Google Bard Topples ChatGPT, Stripe Joins Web3, The Battle for Your Brain, & More

FUTURE OF THE WORLD - Edition 35

May 13, 2023

∙ Paid

In technology, there are front-end users, back-end users, and masters.

Back-end users include developers, system administrators, and others who interact with the backend of the app or device.

Front-end users or end-users are people who use the product, software, or system for its intended purpose, in a final or consumer context. They usually do not participate in the development, have no knowledge of the underlying code or structure, and are interested in the functionality and usability rather than the technical aspects. They are the people for whom the product was designed, and they are a part of the product.

Then there are the masters—the founders and engineers who are envisioning, designing, and building the protocols, platforms, and apps that we live on. More than anyone else, they will determine the future of the world.

Hope you enjoy this edition.

Misha

In today’s newsletter:

Google adds generative AI to search and topples the competition.
Several major companies join web3.
The battle for your brain.
A new premium segment.

This Week in AI:

Google adds generative AI to search, updates BARD, and topples ChatGPT.

At Google’s annual I/O conference this week, the search giant announced that it will infuse results with generative artificial intelligence technology similar to that behind ChatGPT. The company is launching an experimental version of its prized search engine that incorporates text generation like that powering ChatGPT and other advanced chatbots.
Google’s reimagined search still involves typing a query, and it still responds with links to websites, snippets of content, and ads. But in some situations, the top of the page will feature text synthesized by AI that pulls from information found on different sources across the web, and link to those webpages. A user can ask follow up questions to get more specific information.

Get the full story: Bard updates from Google I/O 2023: Images, new features

I tried the updated Bard. It is superior to ChatGPTPlus.

Bard interacts with the internet, can create charts and tables, and will soon include images. ChatGPT is a better writer but cannot access the internet and was trained on data that is pre-September 2021. As a search and research tool Bard is superior. For now!

Google introduced PaLM 2, their next generation language model.

PaLM 2 is a state-of-the-art language model with improved multilingual, reasoning and coding capabilities.

Multilinguality: PaLM 2 is more heavily trained on multilingual text, spanning more than 100 languages. This has significantly improved its ability to understand, generate and translate nuanced text — including idioms, poems and riddles — across a wide variety of languages, a hard problem to solve. PaLM 2 also passes advanced language proficiency exams at the “mastery” level.
Reasoning: PaLM 2’s wide-ranging dataset includes scientific papers and web pages that contain mathematical expressions. As a result, it demonstrates improved capabilities in logic, common sense reasoning, and mathematics.
Coding: PaLM 2 was pre-trained on a large quantity of publicly available source code datasets. This means that it excels at popular programming languages like Python and JavaScript, but can also generate specialized code in languages like Prolog, Fortran and Verilog.

Sundar Pichai laid it all out all the changes in this Twitter thread.

LLMs are causing a stock-market ruckus.

The rise of artificial intelligence is taking the tech world by storm. The technology is also making waves on Wall Street.
It is early days for so-called generative AI, but the tool has caused a stir in companies, schools, governments, and the public for its ability to process massive amounts of information and generate sophisticated content in response to prompts from users.
Big technology companies are investing billions of dollars in the technology. Startups are raising cash and trying to develop business models using AI at a rapid pace.

Get the story here: ChatGPT Is Causing a Stock-Market Ruckus - WSJ

IBM intros a slew of new AI services, including generative models.

IBM, like pretty much every tech giant these days, is betting big on AI.
At its annual Think conference, the company announced IBM Watsonx, a new platform that delivers tools to build AI models and provide access to pretrained models for generating computer code, text and more.

Text-to-Video is the next thing in AI.

Text-to-video is next in line in the long list of incredible advances in generative models. As self-descriptive as it is, text-to-video is a fairly new computer vision task that involves generating a sequence of images from text descriptions that are both temporally and spatially consistent. While this task might seem extremely similar to text-to-image, it is notoriously more difficult. How do these models work, how do they differ from text-to-image models, and what kind of performance can we expect from them?

Get a deep dive here: A Dive into Text-to-Video Models

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This Week in Web3:

Overview.

Stripe launches a fiat-to-crypto onramp.

The Stripe fiat-to-crypto onramp enables individuals to securely purchase cryptocurrencies directly from your platform or Dapp at the time of checkout. The onramp is fully customizable, and you can integrate it into your product or service.
Stripe acts as the merchant of record for these onramp transactions and takes full liability for all fraud and disputes. Stripe also handles all regulatory requirements, know your customer (KYC) verifications, and sanctions screening. Customers have the option of saving payment methods, KYC data, and wallet information with Stripe, which makes the returning onramp experience much faster.

Get the details here: Stripe launches a fiat-to-crypto onramp.

5 top companies file web3 or NFT patents.

Haribo
FICO
Fujitsu
Fidelity Investments
Formula One

With digital assets on the upswing once more, businesses across the board have been locking down blockchain-related patents anew.
Filings for US — and international — patents or trademarks related to cryptocurrency sectors, including blockchain initiatives and NFT enterprises, are one main means for companies to secure related intellectual property. And potentially gain a competitive advantage in the meantime.

The story here: These 5 Companies Have Filed Web3 or NFT Patents - Blockworks

Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and others team up to introduce blockchain network.

Some of the most well-known firms in the tech and finance industries are working together on what could be a vital new project. Specifically, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, Deloitte, and others are set to team up to introduce a new blockchain network.
Bloomberg reported on the collaborative effort that could be vital to ledger technology in the finance market. Moreover, the collective is working to link “disparate institution applications,” which could have a positive effect on the industry as a whole.

Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and Others Team Up to Introduce Blockchain Network (watcher.guru)

Franklin Templeton enters the world of blockchain private equity.

In its latest foray into the cryptocurrency industry, asset management giant Franklin Templeton is exploring the world of blockchain private equity.
An SEC filing on Tuesday registered the Franklin Templeton Blockchain Fund II with the US financial regulator — one key indicator that the firm is looking to raise institutional capital for the new commingled vehicle.
Franklin Templeton representatives designated the vehicle as a private equity fund with the SEC. This is a separate categorization from a liquid cryptocurrency hedge fund setup, for instance. The private equity fund also differs from a blockchain-focused venture capital vehicle, which the asset manager previously established in the fourth quarter of 2021.

More here: Blockchain Private Equity Fund Franklin Templeton’s Latest Crypto Ambition - Blockworks

Alo Yoga retail chain debuts in-store NFT claim.

Alo Yoga, an apparel and accessories retailer with dozens of locations across several U.S. states, has rolled out an in-store NFT claim in collaboration with crypto payments firm MoonPay, letting brick-and-mortar customers receive free digital collectibles featuring “daily affirmations.”
Launched for Mental Health Awareness Month in the United States, the in-store experience lets customers tap a smartphone against a terminal that reads “Tap for Mindfulness” at the checkout counter. The terminal is equipped with a near-field communication (NFC) chip that points customers towards a website and ultimately lets them claim a free daily NFT.

Alo Yoga is a retail chain focused on apparel and accessories. Image: Alo Yoga

Get the story here: Alo Yoga Retail Chain Debuts In-Store NFT Claim With MoonPay - Decrypt

Introducing World App (worldcoin.org)

The first Worldcoin wallet, designed to bring digital identity & global finance to all.

World App, the first wallet for theW orldcoin ecosystem, is launching today. It’s designed to be friendly, and it supports private digital identity and a new financial system. You can use it to authenticate with World ID to prove you’re a real person, get your Worldcoin tokens and send digital money anywhere.
After extensive development and beta testing in a limited number of countries, Phase I of World App is globally available for the first time. Over time, it will evolve into a toolkit to empower individuals in the Age of AI, enabling the usage of proof of personhood, the equitable global distribution of digital currencies and ultimately a path to AI-funded UBI.

You can download it here.

You can mint a free NFT here: Introducing World App (zora.co)

5 Things to Do:

TRY: A Two-Minute Burnout Checkup

Rate your level of stress from 0 to 10 on all six factors of burnout, with 0 equaling negligible stress and 10 equaling extreme stress. Add the numbers to get your general burnout score out of 60, and pay attention to specific burnout factors that score particularly high. A table lists the six burnout factors, with a column of blank spaces to record your level of stress for each factor and a spot at the bottom for the total score out of 60. The factors are: Workload: Sustainability of the amount of work on your plate. Values: Whether you connect with your work on a deeper level. Reward: Both financial rewards, such as salary, bonuses, stock options, etc, and social rewards, for example, whether you’re recognized for your contributions. Control: The autonomy you have over when, where, and how you do your work. Fairness: The feeling that you’re treated equitably at work relative to your colleagues. Community: Professional relationships that boost engagement.

Burnout is the result of chronic stress and, at work, that stress tends to accumulate around your experiences of workload, values, reward, control, fairness, and community. If any are lacking or out of sync, you may be headed toward exhaustion, cynicism, and the feeling of being ineffective.
When taken regularly, this short assessment can help you gauge whether you’re on the path to burnout, and where you should focus your attention to make beneficial changes.

PONDER: Why your brain hates other people - Big Think

Considerable evidence suggests that dividing the world into Us and Them is deeply hard-wired in our brains, with an ancient evolutionary legacy. For starters, we detect Us/Them differences with stunning speed. Stick someone in a “functional MRI”—a brain scanner that indicates activity in various brain regions under particular circumstances. Flash up pictures of faces for 50 milliseconds—a 20th of a second—barely at the level of detection. And remarkably, with even such minimal exposure, the brain processs the faces of Thems differently than Us-es.

READ: The Battle for Your Brain by Nita A. Farahany

A new dawn of brain tracking and hacking is coming. Will you be prepared for what comes next?

Imagine a world where your brain can be interrogated to learn your political beliefs, thought crimes are punishable by law, and your own feelings can be used against you. A world where people who suffer from epilepsy receive alerts moments before a seizure, and the average person can peer into their own mind to eliminate painful memories or cure addictions.
Neuroscience has already made all of the above possible today, and neurotechnology will soon become the “universal controller” for all of our interactions with technology. This can benefit humanity immensely, but without safeguards, it can severely threaten our fundamental human rights to privacy, freedom of thought, and self-determination.
From one of the world's foremost experts on the ethics of neuroscience, The Battle for Your Brain offers a path forward to navigate the complex dilemmas that will fundamentally impact our freedom to understand, shape, and define ourselves.
Where’s the next battleground for humanity?
Your brain.

WATCH: How to calm your anxiety, from a neuroscientist.

What if you could transform your anxiety into something you can actually use during your work day? Neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki shares two evidence-based activities -- breathing and movement -- that can soothe your nervous system and fuel creativity and connection.

POLL: What is your relationship with technology?

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