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AI technology

Beautiful 'gallery of hope' and more positivity about technology

"It’s November 2025. My son’s graduation day. I’m so proud to be stood surrounded by all my brilliant children." Photo: Jillian Edelstein.

Let's start with positive news, because with the billions being thrown into AI, it's quickly becoming about corporate politics or the egos running the companies. Which often ignores the new applications that can affect our lives in a positive way.

Gallery of Hope and AI Consensus

That's why the Gallery of Hope, an exhibition in London of memories yet to be made, is very special. AI was used to offer sick people a glimpse into their future, from attending a child's wedding to taking a special holiday, moments they know they may not live to see. It is a valuable contribution of technology to breast cancer awareness and the fight against it.

There is more positive news about AI from the UK. Where social media have played a detrimental role with disinformation during elections, Polis is now being used, an AI-powered tool that allows groups with very different opinions to reach consensus through voting and discussion. Might be a good tool to start with in most parliaments! 

Interview tip: Hassabis instead of Altman

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was a guest on Lex Fridman's podcast for nearly two hours, in the week it was announced that Altman is making the rounds in Hollywood to promote Sora, the new service that can generate complete videos from text instructions. Altman remained very vague on the issue of who gets paid for OpenAI's use of other people's work as training data:

"We’ve tried some different models. But if I’m like an artist for example, A, I would like to be able to opt out of people generating art in my style. And B, if they do generate art in my style, I’d like to have some economic model associated with that."

- Sam Altman, CEO OpenAI

Sounds sweet, but Fridman didn't ask further about that sentence "we tried different models.What was tried and with whom? Which website, YouTuber or Instagrammer was paid for the fact that OpenAI probably, because that too was not discussed, copied their data and fed it into their system? The movie studios are eager to reduce actors' and crews' gages by using Sora, but how will they be compensated if their work is reused without the proper attribution and permission?

Supercar made by ... Sora? Or Bugatti after all?

Take a look at this beautiful video created with Sora that OpenAI shared on Instagram: would Bugatti and Audi have given their permission, let alone been compensated, for the obviously brand-inspired images?

A more interesting insight into the thoughts of a leading AI developer than the podcast with Altman is this portrait of Demis Hassabis, the AI project leader at Google. The intro alone is feature-worthy:

"Demis Hassabis stares intently through the screen when I ask him whether he can save Google. It’s early evening in his native U.K. and the DeepMind founder is working overtime. His Google-owned AI research house now leads the company’s entire AI research effort, after ingesting Google Brain last summer, and the task ahead is immense."

Google is still doing quite okay

It is true that OpenAI and other smart chatbots pose an existential threat to Google, but Gemini is certainly not hopeless. Especially since Gemini can be deployed for free while OpenAI has to charge a subscription fee to survive, as the company needs every billion. That Altman is not a cheap guy, but I'll come back to that. Looking at the numbers, the financial performance of Alphabet, Google's parent company, has not suffered from the rise of OpenAI: 

Quarter | revenue | net income
Q4 2022 | 76.05 | 13.62
Q4 2023 | 86.31 | 20.69                     

These are amounts in billions of dollars, pushing Alphabet's projected revenue toward three hundred and fifty billion dollars this year. That is comparable to the GDP of Colombia or Denmark, so Google's obituaries are somewhat premature.

Incidentally, am I the only one who thinks, upon reading that Hassabis has a Chinese-Singaporean mother and a Greek-Cypriot father, "so nice, how will they have met

Voice clone not public for a while yet, because of... voting?

Back to OpenAI, which announced it had created a voice clone application, but currently only for a select group of companies because of the dangers of misuse.

"We recognize that generating speech that resembles people’s voices has serious risks, which are especially top of mind in an election year" said OpenAI, which claims it can mimic someone's voice with just 15 seconds of recording a person talking.

An investigation is already underway into an incident in which thousands of voters received "robocalls" from President Biden during the Democratic primaries in New Hampshire - at least, that's what they thought, because it wasn't him. Although Biden could also have been mistaken, which apparently happens to him occasionally.

According to ChatGPT, this is what Stargate will look like. 

A hundred billion dollar data center

The phenomenal site The Information had another scoop: Microsoft and OpenAI are working on a whopping one hundred billion dollar data center for an AI supercomputer with the delightfully pretentious name of Stargate. This in an effort to reduce dependence on Nvidia.

Reading the reports more closely, I'm especially interested in the rounding off method used by the journalists who reported the story: apparently, the project is estimated to cost "more than one hundred and fifteen billion dollars," but that doesn't look as good, so they rounded it off, downwards, to one hundred billion. For that fifteen billion after the decimal point, thirty juggernauts of data centers could normally be built. In AI, everything is bigger and more expensive; but a few hundred times more expensive?

Elon Musk and Amazon are still in it

Musk announced on X that his latest AI chatbot, Grok 1.5, will be available next week and will be better than all AI models, but he also said the same thing about the built quality of the Tesla Cybertruck before the window shattered seconds later. In short, we'll see.

Amazon announced it was investing nearly three billion dollars in OpenAI competitor Anthropic, maker of AI chatbot Claude. I enjoyed the way the Amazon man barely gave the journalist a chance to ask a question and regurgitated his entire press release, seemingly without breathing. You can see him trying to hold his laughter.

Open source AI model: Databricks

In the titanic battle between OpenAI/Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta, it is nice that startup Databricks has managed to develop a powerful open source AI model. Hopefully this will prove to be a serious option for startups and large companies to develop new AI applications without dependence on the Big Tech titans.

Last notable fact: among all the calls for software startups at leading startup incubator Y Combinator, Sam Altman's former employer, was a call to bring old-fashioned manufacturing back to the United States. Indeed, it is helpful if people can build something, especially when well over a hundred billion is being put into a new kind of data center. In this, Elon Musk is right: there is a lot of focus on design, but not enough on production. Microsoft and OpenAI are going to experience that when they actually start building a mega data center combined with a supercomputer. That's something very different from a big X-Box.

Spotlight 9: Cathie Wood guardian angel of Tesla

A dull stock market week, in which Tesla suddenly rises after a horror quarter

In what has been so far a dramatic year for Tesla, in which the company lost nearly 30 percent of its market capitalization, becoming the worst-performing stock in the S&P 500, TSLA shares suddenly rose more than five percent this week.

Cathie Wood's Ark Innovation ETF bought TSLA on Monday for twenty-eight million dollars, and as if that wasn't enough, Ark pocketed some more Tesla shares on Thursday for fourteen million dollars. Earlier this month Ark published a jubilant analysis of Tesla to which Musk responded briefly on X with: "wow.

Ark Invest has about as many haters as fans but at least it dares to come up with striking public reflections. Hopefully Ark will be proved right with this optimistic view of the near future:

"Techno-economic discontinuity is a process whereby technological breakthroughs create sudden and unprecedented transformations. Such discontinuities occurred during the second industrial revolution after introductions of the internal combustion engine, electrification, and telephony. We believe that a similar, unprecedented technological boom is now underway. ARK identifies five innovation platforms—Public Blockchains, Multiomic Sequencing, Energy Storage, Robotics, and Artificial Intelligence—as the areas of technological foment creating the most meaningful convergences today. They are the emerging “general purpose technologies”1 that we believe will transform and accelerate economic growth."

- Ark Invest

This is a very positive vision, but one strongly focused on economic progress. If this economic growth can be accompanied by the development of technology that enables large-scale removal of CO2 from the atmosphere, there is hope for the world.

I would love to hear your response and tips and comments are always very welcome.

Enjoy your Sunday, see you next week!

Categories
AI crypto technology

Google in total panic by OpenAI, fakes AI demo

At last, Google's response to ChatGPT's OpenAI appeared this week, highlighted by a video of Gemini, the intended OpenAI killer. The response was moderately positive; until Friday, when it was revealed that Google had manipulated some crucial segments of the introductory video. The subsequent reactions were scathing.

Google makes a video, fake 1. Er, take 1. (Image created with Dall-E)

Google was showered with scorn and the first lawsuits should be imminent. A publicly traded company cannot randomly provide misinformation that could affect its stock price. Google is clearly in panic and feels attacked by OpenAI at the heart of the company: making information accessible.

Google under great pressure

It was bound to happen. CEO Sundar Pichai of Alphabet Inc, Google's parent company, went viral earlier this year with this brilliant montage of his speech at the Google I/O event in which he uttered the word AI no less than twenty-three times in fifteen minutes. The entire event lasted two hours, during which the term AI fell over one hundred and forty times. The message was clear: Google sees AI as an elementary technology.

Meanwhile, Google's AI service Bard continued to fall short of market leader OpenAI's ChatGPT in every way. Then when Microsoft continued to invest in OpenAI, running up the investment tab to a whopping $13 billion while OpenAI casually reported that it was on its way to annual sales of more than a billion dollars, all alarm bells went off at Google.

The two departments working on AI at Google, called DeepMind and Google Brain - there was clearly no shortage of self-confidence among the chief nerds - were forced to merge and this combined brain power should have culminated in the ultimate answer to ChatGPT, codenamed Gemini. With no less than seventeen(!) videos, Google introduced this intended ChatGPT killer.

Fake Google video

Wharton professor Ethan Mollick soon expressed doubts about the quality of Gemini. Bloomberg journalist Parmy Olson also smelled something fishy and published a thorough analysis.

The challenged Gemini video

Watch this clip from Gemini's now infamous introduction video, in which Gemini seems to know which cup to lift. Moments later, Gemini seems even more intelligent, as it immediately recognizes "rock, paper, scissors" when someone makes hand gestures. Unfortunately, this turns out to be total nonsense.

This is how Gemini was trained in reality. Totally different than the video makes it appear.

Although a blog post explained how the fascinating video was put together, hardly anyone who watched the YouTube video will click through to that apparently accompanying explanation. It appears from the blog post that Gemini was informed via a text prompt that it is a game, with the clue: "Hint: it's a game."

This undermines the whole "wow effect" of the video. The fascination we initially have as viewers has its roots in our hope that a computer will one day truly understand us; as humans, with our own form of communication, without a mouse or keyboard. What Gemini does may still be mind-blowing, but it does not conform to the expectation that was raised in the video.

It's like having a date arranged for you with that very famous Cindy, that American icon of the 1990s, and as you're all dressed up in your lucky sweater waiting for Cindy Crawford, it's Cindy Lauper who slides in across from you. It's awesome and cozy and sure you take that selfie together, but it's still different.

The line between exaggeration and fraud

The BBC analyzed another moment in the video that seriously violates the truth:

"At one point, the user (the Google employee) places down a world map and asks the AI,"Based on what you see, come up with a game idea ... and use emojis." The AI responds by seemingly inventing a game called "guess the country," in which it gives clues, such as a kangaroo and koala, and responds to a correct guess by the user pointing to a country, in this case Australia.

But in reality, according to Google's blog post, Gemini did not invent this game at all. Instead, the following instructions were given to the AI: "Let's play a game. Think of a country and give me a clue. The clue must be specific enough that there is only one correct country. I will try to point to the country on a map," the instructions read.

That is not the same as claiming that the AI invented the game. Google's AI model is impressive regardless of its use of still images and text-based prompts - but those facts mean that its capabilities are very similar to those of OpenAI's GPT-4.'

With that typical British understatement, the BBC disqualifies the PR circus that Google tried to set up. Google's intention was to give OpenAI a huge blow, but in reality Google shot itself in the foot. Several Google employees expressed their displeasure on internal forums. That's not helpful for Google in the job market competition for AI talent.

Because in these very weeks when OpenAI appeared to be even worse run than an amateur soccer club, Google could have made the difference by offering calm, considerate and, above all, factual information through Gemini.

Trust in Google damaged

Instead, it launched a desperate attack. I'm frankly disappointed that Google faked such an intricate video, when to the simple question "give me a six-letter French word," Gemini still answers with "amour, the French word for love. That's five letters, Gemini.

The brains at Google who fed Gemini with data have apparently rarely been to France, or they could have given the correct answer: 'putain, the French word for any situation.'

Google's brand equity and market leadership are based on the trust and credibility it has built by trying to honestly provide answers to our search questions. The company whose mission is to make the world's information organized and accessible needs to be much more careful about how it tries to unlock that information.

Techcrunch sums it up succinctly, "Google's new Gemini AI model is getting a mixed reception after its big debut yesterday, but users may have less confidence in the company's technology or integrity after finding out that Gemini's most impressive demo was largely staged."

Right now, Google is still playing cute with rock-paper-scissors, but once Gemini is fully available it is expected to provide relevant answers to questions such as, I'll name a few, who can legitimately claim Gaza, Crimea or the South China Sea. After this week, who has confidence that Gemini can provide meaningful answers to these questions?

Hey Google, you're on the front page of the newspaper. True story (Image created with Dall-E).

How many billion ican OpenAI snatch rom Google?

The reason Google is reacting so desperately to the success of OpenAI is obviously because it feels it is being threatened there were it hurts: the crown jewels. In the third quarter of 2023, Alphabet Inc. the parent company of Google reported total revenue of seventy-seven billion dollars.

A whopping 78% of that was generated from Google's advertising business, which amounts to nearly sixty billion dollars. Note: in one quarter. Google sells close to seven hundred million dollars in advertising per day and is on track to rake in thirty million dollars - per hour.

ChatGPT reached over a hundred million users within two months of its launch, and it is not inconceivable that OpenAI will halve Google's reach with ChatGPT within a few years. Everyone I know who uses ChatGPT, especially those with paid subscriptions, of which there are already millions of users, says they already rarely use Google.

Google has far more reach than it can sell so decrease in reach does not equate to a proportional decrease in revenue; but it is only a matter of time before ChatGPT manages to link a good form of advertising to the specific search queries. I mean: there's a company that makes millions per hour selling blue links above answers...

Falling stock market value means exodus of talent

Google will then quickly be able to drop from one of the world's most valuable companies with a market capitalization of $1.7 trillion (1,700 billion) to, say, half - and then be worth about as much as Google's hated, loathed competitor in the advertising market: Meta, the creator of in Google's brains simple, low-down social media like Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp. Oh, the horror.

This is especially important because in this scenario, the workforce, which in the tech sector never perks up from declines in the value of their options, is much more likely to move to companies that do rapidly increase in value. Such as OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.

Spotlight 9: the most hated stock market rally

'The most hated rally,' says Meltem Demirors: the rise of Bitcoin and Ethereum continues.

'The most hated rally,' is how crypto oracle Meltem Demirors aptly describes the situation in the crypto sector. ' Everyone is tired of hearing about crypto, but baby, we're back!'

After all the scandals in the crypto sector, the resignation of Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, CZ for people who want to pretend they used to play in the sandbox with him, seems to have been the signal to push the market upward. I wrote last March about the problems at Binance in meeting the most basic forms of compliance.

According to Demirors, macroeconomic factors play a bigger role, such as expected interest rate declines and the rising U.S. budget deficit. The possible adoption of Bitcoin ETFs is already priced in and the wait is on for institutional investors to get into crypto. Consumers already seem to be slowly returning. Crypto investors, meanwhile, seem more likely to hold Ethereum alongside Bitcoin.

Investing and giving birth

I continue to be confirmed in my conviction that professional investors understand as much about technology as men understand about childbirth: of course there are difficult studies and wonderful theoretical reflections on it, but from what I hear from experts in the field of childbirth (mothers) it turns out to be a crucial difference whether you are standing next to a delivery, puffing along, or bringing new life into this world yourself. There is a similar difference in investing in technology or developing it.

I don't think there is a person working in the tech sector who, after reading through the reactions to Google's Gemini announcement, thought, "that looks great, I need to buy some Alphabet shares soon.

But what did Reuters report, almost cheerfully: "Alphabet shares ended 5.3% higher Thursday, as Wall Street cheers the arrival of Gemini, saying the new artificial intelligence model could help close the gap in the race with Microsoft-backed OpenAI."

Ken Mahoney, CEO of Mahoney Asset Management (I detect a family relationship) said "There are different ways to grow your business, but one of the best ways is with the same customer base by giving them more solutions or more offers and that's what I believe this (Gemini) is doing for Google."

The problem with people who believe something is that they often do so without any factual basis. By the way, Bitcoin and Ethereum rose more than Alphabet (Google) last week.

Other short news

The Morin and Lessin couples are journalists, entrepreneurs and investors, making them a living reflection of the Silicon Valley tech ecosystem.

Together they make an interesting podcast that this week includes a discussion of Google's Gemini and the crypto rally.

It's great that Google founder Sergey Brin is back to programming at Google out of pure passion. The Wall Street Journal caught onto it this summer. Curious what Brin thinks of the marketing efforts of Gemini, which he himself is working on.

Elon Musk's AI company, x.AI, is looking for some start-up capital and with a billion, they can at least keep going for a few months. Which does immediately raise the question of why Musk accepts outside meddling and doesn't take the round himself. Perhaps he already expects to have to make a substantial contribution to x.com, the former Twitter.

Mistral, the French AI hope in difficult days for the European tech scene, didn't make a video, not even a whitepaper or blog post, but it linked in a tweet to a torrent file of their new model, attractively named MoE 8x7B. It made one humorous Twitter user sigh "wait you guys are doing it wrong, you should only publish a blog post, without a model." It will be a while before people stop taking aim like this at Google. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, only amour for Mistral.

Details should become clear in the coming days, but the fact that Amnesty International is already protesting because of the lack of a ban on facial recognition is worrying. EU Commissioner Breton believes this puts Europe at the forefront of AI and therefore he would likely thrive as a tech investor on Wall Street.

CFO Paul Vogel got kicked while he was already down: "Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said the decision was made because Vogel did not have the experience needed to both expand the company and meet market expectations." Vogel was not available for comment but still sold over $9 million worth of options. It remains difficult to build a stable business as an intermediary of other people's media.

Apparently, MBS is an avid gamer. After soccer and golf, Saudi Arabia is now plunging into online gaming and e-sports.

I hold out hope that AI will be used in medical technology, to more quickly detect diseases, make diagnoses or develop treatments. But right now, the smartest kids in the class seem focused on developing AI videos that mimic the dances of real people on TikTok.

Where are the female automotive designers? 'Perhaps the way forward in the automotive industry lies neither with the feminine (the unwritten page) nor the masculine (full steam ahead), but somewhere in the middle that combines the practical and the poetic, with or without a ponytail,' according to Wired.