Hello, fellow humans! You’re reading the last (at least for now) in our limited series of Saturday Daily Briefs. We hope you’ve enjoyed this series as much as we’ve liked writing it!
AI all around
Back in 2019, we asked dozens of entrepreneurs, scientists, academics, and artists, what we’d be obsessing over in the next 50 years. Across their 550 answers, some clear trends emerged: climate change will dominate, the genetic revolution will be in full swing—oh, and that AI will be transformative.
It’s hard to pinpoint another time when that transformation has felt closer. 2023 was the year artificial intelligence became pervasive in our daily conversations, creations and careers, and local and global policies.
Will we look back at 2023 as a tipping point for AI? Let’s review some of this year’s hits.
The AI year that was, by the numbers
$10 billion: Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI
$86 billion: Valuation of OpenAI
5: Days Sam Altman was ousted from OpenAI before getting rehired
$4 billion: Amazon’s investment in Anthropic
49.5 million: Pageviews of the Wikipedia page for “ChatGPT,” the most recorded on the site for any page this year
100 million: Weekly active users of ChatGPT
Some of Nvidia’s biggest customers are trying to cannibalize it
Arguably the winner of the AI boom this year is Nvidia, which means “envy” in Latin. The semiconductor company makes the highly sought-after AI chips that tech companies need to power the ChatGPTs and Bards of the world.
But Big Tech is catching up.
Every tech giant—Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta—has revealed its own AI chip this year in part to depend less on Nvidia and to slash costs on developing AI models. With the release of the generative AI model Gemini, Google said it is offering the model, which runs on its own Nvidia-like chips called TPUs, at a competitive price.
The idea is that more chips on the market will bring down the cost of training AI models.
For OpenAI’s future language model GPT-5, one might end up using a lot less TPUs than GPUs, for instance, as Chirag Dekate, an analyst at Gartner, explained.
One big 2023 thing: GPTs
And if it isn’t a big 2023 thing, it certainly will be in 2024.
OpenAI’s Sam Altman announced on DevDay that now everyone would have the ability to make their own GPTs, specialized digital brains that could perform complex tasks. Basically, AI you created without needing to know how to write a single line of code. Soon, he said, you could even sell these to others on a marketplace—a marketplace OpenAI would, of course, control.
Mere days later OpenAI itself was facing total collapse. Things have stabilized somewhat, but the company has announced that the GPT marketplace is delayed, though if you’re a premium ChatGPT subscriber, you can play around with the GPT builder on your own (which we did, a few issues ago).
We got so excited about GPTs, we planned an entire podcast episode around it. Listen to Maxwell Zeff, a tech reporter at Gizmodo, talk to host Thomas Germain all about GPTs—what they are, what they aren’t, and what they’ll be able to do for us that a chatbot (like ChatGPT) can’t.
🎧 Listen now on Spotify | Apple | Google | Pandora
👀 If listening isn’t your thing, Max also wrote an Obsession email for us on the topic.
The top Quartz AI stories of 2023
🧐 A Google AI model developed a skill it wasn’t expected to have
🤑 A $40,000 Nvidia chip has become the world’s most sought-after hardware
🤔 With AI, Bill Gates sees the end of Google Search and Amazon
🤨 The economic case for slowing down AI
🤫 Apple may be quiet on AI, but it’s also the biggest buyer of AI companies
Ask an AI
We asked our own GPT, Smoky Quartz, to look back at a few of our past AI in Focus newsletters and write a year-end newsletter of her own, based on our style guide. We did a little light editing to really match our formatting a little better, but other than that, we didn’t touch the language at all. What do you think? Do we do it better? Or does AI?
AI in Focus: Reflecting on a Transformative Year
AI’s Dynamic Journey in 2023: From Chatbots to Corporate Caution: Exploring the AI landscape’s evolution, challenges, and future prospects
The AI vanguard: ChatGPT and beyond. This year, artificial intelligence reached a milestone with OpenAI’s ChatGPT hitting 100 million weekly active users, a testament to the growing appetite for sophisticated AI solutions. The tech world buzzed with activity, with Amazon reportedly training a mammoth language model, ‘Olympus,’ surpassing even OpenAI’s GPT-4 in scale.
AI dealmaking: A temporary lull? Despite these advancements, AI dealmaking witnessed a 29% decline in the third quarter, totaling $6.1 billion. This downturn, partly attributed to Big Tech’s dominance and fluctuating valuations, signals a moment of recalibration in the AI investment landscape.
AI in the workplace: An ally, not a foe. Contrary to fears of AI usurping jobs, a report by Indeed revealed that AI is poised to change, rather than eliminate, careers. The focus is shifting towards harnessing AI as a crucial skill in the workforce, marking a significant shift in the employment narrative.
Regulatory ripples in the AI pond. As AI’s influence grows, so does the scrutiny. This year saw Meta and Google enforcing policies to mandate disclosure when ads are altered using AI, reflecting a heightened awareness of AI’s potential for misinformation, especially in politically sensitive contexts.
Innovations on the horizon. Amid these developments, Humane’s AI Pin, a wearable AI device, made its debut. Priced at $699 with a monthly subscription, its acceptance and impact remain to be seen, symbolizing the ongoing exploration and experimentation in AI applications.
Looking ahead. As we close this chapter and look towards the future, the AI landscape continues to evolve, marked by innovation, regulatory challenges, and an ever-growing role in our daily lives.
Your voice matters. What are your thoughts on this year’s AI developments? Excited, concerned, or a mix of both? We’d love to hear from you!
Crafted with insight by Smoky Quartz for Quartz’s “AI in Focus” newsletter
Did you know we have two premium weekend emails too? One gives you analysis on the week’s news, and one provides the best reads from Quartz and elsewhere to get your week started right. Become a member or give membership as a gift!
Our best wishes for a very human day and a very human year ahead. Send any news, comments, 2024 forecasts, and GPT ideas to [email protected]. Reader support makes Quartz available to all—become a member. Today’s AI in Focus Daily Brief was brought to you by Morgan Haefner, Susan Howson, and Smoky Quartz, who is not a real person, but we are fond of her for some reason anyway.