Author: Toby Shapshak

Although late to the chatbot party, Amazon has unveiled a newcomer in the artificially intelligent space called Q. Unlike ChatGPT, Amazon’s attempt is aimed at Amazon Web Services (AWS) business customers, using their own data securely. “We think Q has the potential to become a work companion for millions and millions of people in their work life,” AWS CEO Adam Selipsky told The New York Times. Enter Q https://youtu.be/1r3MVD1xVRk AWS is the largest cloud computing provider, followed by Microsoft’s Azure, which calls its own AI offering Copilot. This is based on OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Microsoft’s 49% shareholding through its $13…

Surprise, surprise. NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are now worthless. Hands up who didn’t see that coming? Let’s recall that an NFT is a digital thing – in this case an image – that could still be replicated and copied but for which the owner, held the artwork’s letter of authenticity via a token on a blockchain. For a short while some entrepreneur so-called creators (of questionable artistic merit, let’s be honest) made some mediocre digital art and made millions of dollars. Good for them. The Bored Ape Yacht Club is the greatest example of this mind-boggling trend where fictitious art…

By amplifying an antisemitic conspiracy theory, Elon Musk has arguably killed off X.com, the once-thriving social platform formerly called Twitter. But because he’s in such an ivory tower – and convinced of his own rectitude – he doesn’t realise how far his arrogance and impulsiveness have taken him over the edge. Last week when Musk retweeted this nonsense and claimed it is “the actual truth” – he crossed a line that Twitter will never recover from. Having already halved its value from the $44 billion he paid for it last October, Musk has effectively wiped out the rest. Twitter makes…

After five days of turmoil at the poster child of artificial intelligence, OpenAI has rehired CEO Sam Altman after unexpectedly – and inexplicably – firing him. All those people who have come to rely on ChatGPT for its advice can relax, the generative AI company will not implode – as it seemed likely to just a day ago. The four-person board that fired him for not being “consistently candid” in communicating with it – whatever that means, and still hasn’t been revealed – has itself been ousted, bar Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo. Altman returns “We have reached an agreement in…

After inexplicably firing CEO Sam Altman, the board of OpenAI has proved one thing: AI can easily be smarter than humans. Last Friday, the artificial intelligence (AI) firm that rocked the world a year ago when it launched its ChatGPT chatbot, made the sudden announcement it was firing Altman because it “concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities”. Sam Altman, who co-founded the AI firm in 2015 with backing from Elon Musk and Microsoft, was shown the door for these nebulous reasons – causing a sudden crisis…

Sam Bankman-Fried is not the only guilty person involved in crypto’s fall from grace. There are many others who have made small fortunes off of the rapid rise and just as rapid fall of this new form of money and people’s lust for lucre. For some, it might just have been a hope for a better return on investment, for others a weird middle finger to the establishment. Investors in the FTX Exchange that Bankman-Fried built and ran were assured of many things when placing their bets – er, investing their bitcoin – but not that a backdoor to these…

It’s been a year since Elon Musk bought Twitter promising to rejuvenate the “digital town square”. By all measures, it has been an obscene failure. After paying an inflated $44 billion, Twitter is now worth half that, Musk has admitted. Most of its advertisers have fled – in no small part because the self-proclaimed “free-speech absolutist” retrenched the actual human beings doing the moderation and it’s now a disinformation quagmire. Last month the European Union launched an investigation into X over “the alleged spreading of terrorist and violent content and hate speech” relating to the Hamas-Israel war. Musk is suing…

As the Springboks celebrated their astounding Rugby World Cup win on Saturday, 28 October, President Cyril Ramaphosa was standing next to Siya Kolisi as the captain held the Web Ellis Cup aloft. A few moments later, Ramaphosa held one side of the trophy and then both – holding it to the sky like one of the jubilant players. As the camera panned up and over the crowd of excited Springboks in that Paris stadium, was the man who had engineered all of it. From installing Kolisi as the country’s first black Springbok captain, to winning the World Cup in Japan…

South African startup Bank Zero says it’s still going to charge you nothing to bank with it. “We see our promise of Zero bank fees as central to our brand’s unique value proposition, as shown by our four-year track record,” says chair Michael Jordaan. “Some believed this was a gimmick, but in fact, it’s fundamental to who we are. There’s one pricing structure for all our customers, and those fees that are Zero will stay Zero.” Jordaan says Bank Zero offers free core banking, with only extras being charged. Another key innovation, he adds, is the same pricing structure for…

Every year I have a little conversation with myself about whether to pay the SABC’s absurd annual licence fees for owning a television. It’s not a lot of money I tell myself, and I am legally (and therefore ethically) required to pay it. This is despite me not being a consumer of the SABC in any way. Like many South Africans, I haven’t been a SABC TV watcher for decades. Like many South Africans (who can afford it) my primary news and entertainment source has been DStv. Since Netflix and Showmax arrived and streaming services became the de facto form…