What I Read This Week...
OpenAI, Google and Meta discussed skirting copyright rules to train its latest AI models, Tesla will unveil its first robotaxi later this year, and the global supply of equities is shrinking
Caught My Eye…
The race to lead AI has become a hunt for new and growing amounts of training data. OpenAI, Google and Meta ignored corporate policies, altered their own rules and discussed skirting copyright law as they sought online information to train their newest AI models. In a violation of YouTube’s policies, an OpenAI team transcribed more than a million hours of videos to train its latest model GPT-4. Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, discussed using copyrighted data from the internet on the grounds that negotiating licenses with publishers would take too long. And last year, Google broadened its terms of service to allow the company to tap publicly available Google Docs, restaurant reviews on Google Maps and other internal information for training data.
Elon Musk announced that Tesla will be unveiling its first Robotaxi on August 8th later this year. The announcement comes alongside another report that Tesla is cancelling its plans to build a more affordable $25,000 EV, instead directing all of its resources to develop an autonomous vehicle that would make other cars obsolete. In his ‘master plan’, Elon describes a future in which Tesla owners can add their cars to a fleet of autonomous taxis that can be sent to pick up and drop off passengers, allowing owners to earn additional income while the vehicle is not being used.
The global supply of equities is shrinking at its fastest pace in 25 years as macroeconomic uncertainty weighs on new issuances and companies continue to buy back large volumes of stocks. 2024 marks the third consecutive year of decline, with the global universe of public stocks shrinking by a net $120Bn, ~3x the net $40Bn taken out all of last year. Since 2000, the number of listed companies in the U.S. has fallen from more than 7,000 to less than 4,000 as fewer companies seek exits in the public markets due to rising alternatives like private equity.
Other Reading…
Amazon Gives Up on No-Checkout Shopping in its Large Grocery Stores (The Verge)
Microplastics Have Infiltrated Archaeological Soil Samples (Earth)
New U.S. ‘Green Bank’ Aims to Steer Over $160B in Capital Into Climate Tech (TechCrunch)
Some Colleges Will Soon Charge $100,000 a Year. How Did This Happen? (NY Times)
Would inviting Russia into NATO deescalate the war? NATO was created to protect against USS - why not include Russia to extend peace in the region?
Of the 120B in buybacks I wonder how many were value accretive to shareholders? Capital allocation at the executive level leaves a bit to be desired and once that capital is destroyed its tough to make it back