musk spends on the overrated Twitter remains a waste of time and a waste of his talent. I still hope one day Musk gets angry about Alzheimer's, cancer and the mental health of humanity and uses his undeniable talents to solve those problems, for example with a biotech company. Musk has mastered development of software, hardware and mechanical innovations, how hard would biotech be for him? 

The informative podcast More or Less, from the couples Morin and Lessin, discussed Musk's plans for Twitter in detail this week. It's the only podcast I know of, by the way, in which two couples discuss a specific industry, noting that ex-Wall Street Journal reporter Jessica Lessin is the astute founder of the online trade magazine The Information and Dave Morin is an investor who previously started Path, the most beautiful app of a failed social network I've ever used.

Notable links this week

Bill Gates has a podcast

Speaking of notable podcasts: Bill Gates has started a podcast called Unconfuse Me, and the first edition featured actor Seth Rogen and his wife Lauren as guests. Apparently that's a trend, to appear as a married couple on a podcast. I can hear you thinking, "Bill Gates has a podcast with Seth Rogen, doesn't that sound like Kermit the Frog with Scooby Doo as a guest? It certainly sounds that way, but it turned into an unexpectedly candid conversation about Alzheimer's, home care and recreational drug use, among other topics. Playback at double speed is not recommended.

Barbenheimer does nearly $1.2 billion in a week, Oppenheimer breaks IMAX projectors

The box office success of Barbie and Oppenheimer is unexpectedly huge: Barbie is expected to end the weekend with sales of $750 million and Oppenheimer is approaching $400 million. Even more strikingly, I found that the 70 millimeter version of Oppenheimer in the IMAX is so complex that the film is sometimes out of sync with the sound and even literally breaks. So much for all the doomsday scenarios that "old-fashioned" cinemas would lose out in the streaming era. Good feature films are drawing more audiences to theaters than ever.

Barbenheimer, but made by AI

If Barbie and Oppenheimer were squeezed into one movie, this would be the trailer. I say it too often about AI applications, but it's incredible that this was created entirely by AI: image, sound, video. Above all, the speed at which these kinds of applications are developing is unparalleled. The last time I was so stunned by a technology on the Internet was over 25 years ago when George Michael presented video in a Web browser.

Spotlight 9: Party Q2 at Google and Facebook

Yes, I know they are actually called Alphabet and Meta these days, but admit it, who reads on when those names are in the headline? It was the week when the second quarter results were released so there was a lot of movement in the stock markets. This web page contains a short, handy overview of the results of the major tech companies.

Meta and Alphabet rise, Microsoft falls. Investing in the stock market thus seems like a sprint, not a marathon.

The short-sightedness in the stock markets was demonstrated for the umpteenth time this week. Alphabet and Meta made sharp price jumps, due to higher-than-expected sales while partly driven by currency differences. Granted, Alphabet made 28% more sales on cloud services and that will only increase in the AI era.

However, Meta lost a whopping $21 billion in 18 months on investments in Reality Labs, Meta's business unit that is doing something with all the buzzwords of the last two years, including Web3, Metaverse, AR, VR and anything with difficult glasses. Result: 10% share price gain. How is it possible?

Microsoft, which has taken a tremendously strong position in the field of AI by incorporating OpenAI into the Bing search engine *and* invested as much as $10 billion in OpenAI, a guaranteed hit, was not understood by investors because the investments in AI "do not lead to higher sales right away. Result: 2% decline.

The pink cloud is a schematic representation of my brain as I look at the stock market and see Meta rising, while Microsoft is falling. Photo: created with Midjourney

CNBC doesn't get it either and explains it some more:

'The growth in AI has the potential to drive Microsoft's two largest businesses: the public cloud Azure and the more traditional and market-leading productivity software Office.'

CNBC

That is exactly how it is, but investors apparently had a horizon this week that ended with the Friday afternoon drinks.

Until next week, happy Sunday!

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AI technology

Does AI mean the end of the world for Do-It-Yourselfers?

'Reducing the risk of extinction from apple pie should be a global priority, alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear wars.'

If this had been apple pie and not AI, the Journal would have opened with it.

Had that been the one-line statement made public last Tuesday by dozens of leaders in the field of AI (artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence), it would have been bigger world news than it is now. Only it did not mention apple pie as a threat to the world, but AI. That made the statement a lot harder for journalists to interpret, because AI is a kind of water of technology: it can be used to give people drinks, or waterboard them. The line between those is clear: It's about who decides to stop drinking.

The fear is that in the case of AI, the software itself decides when something happens. Or stops. I once started blogging and nowadays write this newsletter because it forces me to keep up with my field and then organize my thoughts publicly. So herewith my immodest attempt to put the latest developments in AI into a broader perspective.

Who are these people?

First, that statement last Tuesday, issued by the Center for AI Safety (CAIS, pronounced Kees) whose mission is "to reduce the risks of artificial intelligence on a societal scale. We learned from the Watergate scandal that the first thing you do is follow the flow of money, so where does Kees get the money? The Open Philanthropy Foundation donated over $5 million and is in turn funded by former Wall Street Journal reporter Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz, one of the founders of Facebook. (You can guess for yourself whose piggy bank of that couple was turned over the most for this donation. Oh well, at least the money Facebook makes from selling out its users' privacy will be spent on something useful).

In Europe, tricky dossiers usually involve a covenant between government, industry and a party that policymakers describe as ''civil society'' in those kinds of papers that nobody reads. America is the land of the one-liner, so there they arrived at this chunky phrase: ''Reducing the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority, alongside other social-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear wars.''

And that was it, that's all there is in the 22-word statement. It led to rather vacuous media reports from which you can almost read the reporter's despair. Like "my goodness, do I now have to explain to what extent this statement is similar to Robert Oppenheimer's on the danger of nuclear weapons, or shall I just list the list of signatories? It became mostly the latter, of course, and you will recognize most of the names from previous newsletters. CNN bravely lists, "The statement was signed by prominent industry officials, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman; the so-called "godfather" of AI, Geoffrey Hinton; top executives and researchers at Google DeepMind and Anthropic; Kevin Scott, chief technology officer of Microsoft; Bruce Schneier, the pioneer of Internet security and cryptography; climate advocate Bill McKibben; and musician Grimes.

Who didn't sign?

The latter is kind of funny, because Grimes is the baby mama of as far as we know the youngest son of Elon Musk, who is even named X Æ A-Xii because it is the elven spelling of the term AI. (Read that last sentence again and realize that this is a defenseless child.) The very name Elon Musk was missing from the signatories. Other people who conspicuously did not sign the statement, and whose names it seems to me would have made sense if CNN had inquired why, are Jeff Bezos (founder and chairman of Amazon's Supervisory Board), Sundar Pichai (CEO of Alphabet, Google's parent company, man of this brilliant speech), Andreessen Horowitz (the leading investor in technology companies), Mark Zuckerberg (CEO Meta, formerly known as Facebook, buyer of former competitors like Instagram and Whatsapp) and Peter Thiel (financier of, among others, LinkedIn, Yelp, Facebook and Palantir and through his Founders Fund also Airbn and Space X). And further missing are just about all players in the technology field from India, South Korea, Japan and China.  

All of these parties have the knowledge, clout and motivation to become a major player in the global market for AI applications. And they have not signed the no doubt well-intentioned declaration to take care that the world does not perish to AI. Of course, that doesn't mean that the chief bosses of the tech world will try to destroy the world with AI; after all, killing off the world's population would be bad for their quarterly numbers.

What about Bill Gates?

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates publicly hopes that Amazon and Google will lose out to AI. Furthermore, he has little influence on the public debate about AI; it is no coincidence that CNN did not even mention Gates in the list of signatories and even Elon Musk's ex did. I place little value on the predictions about technology from the man who, in his November 1995 book The Road Ahead, called the Internet not the future, but a dirt road compared to the information super highway he himself would build in the form of MSN.

It remains incomprehensible to me that Gates does not provide more analysis on the business aspects of technology, but continues to muse on the social implications. Because precisely as an entrepreneur, he remains, in my view, unparalleled. His vision is brilliant when measured over say 24 months, not 24 years.

Remember from Bill Gates especially these two achievements:

  • IBM was looking for an operating system for their new product, the personal computer, in 1981; Gates had nothing on hand but bought the obscure Quick and Dirty Operating System (QDOS) from a small software maker for seventy-five thousand dollars, changed the name to MS-DOS (because the spotless IBM could not do anything with the word Dirty) and did not sell the software, but licensed it to IBM on a non-exclusive basis. That form of licensing was virtually unknown in the software world. Primarily on the basis of this one deal, Microsoft became the most valuable company and Gates the richest man in the world.
  • In 1995, Microsoft was the most powerful company in the technology world and Gates the world's richest man. Only, the whole image of Microsoft and Gates was focused on a world where computers barely worked together, let alone communicated together or enabled transactions. While Jeff Bezos was a few miles away building Amazon into an e-commerce machine and would follow in Gates' footsteps as the world's richest man, Gates wrote a memo to the top of Microsoft that would become known as "the Internet tidal wave. In fact, Gates said, "I was wrong. We need to make all our products Internet-capable.' I had never seen a CEO confess his own mistakes in such a way and have the entire corporation turned around and focused, in such a short time. Admitting that he had overlooked the Internet struck me as great. (And I was relieved, because my brainchild was called Planet Internet and it's not good to wake up every day thinking the world's richest man is saying your product sucks.)

His book The Road Ahead would come out six months later and already be dated upon publication. It was especially odd because Gates had so strongly emphasized the importance of the Internet in his memo. The Internet, Gates orated in his book, was built on antiquated technology and therefore too limited to transmit information, communications and transactions over it on a large scale.

What happened next was as hilarious as it was symbolic, because his book required a second version as quickly as his software did: just a month after the book was published, Gates began work on a second version, which appeared in October 1996 and was no less than 20,000 words longer, just as his software counted more and more lines of code. In the second version of the book, Gates made the Internet much more central.

The only thing I liked about The Road Ahead was that Gates had written it with then Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold, a former world barbecue champion who had studied under Stephen Hawking. From Myhrvold, I would have liked to have read more.

Bill Gates is like a nerd version of Marco van Basten: a top player who is phenomenal as an analyst, but failing as a coach. I sincerely hope Bill Gates will write about applications of AI, about business models, opportunities and threats; about everything except what it will mean for society. And full disclosure: my opinion of Gates is independent of my own experiences with him and Microsoft in the browser war.

Impact, a Belgian employment agency for technicians, came up with this nice advertisement

Why is AI so promising and so dangerous?

Far more important than Gates' opinion on AI, I found this article about an officer in the U.S. Air Force who gave a reflection on a drone that went wild because of AI and wanted to kill its own driver. The first gasp was that this actually happened, but apparently it was just a scenario being discussed in the U.S. military. Thank goodness, because it is the ultimate Terminator nightmare when the monopoly of violence falls to computers.

While a huge technological achievement, even Nvidia's new supercomputer, which I wrote about last week, will not lead to a mass breakthrough of AI applications. Such computers are so expensive and complex that only a small number of companies have the capabilities to use them properly. Of course, it is a huge revenue generator for Nvidia, as Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Google will gladly stock this computer en masse, but it is precisely open source AI that seems to be the definitive breakthrough of AI.

These are not my words, but this is according to a leaked internal Google document. According to the leaked document, the open source AI community is so active and highly developed, that as soon as more accessible development capabilities emerge, both OpenAI and Google are hopeless. While OpenAI and Google use "proprietary" LLMs (Large Language Models), the models in open source are actually ready for public use. This makes the group of global developers larger than the OpenAI and Google staffs, the thinking goes.

Hooray for QLoRA?

And now it appears those cheaper tools will be available within a year! Because it seems to be possible to develop AI applications on some out of the box gaming PCs. LLMs used to develop generative AI applications can normally only run on enormously powerful computers. That is the reason for the explosive price increases of the makers of such devices such as Nvidia and Marvell, which I wrote about last week. As one reader sent, "QLoRA completely changes the landscape. You can use the same 8x80GB on a single 48GB card. From an $8x15K piece of kit to a souped-up PC.'

Translated into slightly more normal Dutch: the fact that you can cram 96 billion 4-bit weights into 48GB (which is huge) means that AI development is now available to hobbyists. What normally costs a ton of equipment can now be done for a few thousand Euros. For enthusiasts: here the scientific article. And here the tweet predicting that within a year these computers will be commonplace.

AI for Do-It-Yourselfers

The question is what applications will be built if hobbyists, enthusiasts and rogues will have the ability to create AI applications. And the follow-up question is how to monitor and regulate this, if at all possible.

Finally for this piece on AI:

Notable links:

  • Artifact, from the founders of Instagram, is a personal news reader. Just downloaded, but not yet tested, with the slogan: "Finally, an AI-driven news feed with you in control. Because no startup can do without the word AI in its slogan in 2023. I'd love to hear readers' opinions, anonymity guaranteed.
  • Bold: a detailed forecast of the development of AI Singularity through 2029. Someone should check this annually for accuracy; I certainly forget.
  • Meta (Facebook's) wants every employee assigned to a particular branch to show up at the office at least three days a week starting in September. Unfortunately, it is not clear what percentage of employees this will apply to. It remains to be seen whether this will cause many talented employees to leave, as as many as 150,000 jobs were lost in the US tech sector this year alone.

Event of the week: ATxSummit Singapore

A not-so-subtle humblebrag: the creator of your Sunday tech newsletter is participating Tuesday in a panel on Web 3.0 beautifully titled "Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. It's part of the ATxSummit in Singapore, where "governments, businesses and knowledge centers gather to discuss the role of technology in our shared digital future.

27 recipients of an email about a panel in Singapore with four participants

People often ask what working in Singapore is like, and I usually answer that question with "intense. Everyone is professional, from a receptionist to a minister, focused and dedicated. At the same time, I worry about whether people are relaxing enough and not working too hard. See above screenshot of an email about the preliminary online meeting on our panel, which consists of only four participants and yet went out to 27 people. You'd think this would lead to a huge bureaucracy, but officials, for example, answer email inquiries substantively within three business days. Sometimes I begrudge everyone in Singapore a daddy or mommy day a week.

Since I will have access to a make-up artist, something that has been at the top of my wish list for years, I expect there will be a livestream that I will share through my accounts on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. The panel will take place from 9 a.m. to 9:45 a.m. Dutch time. Advance warning: it's only for the connoisseur/lover of concepts like "participatory data" and "decentralization of identity.

Topping the Spotlight 9 inside: Nvidia

For years, the technology sector has been talking about a handful of dominant players: Alphabet (Google's parent company), Amazon, Apple, Facebook (now Meta) and Microsoft. Since this week, we can count Nvidia among them, which passed Meta in market value. For a while, Nvidia was even "a trillion dollar company," or worth more than a trillion: a thousand times a billion. (A billion in English is a billion and a trillion in English is a trillion. They are not the inventors of the useless inch and driving on the left for nothing).

Meta past in market value, 175% increase this year: Nvidia belongs in Spotlight 9

Therefore, in my completely arbitrary survey of key economic indicators for the tech world, my Spotlight 9, I threw out the Dow Jones Index and replaced it with Nvidia. After all, for the overall market, the S&P 500 is already in the list, for crypto the tokens Bitcoin and Ethereum, and that leaves no fewer than six indicators of stock market sentiment for the tech sector.

But beware: anyone who buys a share of Nvidia now does so at a P/E ratio of over 200! Compare that to Apple, with a P/E ratio of 30, and then I dare say it is unrealistic to expect Nvidia to grow more than six times as fast as Apple. In other words, Nvidia stock is extremely expensive, regardless of that AI-driven demand for GPUs and the new Nvidia supercomputer.

Speaking of Apple, I wrote, to the annoyance of a number of Apple employees who I thought I could count among my circle of friends until that article, about the long-awaited Apple mixed reality headset, probably called the Apple Reality Pro. This device, the first all-new device since the Apple Watch in 2015, is expected to be unveiled at WWDC on Monday. If it really is something special, I will write an extra edition of this newsletter on Tuesday morning. If not, thanks for your interest and see you next week.