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Top stories today:1) Amazon launches AWS Bedrock, partnering with Anthropic, AI21, and Stable Diffusion2) Meta open sources its Animated Drawings project3) Solana launches their Web3 smartphone Saga4) Bernard Arnault's wealth reaches $210B, a record for him5) Twitter promises no fees for 12 months on Monetization platform6) Police arrest IT consultant as suspect of San Francisco murder

0. Data and calendar

1. Amazon launches AWS Bedrock, partnering with Anthropic, AI21, and Stable Diffusion

• Goal is to be the Switzerland of AI models, offering many options, and not investing in any company, unlike Microsoft and Google, which have invested heavily in OpenAI ($13B) and Anthropic ($300M), respectively. - WSJ, AWS

• LLMs were also highlighted in Amazon's 2022 annual letter: "I could write an entire letter on LLMs and Generative AI as I think they will be that transformative, but I’ll leave that for a future letter. Let’s just say that LLMs and Generative AI are going to be a big deal for customers, our shareholders, and Amazon." - Amazon shareholder letter

Amazon's problem is that GPT-4 today is by far the best LLM

• Will LLMs be winner-takes-all or competitive? The thesis on the former is that GPT-4 is already a few years ahead of its competitors and will use its Plugins capabilities to build a community of apps around its software, thus establishing a strong moat.

  • The counter-argument is that competitors like Anthropic (founded by former OpenAI employees) can catch up in a few months and that Plugins might be cross-compatible.

On the other hand, Amazon does have more AI employees than any other Big Tech company

2. Meta open sources its Animated Drawings project, still playing low stakes

It is literally a software that converts drawings into animated videos:

Read more: Engadget, Animated Drawings.

Cool, but... where are Meta's actual useful AI products?

• Meta semi-launched an LLM (LLaMA), but it was only with 65B parameters (vs. 1T of OpenAI's GPT-4), so its quality was also much worse.

  • Meta released its scientific LLM Galactica, but pulled it back after 3 days.

  • Meta has a prolific and outspoken Chief AI Scientist, Yann LeCun, so it's unlikely a matter of lack of talent.

• Given all that, where are Meta's revolutionary AI products?

In other AI news...

• The European Data Protection Board creates a task force on ChatGPT.

• Google showcases robots that sort waste and recyclables. AI-powered robots have the potential to be 100x more powerful than LLMs, given they could do most human physical labor (think infinite construction workers).

• Spark Capital hires Fraser Kelton, former OpenAI head of product, as venture partner.

• Stable Diffusion XL Beta now available.

• GPT4All-J is announced: open-source chatbot that can run locally.

3. Solana launches their Web3 smartphone Saga

• Powerful Android phone, with hardware wallet and 0%-fee dapp store.

  • Powerful phone: "Snapdragon® 8+ Gen 1 Mobile Platform, 12GB of RAM, 512GB of Flash, 6.67” OLED display."

  • Built-in hardware wallet: "Sign your transactions easily, quickly and securely thanks to Seed Vault, a secure custody protocol that protects your keys from malicious actors via secure biometrics and password entry, and hardware-supported encryption of your keys. Not even the Android OS has access." - Decrypt, Solana

  • 16 apps available: "At launch, 16 dapps will be available for download on the Solana app store. These apps include Audius, Dialect, Jupiter Aggregator, Ledger, Magic Eden, Mango Markets, Marinade, and Squads, just to name a few." - Blockworks

• $1,000, available to order now in the U.S., EU, the United Kingdom, Canada, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand.

This phone makes theoretical sense, but Web3 and Solana haven't reached the masses

• People are happy to gamble on Binance, but are not yet into transferring money using hardware wallets. Very few online or physical stores accept crypto, and given the proliferation of zero-fee fintech apps and the fact that businesses (not consumers) pay most credit card fees, the usefulness of crypto as a payment method is limited, in the eyes of most consumers today.

• Crypto's main use case today is store of value, which favors a hardware wallet like Ledger that the user stores in a lock box, not carry with them throughout the day.

4. Bernard Arnault's wealth reaches $210B, a record for him; Musk 2nd at $180B

Americans have the technology; the French have luxury goods:

As a reminder, Elon Musk's wealth reached $338B in 2021, so he's almost 50% down. But who's counting?

5. Elon Musk promises no fees for 12 months on Twitter's Monetization platform

• Currently only available to some U.S. users.

• Clearly, a great feature to have, and it also provides some defense against competitors like Substack Notes (which, by the way, charges a 10% fee).

Twitter is also expected to launch a "Verified only for you" tab

Which would favor verified users, in line with Elon trying to boost subscription revenue:

Twitter is also introducing a 10K character limit, bold, and italics

Read more: Techcrunch.

6. Police arrest IT consultant as suspect of tech founder murdered in San Francisco

• Nima Momeni, suspect:

  • IT consultant

  • Spent 10 days in jail for driving with a suspended license, following a previous arrest for drunk driving. He was also charged with illegal possession of a switchblade knife, but it was dismissed. - Bloomberg

Some argue that this is evidence that, actually, SF is pretty safe

After all, this is not the kind of drug-related or homelessness-related violence that the doomers cry about, they say:

But most San Franciscans still see crime as a major problem

7. More wives are working and earning more in U.S. marriages

The egalitarian trend continues:

Most couples believe egalitarian marriages are better for the children

Read more: Pew Research Center.

8. Other headlines

Tech

• Substack CEO: interview on Notes, Twitter, more.

• Betaworks' new accelerator has $500K investment, following YC and HF0.

• Whatsapp making it harder for hackers to steal your account.

• Hackers break into Western Digital, asking for 8-digit ransom.

• Code Conference to be hosted by Nilay Patel, Casey Newton, and Julia Boorstin.

• Ice cream appears to be good for you, but many scientists don't want to talk about it.

• Barry Diller thinks AI is another big threat to the publishing industry.

Business

• PPI -0.5% MoM, +2.7% YoY; Core PPI -0.1% MoM, 3.6% YoY.

• Insider loans have increased at regional banks since 2021, revering long-term trend.

• U.S. to push back against China's "coercion" at G7 meeting in Japan.

• Germany to finalize closing of all its nuclear power on Saturday.

Crypto

• Gensler blasted by House Republicans, who want details on SEC <> SBF.

• Bitboy ordered to appear before Miami court for harassing emails against attorney.

• MonkeDAO will purchase rights to Solana Monkey Business NFT collection for $2M.

U.S. politics

• FBI arrests Airman First Class Jack Teixeira in connection to leaked docs.

• DeSantis quietly signs Florida's 6-week abortion ban into law, with exceptions for rape and incest only up to 15 weeks; 75% oppose the bill.

• White House asking Supreme Court to revert abortion pill restrictions.

• DeSantis asks Florida Congressmen to stop endorsing Trump.

• DeSantis continues to refuse to attack Trump directly in new ads.

• Trump answers 7 hours of questions in NY fraud deposition.

• Appeals court denies ruling on Trump's official capacity in Carroll suit.

• Reid Hoffman has been funding Carroll's lawsuit.

• Clarence Thomas' mother still lives in home sold to billionaire.

World

• WSJ reporter could be swapped after trial, says Russian Deputy Foreign Minister.

• North Korea says it successfully launched solid-fuel ICBM, harder to target.

9. Interesting tweets, memes, and images

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