Meta + IBM = Open or Dystopian?
Welcome to AI Collision š„,
In todayās collision between AI and our world,
Napster, Gnutella and Winamp
AI going the way of the web?
Elonās next billion dollars
If thatās enough to get the torrents downloading, read onā¦
AI Collision š„ is AI going the way of the web?
I remember a time when the internet was just about āTop 10ā lists, Napster and Gnutella downloads of MP3s to play on Winamp and asking āJeevesā how to find cat videos.
It was a āsimplerā time back then. But then again, when you start thinking about nostalgic things, everything always seems like a āsimpler timeā.
Truth be told, back in the early 2000s things were equally as challenging, but the internet wasnāt awash with it all thenā¦ that would come as the internet itself grew to become one almighty global social infrastructure.
The growth and advancement of the internet, how we use it and how all industry is connected to it, is one of the most outstanding technology phenomena of human history.
As a result of the growth and expansion and advancement of the āwebā, wealth has been created at an unprecedented scale.
If the internet was not a āthingā then we would not have a company like Meta Inc. (NASDAQ:META) worth more than $800 billion. Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) would not be worth $1.6 trillion. Even a company like IBM (NYSE:IBM) wouldnāt have reached the heights of $150 billion plus in market cap.
This is just a sample of the companies now worth trillions of dollars in combined value. And before the turn of the century, a number of them didnāt even exist.
When you look at the rise of tech in our world, the connectivity to the web, the advances in speed, scale, you can see that with world-changing trends, comes immense wealthā¦ for a few.
You see, as the web was in its nascent stages, there was an opportunity for it to head down a different path.
In 1989, Sir Tim Berners-Lee (the creator of the World Wide Web) published his seminal paper, āInformation Management: A proposalā.
It was the foundation of the world wide web, using a ānon-linear text system known as āhypertextā.ā
As he noted in that paper:
āThe aim would be to allow a place to be found for any information or reference which one felt was important, and a way of finding it afterwards. The result should be sufficiently attractive to use that it the information contained would grow past a critical threshold, so that the usefulness the scheme would in turn encourage its increased use.ā
Several years later in 1997, as the internet was expanding, and commercial interests were digging deeper, a group of researchers from The Internet Society published, āA brief history of the internetāā Barry M. Leiner, Vinton G. Cerf, David D. Clark, Robert E. Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, Daniel C. Lynch, Jon Postel, Larry G. Roberts and Stephen Wolff were the authors.
Itās well worth a read, as they cover the internetās development to 1997 and a glimpse of what they saw coming (which all came true by the way).
But as they conclude the paper, they note,
āIf the Internet stumbles, it will not be because we lack for technology, vision, or motivation. It will be because we cannot set a direction and march collectively into the future.ā
Itās the age-old problem: at what point do we, or can we, march collectively into the future? Or is it the case that commercial interests will always take control?
The internet protocols are open and available for anyone to use. But the way in which we use the net, namely things like domain name space and cloud services, is highly centralised and concentrated.
Cloud alone is dominated by two players: Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. Together they control about 55% of all cloud services.
No wonder both Amazon and Microsoft are worth over $1 trillion each.
The reason Iām talking about the internet today is because the development of āin the wildā AI systems is also in its nascent stages.
In other words, weāre not in 1989, but weāre not completely in 1997 eitherā¦ somewhere in between.
Which means thereās still a chance that AI doesnāt go the way of the web and a select few gigantic commercial interests take over control of the AI tools that we all can use.
At the same time, thereās still a window of opportunity for the AI-world versions of Meta and Google to come from seemingly nowhere to be the titans of AI in the future.
However, it certainly feels like AI is fast getting to that fork in the road.
Already the giants of tech are lining up to take control. Just yesterday, Meta and IBM launched what theyāre calling the AI Alliance.
This āallianceā of 50 organisations (yes, just 50, at least to start with) is, ācoming together to support open innovation and open science in AI.ā
I dunno, but 50 organisations doesnāt seem very open to me.
You also have to remember that companies like IBM and Meta, and others included in the āallianceā including AMD, Sony, Dell, Intel and Oracle, donāt have a responsibility to āopenā anything.
They have a responsibility to return value to shareholders. So you always need to remember that what they say and what they want are often competing views.
Which ultimately means thereās probably little you can do about whether the future of AI is truly āopenā or whether these corporate interests find a way through āalliancesā like this to commercialise and make profits from its developmentā¦ just like they have with the web.
If the latter is the case, I guess thereās no point crying about it, but buying it instead.
If the future of AI is one led by Meta, IBM, Google, Microsoft, and anyone else, I guess the only thing to figure out (whether you like it or not) is how much youāre going to invest in each one.
AI Gone Wild š¤Ŗ
How long ago did Elon Musk launch X.ai, his AI company that heās integrating into X.com? Three, four, eight weeks ago?
The platformās AI, known as Grok, is supposed to be more advanced than anything else at delivering natural language responses to real-time, real-world events.
After all, it is trained on X.com data. And speaking of ātrainedā we also know that Elon had about 8,000 Nvidia A100 GPUs as the backend hardware that were used to train Grok. And that going forward, Elon said theyād be looking to double their compute with Grok every couple of months.
Well, weāre getting close to a couple of months from Grokās release already. So it must be time for Elon to load up on more A100s or whatever other AI GPU hardware heās going for (most likely Nvidia gear).
In fact, we know he must be loading up on hardware because heās going back to the capital markets to fund it.
X.ai is looking to raiseā¦
Wait for itā¦
It seems like the commercial interests are very strong with this one too.
Oh, and by the way, itās not an initial public offering (IPO). Youāre not getting anywhere near this capital raise. Most people never do get anywhere near these kinds of funding rounds.
At least most of the time.
There are a few ways to get exposure to these VC-level style plays. But maybe more on that in a couple of weeksā timeā¦
Nonetheless, a billion here, a billion there, it seems like the capital is well and truly flowing to AI still. It does suggest that if 2023 was the realisation that AI was going to reshape the very fabric of the worldā¦ then maybe 2024 is the year that will reshape the fabric of the markets and capital allocations.
I suspect that weāve not yet truly seen the AI mania take hold in the market, and that 2024 will see a spate of AI companies hit the market, IPO and reverse takeover (via SPACs) into the market again.
As capital starts to loosen up a bit and flow again, just wait and see what thatās going to do with AI companies. Elonās next AI billion is just the start.
Boomers & Busters š°
AI and AI-related stocks moving and shaking up the markets this week. (All performance data below over the rolling week).
Boom š
UiPath(NYSE:PATH) up 29%
Predictive Oncology (NASDAQ:POAI) up 8%
iRobot (NASDAQ:IRBT) up 7%
Bust š
Brainchip Holding (ASX:BRN) down 21%
Gorilla Technology (NASDAQ:GRRR) down 14%
Appen Ltd (ASX:APN) down 11%
From the hive mind š§
For all the good AI will bring, you can rely on the central bank to only think about the downside, like financial instability.
Nvidia dominates the AI chip market. And probably will for another year or two. But is AMD hot on its heels? Can AMD challenge the might of Nvidia. This chip may give them a shot.
But if AMD is challenging over there, then over here Nvidia seems to have a bit more respect for what Huawei is doing.
Artificial Polltelligence š³ļø
Based on our issue from Tuesday, I wonder how much youād care if short, sharp market updates came to you from a real person (like me) or from an AI avatar of me.
Weirdest AI image of the day
Harry Potter and the Suspicious Powder in a Burger King Bathroom ā r/Weirddalle
ChatGPT quote of the day
“Imagination is the Discovering Faculty, pre-eminently. It is that which penetrates into the unseen worlds around us, the worlds of Science.” ā Ada Lovelace
Thanks for reading, see you on Tuesday. And if youāre enjoying our work, please like, share and leave comments below,
Sam Volkering
Editor-in-Chief
AI Collision
