Bloomberg Teaches ChatGPT Math

Plus: Are people getting smarter or is the CFA exam getting easier? ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

April 14, 2023

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TOGETHER WITH

Good morning and happy Friday.

Now he just needs a baseball team to be an owner for all seasons.

CNBC reported that the Washington Commanders are nearing a sale to a group led by Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils owner Josh Harris. At $6 billion, it would be one of the most expensive sports transactions in history, even larger than when the Walton family purchased the Denver Broncos for $4.6 billion in June. So it seems all those ticket scandals, federal investigations, and mediocre seasons have only made the franchise more valuable.

Morning Brief

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Amazon and Bloomberg make their generative AI debuts.

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ByteDance wants to eat Meta’s virtual lunch.

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The hardest exam in finance gets a little less hard.

Tech

Bloomberg and Amazon Jump On the ChatGPT Train

There’s a ghost in the machine, or is it a bot in The Terminal?

On Thursday, a Bloomberg official told CNBC that the company plans to weave ChatGPT-style software into its Bloomberg terminal product. The same day, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced the company — which has slashed other parts of its business along with 27,000 jobs — is “investing heavily” in generative AI.

Piling On

Bloomberg has built its own software rather than relying on OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. This means it’s been trained on a narrower set of data than ChatGPT, the idea being this will make its generative AI tool better-versed in the world of finance. Probably a good call, given AI tools have so far proven a bit slapdash when it comes to talking about financial matters, or even basic math.

Amazon’s adoption of generative AI is broader, which is not surprising considering the company’s everything, everywhere, all at once approach to business:

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Jassy hinted that generative AI could be integrated into the customer experience, but played coy on exactly how. We’d suggest having AI come up with ways to make Amazon’s website stop recommending the same thing you already bought over and over and over again.

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Even if Amazon ends up producing an underwhelming generative AI product for consumers, it’s making another play to target the companies taking part in the same gold rush. AWS, Amazon’s cloud computing wing, is announcing a suite of tools to persuade developers to use its services to build their own large language models and generative AI tools.

Underpinning the infrastructure of the internet has worked well for AWS so far, and it looks like Jassy is following that playbook, as running tools like ChatGPT takes a phenomenal amount of computing power.

“Some statistics suggest that ICT (Information and communication technology) contributes more to climate change than aviation globally and that the needed energy for AI has increased an estimated 300,000 times between 2012 and 2018,” Professor Sandra Wachter, an expert in AI, told The Daily Upside, adding “Other numbers suggest that one training session for ChatGPT requires the same annual energy consumption as 126 Danish homes in a year.”

Eurotrashed: While competitors try to ape OpenAI’s success, regulators overseas are cracking the whip. Italy, which blocked ChatGPT last month citing privacy concerns, sent a list of demands to the company that it must comply with by April 30 or remain blocked. Meanwhile, the French privacy watchdog is looking into complaints it’s received about ChatGPT, and the EU’s overarching data protection board has assembled a task force dedicated to policing it.

– Isobel Asher Hamilton

Tech

VR App Developers Caught in Push-Pull Between Meta, ByteDance

First came alternative facts. Now there are alternative virtual realities.

Meta and TikTok parent company Bytedance are tripping over each other to court developers to create games and other software for their competing virtual reality devices. The hope is that somebody, anybody, can create a so-called killer app to finally convince the masses to walk around with a giant clunky visor on their heads.

Snap Back to (Virtual) Reality

After spending ungodly sums of very real money (including $16 billion last year), Meta is still struggling to take the metaverse into the mainstream. And there may already be some small internal recognition that VR may have been the wrong tech sub-industry abbreviation to go all-in on as ChatGPT continues to impress and large-language models transform the world. Zuck and Meta have already not-so-quietly shifted focus to their own AI efforts. And it makes sense: Shipments of the company’s Quest headsets declined by over 90% year-over-year in Q4 2022, according to estimates from International Data Corp., to around 310,000. For reference, Nintendo routinely sells around 10 million Switch consoles per quarter.

Meanwhile, the device has only one hit game: the “Fruit Ninja”-esque “Beat Saber,” which has roughly 1.5 million monthly active users. ByteDance, meanwhile, skipped the internal development route and took a page out of Zuck’s playbook by acquiring headset maker Pico in 2021. Its sales quickly rivaled Meta’s, with 290,000 units shipped in Q4 last year.

Now, according to a recent Wall Street Journal report, ByteDance is spending its TikTok earnings to beef up Pico’s game library — all while developers grow tired of Meta’s purportedly cumbersome VR app store procedures:

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“It’s definitely exciting to see a major player come into the market and to challenge the way that Facebook has been doing things,” Ben Outram, founder of VR game-maker Squingle Studios, told the WSJ.

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Sources told the WSJ that ByteDance is offering some VR developers up to $25,000 to bring their titles to Pico’s app store.

A Comet from Cupertino: Looming over the entire VR/augmented reality/metaverse industry is Apple, the undisputed king of taking tech hardware into the mainstream. But Apple’s long-rumored mixed-reality headset has been reportedly delayed numerous times. And last month, eight current and former employees anonymously spilled their concerns to The New York Times over the device rumored to retail at $3,000. Still, if any company can sell regular folk on VR, it’s the one that sold them on an iPhone, a slightly bigger version of an iPhone (the iPad), and then a smaller, wristwatch version (the Apple Watch).

– Brian Boyle

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Finance

CFA Pass Rate Still Below Average, But Above Pre-Pandemic Levels

(Photo Credit: Ben Mullins/Unsplash)

Times like these test a person, especially CFAs.

The pass rate for February’s final level of the famously tough chartered financial analyst exam hit 48% for the second time in a row. Pass rates have bounced back from pandemic-era lows and are now inching toward the decade average, an indication that the test is becoming more forgiving.

Pencils Down

People who complete the CFA exam typically go on to work in portfolio management and investment consulting. Along with an MBA degree, the CFA is often seen as the gold standard for Wall Street hires.

And let’s get one thing straight: The CFA test is hard. It’s often called “the hardest exam in finance.” You can’t just cram for it like a bio quiz (remember, the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell). Students typically take about four months to prepare for the Level I test and dedicate 300 hours of study time to it. For the Level II and III exams, that study time bumps up to 330 and 345 hours, respectively.

That said, the test does appear to be getting easier:

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The last year a supermajority of students passed the final test was 2006, with 75% of takers earning their certificate, according to the CFA Institute. After that, pass rates fell between 50% and 55% for the next decade and a half. Then COVID hit, upending pretty much every facet of human life, and the CFA exam was no exception.

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Exam dates were postponed or canceled, and the tests went computer-based instead of in-person. This threw off a lot of students who had spent months studying. And because 2021 never saw Level III pass rates exceed 43%, application numbers fell off. Large swaths of Wall Street’s freshman class didn’t want to spend so much time and money on a test they’d likely fail.

Take it Easy: AJ Srmek, a financial advisor and Youtuber, said the CFA Institute is likely trying to correct the COVID dips by easing up on the tough questions and requiring a lower score to pass. “The biggest factor with these improving pass rates is the decreasing minimum passing score,” he said in a video. “A lower minimum passing score is literally the institute just turning a dial and making the exam generally easier.”

– Griffin Kelly

Extra Upside

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Rideshare reveal: China’s Didi Global shows off a very futuristic looking driverless taxi.

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Clock’s ticking: Montana could be the first state to fully ban TikTok.

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Let A.I. be your guide. While independent traders ride out volatility with a blindfold on, artificial intelligence can offer clarity. Already this year, VantagePoint predicted the SVB downtrend 21 days before the collapse, and it’s accomplishing humanly impossible tasks like forecasting market trends 1–3 days in advance with up to 87.4% proven accuracy. Watch this A.I. brain forecast trend reversals in the next no-cost live A.I. Marketing Training.*

Just For Fun

Cleared for landing.

Count the spins.

Have a great weekend!

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