A week's worth of tech news that takes you 5 minutes to read

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Welcome to this week's download! All the news you need to keep you relevant for the week of 1/29/2023. Highlights include:

• The AI feeding frenzy

• Salesforce family drama

• Scientists are trying to kill us all

 Total read time: 4 minutes 52 seconds. Let's goooooo! 🚀

AI Feeding Frenzy

AI (artificial intelligence) is everywhere you look these days. We've spent the last few weeks discussing ChatGPT positioning itself as the leader in the space (although, if you ask Meta's top AI scientist, he's not impressed). ChatGPT's parent company Open.AI made the news this week with Microsoft announcing a multi-year, multi-billion (with a b) dollar investment/partnership which will allow developers and organizations to access the Open.AI infrastructure, models, and toolchains within the Azure platform. In addition, Microsoft plans to deploy OpenAI's models across its products, including Bing, Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook.

However, the overall AI market is scorching hot as investors are itching to get in. One article this week asked if AI was the new Crypto? To answer that question, let's check the crypto-trifecta:

1. Media obsession ✅

2. An insane amount of money invested ✅

3. Social media "influencers" pretending to know what they're talking about ✅

...so all the indicators seem there. 🤷🏽

ChatGPT aside, here's a list of some of the hottest AI tools, for business people, on the market:

• Jasper.AI will write blog posts for you

• DoNotPay is the world's first AI lawyer

• Dall-E-2 make you a picture from your description

• Timely uses AI to track your time

• Fireflies takes notes for you

• And in competition for the creep award is Calligrapher.AI which uses machine learning to duplicate anyone's handwriting

Salesforce Drama

Salesforce is facing pressure from activist firm Elliott Management to overhaul the company, including moves to sell off Slack, MuleSoft, and Tableau and end the company's remote work policy. The movement has Salesforce employees worried about potential additional layoffs beyond those already announced. In addition, Salesforce board members have to be reelected every year, a fact that may be exploited by investors at the next shareholder's meeting by nominating directors who favor Elliott's mission.

However, it should be pointed out that fresh faces on the Salesforce board may not be a bad thing. For example, five of the current board members have served for over 15 years.

At Tiktok, It's All About Who You Know

Some TikTok employees have the ability to sidestep the algorithm and boost videos by putting selected videos into users' For You pages. The 'Heating' feature aims to introduce celebrities and emerging creators to the TikTok community and diversify the content experience. TikTok claims that only around 0.002% of videos in For You feeds are heated, but an external report claims that heated videos make up around 1-2% of total daily video views. 🙄

Google is TERRIFIED of Microsoft

Google plans to unveil more than 20 projects powered by artificial intelligence this year, a move to combat Microsoft's recent AI undertaking. One of the projects will be a version of its search engine with chatbot features. The company recently announced that it would lay off more than 12,000 employees and focus on AI as a domain of primary importance. Some AI projects are set to debut during Google's annual I/O event in May.

Amazon Deals Drugs 💊

Amazon launched RxPass, a subscription exclusive to Prime members for shipping eligible prescriptions to their doorsteps. For $5 a month, members can have unlimited medications delivered for free as long as they're qualified. The program includes drugs that treat more than 80 common health conditions. Medications can be delivered on either a monthly or quarterly basis, depending on prescription requirements. A link to the complete list can be found here.

Just for fun, I asked ChatGPT "What should Amazon call its pharmacy service?" and here's what it came up with:

1. Amazon Pharmacy

2. Prime Health

3. The Medicine Cabinet

4. PillPack by Amazon

5. Health Hub.

Spotlight story

Robots are Rising. Blame the Nerds

If you've followed my newsletter for a while, you probably know I have an unhealthy fear of Robots rising against the human race. It could be because I've watched too many science-fiction movies, but I often feel my fear is justified.

Why, you ask? Because science keeps doing things to prove me right. This week we found out that shape-shifting robots are now a thing. 😳

The great minds at Carnegie Melon University have now created a "soft robot" that can transform from solid metal to liquid metal or what they call "magnetoactive phase transitional matter" (MPTM), which uses magnetic fields to help robots change shape and move through a space. Yes, there are biomedical benefits, as future versions of an MPTM robot might be able to deliver medications to specific organs or extract dangerous objects from the body. However, this was also the baseline for the Terminator movies, as they've now created the technology for the T-1000 robots to be developed.

We're already well on our way to having a real-life SKYNET, and now liquid shape-shifting robots are on the horizon. So how is it possible that these guys have never seen how these movies end? 🫣

Rapid Fire

• Stripe wants to go public

• Apple's "Reality Pro" Headsets: First Look 👍🏼

• Coming soon: Mini Nuclear Power Plants

• Big Banks want to take down Apple Pay

• World's First Hydrogen-Powered Train in China

• Scientists built a working tractor beam

• US House of Reps to vote on Tiktok Ban

• Spotify has another outage

• Built buys Roin in construction robots mega-move

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