😺 Our honest reaction to Grok

PLUS: Are investment bankers screwed?!

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Welcome, humans.

Remember Devin, the viral ‘AI software engineer’ founded by that genius coding Olympian? According to one YouTube debunker, Devin isn’t nearly as capable as its demos showed.

Whether or not the debunking is justified, it’s a great reminder that while, yes, AI might blur the lines between reality and fiction, tech companies have long embellished demos to make themselves look better (cough cough Google).

Here’s what you need to know about AI today:

xAI previewed its latest model, Grok 1.5, a chatbot that can “see”.
Banks are pouring significant capital and energy into AI.
The internet went wild debating whether Drake’s Kendrick Lamar diss track was AI-generated.
ChatGPT’s traffic has remained stagnant over the past year.

Our honest reaction to Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot (updated).

xAI

We often roast Grok, Elon Musk’s ‘anti-woke’ chatbot, partly cause of the many Elon fanboys (& Elon himself) who spam Twitter with false claims that Grok is a “ChatGPT Killer”.

Grok is clearly a step down from ChatGPT-4, Claude 3, and Gemini Ultra.

However, TBH, we are impressed by what xAI (creator of Grok) has accomplished in such a short time and consider it a serious competitor in the AI race. Plus, it’s never a good idea to doubt Elon.

Also, Grok does excel in two areas:

1. It can “see”—xAI recently previewed Grok-1.5 Vision, an upgraded model capable of tasks like digitizing notes, explaining images, and converting a picture of a table to CSV.

Grok’s “vision” is comparable to that of GPT-4/Claude 3 Opus.

2. It’s good for current events—Grok monitors Twitter for real-time news, making it a more reliable source than ChatGPT/Claude for staying updated on global happenings.

Grok

Why it matters: Why it matters: In recent months, xAI has aggressively recruited AI talent and engaged with investors to potentially secure an additional $3B to rival OpenAI.

It’s game-on, Donkey Kong!

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Banks invest big in AI to save $$$.

Here’s a shocker—America’s biggest money-makers are working overtime to figure out how AI can make them more money: BANKS!

For some, it’s paying off.

Take Morgan Stanley: they’ve trained an AI assistant on 100,000 internal documents, practically giving every employee an AMA on anything finance-related, from market trends to legal processes for staff.

Financial advisors have used it to give clients advice on things like minimizing taxes when getting married.

“Top executives at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and other banks are debating how deep they can cut their incoming analyst classes, according to several people involved in the ongoing discussions. Some inside those banks and others have suggested they could cut back on their hiring of junior investment banking analysts by as much as two-thirds, and slash the pay of those they do hire, on the grounds that the jobs won’t be as taxing as before.”

NYT

Per Axios and an Evident report, successful strategies for banks so far include:

A culture of innovation and experimentation—encouraging staff to test AI tools (75% of Morgan Stanley interns used ChatGPT at least weekly last summer).
Training staff—PwC plans to spend $1B to train every employee in AI. Start by having your team take The Neuron’s Intro to ChatGPT course!
Investing BIG in AI research, talent, and patents. JPMorgan now employs 2,000+ AI specialists, plans to invest $1B+/year on AI, and published 400+ AI research papers since 2018.

BUT it’s still early days: AI’s influence in financial services hasn’t yet shaken up the status quo.

Morgan Stanley’s AI chief told Axios, "We've deployed two use cases. But what about a world where we might have 100,000?"
Meanwhile, a Goldman Sachs spokesperson told The NYT, “We anticipate no changes to our incoming analyst classes.”

Around the Horn.

The internet is rife with debate over whether Drake’s diss track against Kendrick Lamar and others was created by AI.
Meta is piloting AI-driven features in WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger, such as a new AI search bar to discover fresh content.
Google introduced a new research method that might enable LLMs to process unlimited text.
Sam Altman has been pitching ChatGPT Enterprise to hundreds of Fortune 500 companies in SF this month.
A “handful” of AI startups are considering IPOs, according to a NYSE exec.
ChatGPT’s web traffic has barely shown any growth over the last year.

Treats To Try.

Interview with AI provides mock interview sessions with a virtual HR expert.
Voxio organizes voice recordings into structured text formats.
Ideogram, an AI image tool that renders text well, just introduced features like image captioning, negative prompting, and enhanced rendering.
Guidde is an AI video documentation tool that makes it easier to explain complicated processes to team members.