Wanna be our boss? We’re hiring a managing editor. Requirements include a sense of humor, the drive to lead a small team, and the ability to recognize important — and delectably offbeat — stories in tech and business.
In today’s email:
ChatGPT: The internet’s buzzy new chatbot.
Chart: Duolingo’s rise.
Digits: Bombers, boxes, and bottles.
Around the web: Lo-fi games, a sneaky pup, Wednesday Addams’ legacy, and more cool internet finds.
🎧 On the go? Listen to today’s 10-minute podcast to hear us break down insights on Duolingo’s business, ChatGPT’s wild implications, the World Cup’s impact on stock trading, TikTok’s “what do you do for a living” guy, and a whole lot more.
The big idea
ChatGPT isn’t always right, but it’s fun
You’ve probably been hearing a lot of buzz about ChatGPT, and for good reason.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT is an AI chatbot that uses natural language processing, a branch of AI focused on understanding and responding to text. It’s currently open to anyone, for free, as OpenAI tests it.
ChatGPT can answer questions and explain concepts, which some say it does more skillfully than Google.
One cool thing: Ask ChatGPT to explain something complicated like you’re a child, and it’ll simplify it.
ChatGPT can also help you fix code or write an article, or tell you a spooky story or corny joke.
Any potential problems?
Apart from AI overthrowing humanity like in numerous sci-fi movies?
ChatGPT can be wrong, and it can’t offer you any real-time info.
While it’s pretty good at refusing to answer harmful or offensive questions — better, in fact, than other AIs — some users have tricked it into explaining how to make explosives or shoplift.
OpenAI says moderation AI blocks unsafe content, but expects it “to have some false negatives and positives for now.”
What’s next?
Given that ChatGPT isn’t 100% accurate, you shouldn’t use it to write your term paper or an article, but you could use it when you get writer’s block.
It’s also ripe for creative experimentation.
Case in point:Guy Parsons, who runs a website devoted to DALL-E art, used ChatGPT to get room decor ideas. He then fed the ideas to AI image generator Midjourney, resulting in some pretty cool rooms.
TRENDING
NYCneeds someone with a “general aura of badassery” to lead the city’s armed conflict against rats. The role could pay $170k a year, and the job description may be one of the most entertaining ever.
SNIPPETS
Palmer Luckey’s defense tech startup Anduril raised $1.48B in the second-largest US round of the year, valuing it at $7B. Luckey previously sold Oculus to Meta for $2B when he was 21.
Apple, Twitter’s largest advertiser, has “fully resumed” advertising on Twitter, says Elon Musk. Amazon is also reportedly coming back, to the tune of $100m per year.
Daniel Mac, the TikToker who asks people in fancy cars what they do, reportedly makes up to $100k/mo. He’s posted videos with everyone from porn stars, to Joe Biden, to an Apple exec who got fired over their appearance.
Delta and its pilots’ union agreed to preliminary terms for 30%+ raises over four years, including an 18% raise on the day the contract is signed.
Check out the cool AR tech on FIFA’s World Cup app that lets fans there use their camera to pull up players’ live stats.
Vitamin and supplement businessesare weathering a market slowdown following three straight years of growth, seeing US sales fall 3.3% YoY in October.
Pantone’s 2023 color of the year is “Viva Magenta,” a bright reddish hue “vibrating with vim and vigor.”
OPEC+ will continue to cut oil production by 2m barrels per day, despite the EU’s ban on seaborne imports of Russian oil and G-7’s price caps.
Bones Day: Noodle, of bones-no bones TikTok fame, has died at 14. His owner encouraged fans to celebrate his long (for a pug), happy life.
Bill Gates and Khloé Kardashian probably don’t have a ton of common interests. But, per Bloomberg, Duolingo is one of them.
Launched in 2012, the gamified language app has transformed from a PhD project into a 500-person public company now on a mission to make profits.
The app, which views sites like TikTok and Netflix as its competition, now boasts ~15m daily users, up 51% YoY, and 3.7m paid subscribers. Barring any unexpected fiscal blowback over its highly controversial redesign, revenue this year is projected to surpass $365m, up 45% YoY.
The company is now expanding through in-app purchases, subjects like reading and math, and a $49 online English test accepted at 4k+ institutions that made ~$25m last year.
Fun fact: Duolingo co-founder Luis von Ahn invented the web authentication tool CAPTCHA, which he gave to Yahoo for free, and reCAPTCHA, which he sold to Google.
Free Resource
Our take on the social media content calendar
Because when posting on more than one site, it starts to get funky.
That’s why you plan in advance: Consistency helps to keep folks engaged and combat the unkind algorithms that make your content invisible.
Use HubSpot’s sweet social media calendar to coordinate campaigns on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and other top platforms throughout 2023.
1) The Pentagon showed off its new stealth bomber, the B-21 Raider, on Friday. The ~$753m plane can be flown without pilots, and the government hopes to order 100+, though just 21 have been built.
2) The shipping container businessbrought in $58.9B in Q3 of 2022, up 22.4% YoY and 158% higher than the combined profits of Meta, Amazon, Netflix, and Google.
3) When the US played in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, US equity trading volume dropped 43%, per a study by European Central Bank economists. When Chile played, equity trading there dropped almost entirely.
4) On that note, were you even aware that the US is co-hosting the next World Cup? Some 65% of US adults say they’ve seen, read, or heard “nothing at all” about the US, Mexico, and Canada hosting in 2026.
5) Gosh, we really like our water in bottles. With Americans drinking 47 gallons of bottled water each in 2021, it’s a market expected to reach $39B in 2022.
AROUND THE WEB
😶🌫️ On this day: In 1952, a combination of industrial pollution and weather conditions caused the Great Smog of London, a deadly event that led to the Clean Air Act four years later.
🎧 Podcast: Listen to this episode of Billion Dollar Moves to hear host Sarah Chen-Spellings’ top three takeaways from recent interviews with US-Asia founders.
😒 That’s interesting: Emily Alford writes about how Wednesday Addams influenced a generation of cynical millennials.
😎 Chill out: Enjoy some browser games, like “Solitaire”and “Minesweeper,”while listening to lo-fi tunes.
🤫 Aww: And now, sneaking past the monster who guards the stairs.
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