It is all about perception until it becomes about results. Yes, IBM went to the mountain, trumpeting the new age of exponential computing, as IBM Watson touched the face of the future when it won Jeopardy! Fast forward today, no one remembers IBM as Big Tech enters an injury time on who wins the race of natural language computing.

OpenAI opened the race, gaining a lot of meters. But Google understands that its future is imperiled if it does not respond. And the company is responding, promising a ChatGPT rival, in the next few weeks: “AI is the most profound technology we are working on today…people are turning to Google for deeper insights and understanding”. Google named the chatbot Bard!

People, what happens in the next 18 months will determine many things on the future of consumer technology. The winner of this competition will win in the near future because if it bakes these AI systems into cloud computing solutions, a new basis of competition will emerge. In other words, Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, etc are in the race of the operating system for modern digital empires.

Yet, Google does not need to win this race to thrive. And Microsoft does not need to win outright to thrive. The key is making sure you can keep your tribe by having an optimal product that ensures they do not leave.

Indeed, I left Dropbox when Microsoft unveiled OneDrive, not because OneDrive was better, but largely because I already use Microsoft for many things – and could easily bundle my Microsoft 365 with the OneDrive. That means Google has to make its Bard, not bad, to keep its tribes; it may not need to be super-great.

AI is the most profound technology we are working on today. Whether it’s helping doctors detect diseases earlier or enabling people to access information in their own language, AI helps people, businesses and communities unlock their potential. And it opens up new opportunities that could significantly improve billions of lives. That’s why we re-oriented the company around AI six years ago — and why we see it as the most important way we can deliver on our mission: to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Since then we’ve continued to make investments in AI across the board, and Google AI and DeepMind are advancing the state of the art. Today, the scale of the largest AI computations is doubling every six months, far outpacing Moore’s Law. At the same time, advanced generative AI and large language models are capturing the imaginations of people around the world. In fact, our Transformer research project and our field-defining paper in 2017, as well as our important advances in diffusion models, are now the basis of many of the generative AI applications you’re starting to see today.

Independence of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) was preached by many as a critical element to drive economic stability in the nation. But in this election season, those same people do not believe anymore. Yes, they now want judges to change calls made by the high priest of Nigeria’s economy (i.e. the CBN governor). Sure, I do not support all the calls by the apex bank. But its worst calls would be better than judges running the banking system from the bench.

Central banks work mainly to stabilize or strengthen their currencies (to reduce inflation) and create employment by managing interest rates.  That does not seem like what High Courts are designed for.

Nigerians: we need to grow up. CBN monetary policy should not be decided by judges with reckless abandon. I SALUTE the judge: “A high court in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, has mandated the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to not rescind on its set plans and timeline for the implementation of the naira redesign policy.”

A high court in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, has mandated the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to not rescind on its set plans and timeline for the implementation of the naira redesign policy.

In a suit encoded FCT/HC/CV/2234/2023, the judge of the Abuja-based high court, Eleojo Enenche, on Monday, gave a standing order which restrains the CBN from extending the deadline on the use of old naira notes pending the determination of the suit.

The lawsuit whose defendants include the CBN, President Muhammadu Buhari, and several banks and whose plaintiffs include Action Alliance (AA), Action Peoples Party (APP), Allied Peoples Movement (APM), and National Rescue Movement (NRM) has the following extant ruling:

Emefiele. Emefiele. Emefiele (how many times did I call you?). Find a way to help Nigerians but do not allow underground vaults to open to rig this election. #boldness.

Comment on Feed

Comment 1: The report of that judgement was good news especially when one considers how the governors of the ruling party are thronging the villa to persuade Mr. President for another extension and the mountain politicians are trying to make out of the sand castle. It’s clear that a lot of them politicians depend solely on vote-buying to win elections and it’s the reason why they get reckless and abandon their duties once they assume office.

The recall process hasn’t been tried nor tested; the impeachment process is a witch-hunting or vendetta exercise; and our judicial process is turning lame, pandering to the whims of the highest bidder. Until these processes are got right, we still may be far from zion but with the naira redesign, we’re at least one step in the right direction.

My Response: The same governors who did not care when universities were closed for months.  Did they care when citizens suffered from fuel scarcity? It seems strange that they really care that much for the Naira scarcity.