Lifeboat Foundation

ChatGPT3 became the newest internet sensation last year when it allows users to generate text and answer complex questions in a manner that seems almost human. But, beyond the prowess of ChatGPT3, the underlying impact of the technology — generative AI — on business is only just coming into focus.

ChatGPT3, together with its image-generating cousin Dall-E, has the potential to revolutionize the way content is created, from blogs to white papers, student essays to business correspondence. It provides access to expert-level syntax and grammar to anyone who uses it. But this also raises some important ethical questions.

This is not the first time that technology has captured the attention of the public. IBM Watson made headlines in 2011 when it won the television game show Jeopardy! and Amazon’s AMZN virtual assistant, Alexa, has been answering questions through smart speakers since its commercial debut in 2014.

Let me pick up where I left off ahead of Christmas by reiterating the fives themes for 2023 (‘War by Other Means’) that I had put together with David Skilling. The note details the trends we expect to materialise through the year as intense strategic competition between regions takes hold.

ChatGPT brings AI into our everyday lives, highlighting also its use in many other domains such as medicine and justice.

Tech isn’t as collegial.

Tech isn’t as collegial as it used to be. Rocket ships are being unveiled as sputtering messes, mission-driven startups don’t feel so mission oriented when responding to investor pressure, and widespread layoffs offer a loud reminder that jobs are breakable contracts not sacrosanct vows.

Over the past few months, thousands of employees from Meta, Twitter, Stripe, Amazon, DoorDash and countless other companies that don’t have the privilege of being household names are back on the job market. A job market that includes hiring freezes, salary cuts and a general malaise that industry experts warn won’t be over this year.

Continue reading “Burned: ‘Not everybody is walking away with a year’s worth of runway in their pocket’” »

We’ve met with Mojo Vision for several CESes, watching the startup’s AR contact lenses develop, year by year. These sorts of things take a lot of time and money, of course — and these days it seems increasingly difficult to find either. Today, the California-based firm announced that it is “decelerating” work on the Mojo Lens, citing, “significant challenges in raising capital.”

In an announcement posted to it site, CEO Drew Perkins blames insurmountable headwinds, including the bad economy and the “yet-to-be proven market potential for advanced AR products” in its ability to raise the necessary funding required to keep the project afloat.

“Although we haven’t had the chance yet to see it ship and to reach its full potential in the marketplace, we have proven that what was once considered science fiction can be developed into a technical reality,” Perkins writes. “Even though the pursuit of our vision for Invisible Computing is on hold for now, we strongly believe that there will be a future market for Mojo Lens and expect to accelerate it when the time is right.”

Packing battery tech nobody uses in consumer devices and a half-horsepower motor, BlenderCap is one of the most ludicrously over-engineered products we’ve seen in a hot minute. At CES in Las Vegas, we took a closer look at talked with the team behind the product to find out more.

Let’s start with, er, why do we need a portable blender in the first place?

“We originally invented this just for personal use for making smoothies after the gym. I was going to CrossFit, and I wanted a protein shake after that. I made myself a shake, and it just got sort of melted and lumpy after you have worked out for an hour or two,” says Dakota Adams, co-founder at the company. “Then the idea came along to put a blender onto these Hydroflask-style bottles. Matthew [Moore] and I became friends and began working on how to pack that technology into a tiny little cap.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQ-6Q8pHQE0

Today I’m looking at Elon Musk’s must read science fiction books. Thanks for watching.

Intro — 0:00
The Foundation Saga — 1:09
Atlas Shrugged — 2:22
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — 3:38
The Dune Chronicles — 4:27
Stranger in a Strange Land — 5:38
The Culture series — 6:24
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress — 8:01
Daemon series — 8:43
The Machine Stops — 9:47

Continue reading “ELON MUSK’s must-read science fiction” »

When you donate someone else’s money.

Some charities have voluntarily agreed to return the funds, some have already spent the money, while others are awaiting legal clarity.

Humans are eternally curious about the night sky, but figuring out how to use a telescope is non-trivial. At CES in Las Vegas, Unistellar believes it has the perfect solution with its Equinox 2 Smart Telescope.

“When I was a young teenager, I had a telescope that I used during the long summer nights. Fast forward to being an adult – I didn’t have any more time to do astronomy. With a friend of mine, we started to think about what we can do to bring astronomy back to our busy daily lives,” says Laurent Marfisi, co-founder and CEO of Unistellar in an interview with TechCrunch. “We thought up a telescope that is easy to use, that is powerful enough to see through the light pollution, and that has the possibility to reveal galaxies and nebulae, all those things that we could not see even when we were teenagers. The aim is to bring a lot of the power that professionals have in astronomy into the daily lives of consumers who just want to have fun, spend good quality time with their children and their friends around astronomy.”

SpaceX makes 1,000 flights per year the goal for its next-generation Starship.

In 2022 SpaceX set a record for rocket launches achieving 61. But the company’s long-term goal is to get to 1,000 per year in a decade.