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Zuckerberg becomes fourth-wealthiest person following shift to Meta

Tech giant Meta's current market capitalization is more than $1.4 trillion — making it one of the most valuable companies in the world.

Tech entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg is now the world's fourth-wealthiest billionaire — with a net worth of $201 billion — following Facebook's rebrand to Meta in October 2021, and expansion into metaverse hardware and artificial intelligence.

Meta is currently trading at approximately $567 per share at the time of this writing — a more than six-fold increase since the stock's November 2022 lows of roughly $88 per share.

In the year following the rebrand, Meta's stock fell sharply from trading in the $300 range to the November 2022 lows — reflecting investor sentiment toward the company's pivot to augmented reality experiences and the development of AI at the time.

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Vitalik Buterin: Bullish on Google sign-in, bearish on duels to the death

Buterin says prediction markets are better for settling beef, but Elon Musk says he’s packing historical heat.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently raised some eyebrows on social media after offering his soft support for Google’s automatic sign-in feature. But his post on dueling to the death received a lot more attention. 

Buterin’s platform of choice appears to be Farcaster, where he interacts with other users on a variety of topics. In mid-August, the popular developer hosted what he referred to as an impromptu “AMA” (ask me anything), during which the topic of third-party authentication services, such as Google Sign-in, was brought up. 

At the time, Buterin expressed concern over the implications of “normalizing” the idea of using services such as “sign in with Google” in the cryptocurrency and blockchain industries. “I think that’s really bad,” he wrote. However, he followed up by describing a scenario where sign-in services could serve as bridges to secure systems via under-the-hood account abstraction. 

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OpenAI turns to Broadcom as Musk, Zuckerberg snatch up Nvidia AI chips

The run on training hardware has put chipmakers at the forefront of the general artificial intelligence boom.

OpenAI is reportedly in talks with Broadcom and other chip makers in what appears to be an urgent effort to expand its artificial intelligence operations. 

AI models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta’s Llama are typically trained using massive clusters of graphical processing units (GPUs) or similar computer chips. The most popular hardware, the H100, belongs to Nvidia.

The H100 can cost anywhere from $15,000 to $30,000, depending on the number purchased and current market conditions. It can take tens of thousands of these AI chips to train a single model, with more necessary for larger, more robust systems.

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As Meta’s Threads celebrates first anniversary, will it now become a challenger to X?

Despite Threads hitting 175 million monthly active users, it’s still too early to say whether it could become another X one day.

Meta’s Threads, a social media platform built to capitalize on Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover in 2023, is celebrating its first anniversary with high ambitions to overtake X, as Twitter is now known.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to Threads on July 4 to announce that the app has more than 175 million monthly active users. The new milestone comes a few months after Threads reached 150 million active users in April, marking stable growth in 2024.

Despite Threads adding a significant amount of new users over the past three months, it’s still too early to say whether the app could one day become another X, which has proved to reign supreme in the cryptocurrency community.

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Meta’s prototype ‘full holographic’ glasses could be a game changer for Web3

The new holographic display could give NFTs the Pokemon Go treatment.

Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg thinks smart glasses with holographic displays will slowly supplant the mobile phone as humanity’s primary communications and computing device. 

In a recent interview with YouTuber Kane “Kalloway” Sutter, the billionaire tech mogul expounded on a number of topics including artificial intelligence and open source. But, when asked by host Kalloway what Meta’s most exciting future product was, Zuckerberg gave a full-throated endorsement for a set of glasses — the kind you wear on your face — featuring cameras, microphones, speakers, and a full field-of-view (FOV) holographic display.

Pundits in both the advertising world and the technoverse have, by and large, had a field day mocking Meta and Zuckerberg over their pivot from “Facebook,” the company behind the aptly named “Facebook” social media platform to “Meta,” the company that’s… working on the metaverse.

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Argentina’s Milei meets top tech CEOs to boost business relations

Libertarian Argentina has “enormous possibilities” under his leadership, Milei tells Sam Altman.

Argentinian President Javier Milei will meet privately with a number of high-profile figures, including top tech CEOs during a trip to Silicon Valley in California as he tours the United States. He will use the occasions to promote business relations with Argentina, according to press reports.

Milei told OpenAI and Worldcoin head Sam Altman about “the enormous possibilities offered by a libertarian Argentina” during their hourlong meeting on May 28. Alex Blania, co-founder and CEO of Tools for Humanity, the main developer of the Worldcoin project, was also at that meeting. It was Milei’s second meeting with the men. Worldcoin was active in Argentina in the summer of 2023 but faces political opposition.

Other tech luminaries on Milei’s roster include Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Apple’s Tim Cook. Milei will also meet with a group of start-up and AI entrepreneurs and speak at the Pacific Summit.

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Meta’s Horizon Worlds launches on mobile and web in early access

Mark Zuckerberg's Horizon Worlds is extending past virtual reality in a bid to bring more users to its 3D virtual world.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has finally made the move to expand his metaverse Horizon Worlds from virtual reality headsets to people's smartphones and computers.

The 3D avatar-based social platform announced in a Sept. 15 blog post that it has started rolling out its first Meta Horizon world to mobile and web in an early access state. 

The only experience immediately available is Super Rumble, a free-for-all shooter that launched in late July, allowing two to six players to come together in fast-paced matches lasting five minutes. Meta said that more experiences and worlds will be coming to the platform over the coming months. 

Super Rumble, a first-person shooter previously only available on VR devices. Source: Meta

With the initial rollout, only a small number of people will be able to access it on the web or the Meta Quest app on Android, with an iOS rollout slated for the coming weeks.

“Early access will roll out to more people gradually as we gather feedback and evolve the experience,” said Meta. 

“The metaverse should be available to everyone — no matter what device they’re on,” the tech giant added.

“And while Quest headsets are the most immersive way to access the metaverse, we believe there should be multiple entry points.”

Meta said bringing Worlds to more devices will open up the experience to more people. Meta hasn’t released any public statistics on its monthly active users, but a report from The Wall Street Journal in October 2022 suggested it was less than 200,000. 

Meta's social platform is still currently only available in Canada, France, Iceland, Ireland, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. 

Related: Meta ‘ruined’ the term metaverse, but now it’s evolving: Yuga Labs CEO

Interestingly, blockchain-based metaverse platforms, including Decentraland and The Sandbox, seemingly started their journey the other way around. 

Both launched as PC and web-based experiences first, with Decentraland launching its browser-based 3D virtual world in February 2020 and The Sandbox launching its Alpha on PC in November 2021. Both have yet to release an official virtual reality port

We've got legs!

Meanwhile, Meta avatars in Horizon Worlds have finally received a long-awaited update — virtual legs. 

Zuckerberg initially copped criticism after the launch of his metaverse, with observers noting that the massive investment from the firm couldn’t even give its avatars virtual legs. During Connect 2022, Meta promised the legs would come in an eventual update sometime in 2023. 

The legs functionality was reportedly already introduced to Quest Home space some weeks ago as a v57 test version update, but some users have reported the legs have now made their way onto the Horizon Worlds app. 

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Meta to launch AI chatbots with personalities to retain users: Report

As the Big Tech giant Meta focuses on retaining its users it plans to launch a number of AI-powered chatbots with different personalities and functions.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, plans to release artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots with human-like personalities as it focuses on user retention efforts, according to a report from the Financial Times. 

On Aug. 1 the FT reported that people close to the matter said prototypes of the chatbots have been underway with the final products being able to hold discussions with users at a human level.

The range of chatbots will be able to display different personalities and are expected to be released as early as next month, according to the report.

Sources close to the matter say that Meta staffers have dubbed the chatbots as “personas” and that these bots take the form of different characters. Another person with knowledge of the plans said the company has already explored one bot that speaks like the former United States president Abraham Lincoln and another for travel advice that speaks like a surfer.

According to the sources from the FT, the purpose of the chatbots will be both to offer recommendations and new search functionality, along with being a “fun product for people to play with.”

Cointelegraph has contacted Meta for further comment on the matter and has received no response at the time of writing. 

Related: Meta and Microsoft launch open-source AI model Llama 2

The FT source said that the company may automate checks on the chatbots’ outputs to ensure accuracy and avoid rule-breaking speech. 

This development comes as Meta has allocated major efforts toward user retention. During its 2023 second-quarter earnings call on July 26, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke about the company’s latest product and Twitter rival, Threads.

He said that he is “seeing more people coming back daily than I’d expected.” It was in this call Zuckerberg said Meta was primarily focused on Threads user retention. The earnings call also revealed another $3.7 billion invested into metaverse development.

The introduction of accessible chatbots also means an opportunity to collect large amounts of user data. OpenAI, the maker of the viral AI chatbot ChatGPT, has been hit with a class-action lawsuit over alleged data theft via its own bots. 

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Elon Musk imposes ‘rate limit’ on Twitter citing extreme ‘system manipulation’

Verified Twitter users will be allowed to view 10,000 posts per day, while new, unverified accounts will get 500 under the new limits.

Social media platform Twitter is temporarily limiting the number of posts that users will be allowed to read per day, after seeing “extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation,” according to executive chairman Elon Musk.

In a July 1 post, Musk said the temporary limits will see verified accounts capped at 10,000 posts per day, while unverified and new, unverified accounts are capped at 1,000 and 500 posts per day respectively:

Twitter users had been reporting issues on the platform over the last few days including the inability to retrieve tweets, missing timelines, and being met with a "rate limited exceeded" message, leading to the hashtag #TwitterDown #TwitterFail to trend in certain jurisdictions.

A screenshot of a Twitter user’s account — having reached their rate limit. Source: Twitter

Real-time outage monitor website Downdetector has seen thousands of user-submitted reports claiming Twitter outages over the last 24 hours.

France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the East and West Coasts of the United States appear to be the most affected regions, according to Is The Service Down.

Number of outage reports on Twitter in 15-minute intervals over the last 24 hours. Source: Downdetector

Musk didn’t clarify what may be responsible for scraping Twitter’s data and didn’t elaborate on the root cause behind the “system manipulation” claim, but said that their data was being "pillaged" so much it was degrading service for users. 

Some suggest that the extreme "data scraping" has been caused by web-browsing-enabled artificial intelligence chatbots, such as OpenAI's GPT-4.

According to Twitter’s developer documents, rate limits are imposed to manage the volume of requests made to Twitter’s Application Program Interface (API).

“These limits help us provide the reliable and scalable API that our developer community relies on,” the document states.

Related: Twitter suspends memecoin-linked AI bot after Elon Musk’s ‘scam crypto’ claim

Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter was among the few that defended the recent moves in a July 2 post, noting that “Running Twitter is hard” and that the decision was likely made for the greater good of the platform.

He added that he’d like to see Twitter move to a “truly censorship-resistant open protocol” like Bitcoin and Nostr:

Outside of the office, Musk appears to be training for a potential mixed martial arts cage fight with fellow billionaire and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

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AI automation could take over 50% of today’s work activity by 2045: McKinsey

Management consulting firm McKinsey & Co believes AI will have the “biggest impact” on high-wage workers.

In just 22 years, generative AI may be able to fully automate half of all work activity conducted today, including tasks related to decision-making, management, and interfacing with stakeholders, according to a new report from McKinsey & Co.

The prediction came from the management consulting firm report on June 14, forecasting 75% of generative AI value creation will come from customer service operations, marketing and sales, software engineering, as well as research and development positions.

The firm explained that recent developments in generative AI has “accelerated” its “midpoint” prediction by nearly a decade from 2053 — its 2016 estimate — to 2045.

McKinsey explained that its broad range of 2030-2060 was made to encompass a range of outcomes — such as the rate at which generative AI is adopted, investment decisions and regulation, among other factors.

Its previous range for 50% of work being automated was 2035-2070.

McKinsey’s new predicted “midpoint” time at which automation reaches 50% of time on work-related activities has accelerated by eight years to 2045. Source: McKinsey

The consulting firm said, however, the pace of adoption across the globe will vary considerably from country to country:

“Automation adoption is likely to be faster in developed economies, where higher wages will make it economically feasible sooner.”
Early and late scenario midpoint times for the United States, Germany, Japan, France, China, Mexico and India. Source: McKinsey.

Generative AI systems now have the potential to automate work activities that absorb 60-70% of employees’ time today, McKinsey estimated.

Interestingly, the report estimates generative AI will likely have the “biggest impact” on high-wage workers applying a high degree of “expertise” in the form of decision making, management and interfacing with stakeholders.

The report also predicts that the generative AI market will add between $2.6 to $4.4 trillion to the world economy annually and be worth a whopping $15.7 trillion by 2030.

This would provide enormous economic value on top of non-generative AI tools in mainstream use today, the firm said:

“That would add 15 to 40 percent to the $11.0 trillion to $17.7 trillion of economic value that we now estimate nongenerative artificial intelligence and analytics could unlock.”

Generative AI systems are capable of producing text, images, audio and videos in response to prompts by receiving input data and learning its patterns. OpenAI’s ChatGPT is the most commonly used generative AI tool today.

McKinsey’s $15.7 trillion prediction by 2030 is more than a three-fold increase in comparison to its $5 trillion prediction for the Metaverse over the same timeframe.

Related: The need for real, viable data in AI

However, the recent growth of generative AI platforms hasn’t come without concerns.

The United Nations recently highlighted “serious and urgent” concerns about generative AI tools producing fake news and information on June 12.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg received a grilling by United States Senators of a “leaked” release of the firm’s AI tool “LLaMA” which the senators claim to be potentially “dangerous” and be possibly used for “criminal tasks.”

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