🤑🧠 AI Whisperers, Apple's Bank and time to clean!

Want to make $335,000 to whisper to an AI? Wait, maybe I read that description wrong?

This is what I’ve got for you today:

• 🍎 Apple - bank and VR

• 🤖 AI - a 6-month pause after GPT-4?

• 💼 Jobs - become an “AI whisperer” at up to a $335,000 starting salary

• 🧼 Spring cleaning for your finances

Tech, AI and spring cleaning your finances

Hey, you! I hope you’ve had a great week so far and you’re ready for the weekend! In today’s newsletter, you’ll read about some interesting news from Big Tech and AI Land. And as spring is finally showing its pretty little face, let’s do some spring cleaning - of our finances!

🍎 Apple - bank and VR

Many of us use Apple products. iPhones, AirPods, MacBooks and the like. While I’ve been an Apple ‘fan’ for a long time, I can’t remember the last time I watched WWDC streams live.

Apple used to have this ‘buzz’ around it, and (to me) they were great innovators. Ever since Jobs passed away, Apple just doesn’t live up to that any more. Sure, the company is run well (and has made stellar returns for its shareholders 🤑). But I wouldn’t call them innovative.

I can’t help but wonder if that’s about to change. Two updates around Apple:

VR

Though Apple isn’t the great innovator of the past any more (to me), I will give them credit for this: being able to introduce a new technology or innovation at the right moment. When most people are ready to adopt them. Not being first, but being best, for the average consumer, at the appropriate moment.

VR headsets, from Meta to Valve and Sony, have been around for a while now. They have been primarily successful in niche areas, such as gaming and some Metaverse stuff, though that hype seems to have died down now too. No mass adoption by the average consumer as of yet.

Will this change when Apple introduces their VR headset on June 5th?

Bank of Apple

Many people use Apple Pay. In fact, 78% of iPhone users. This gives Apple massive negotiating power with banks: it’s the only digital wallet that the banks have agreed to pay a fee on.

Apple raked in $782 million in fees last year. Not bad. Now, Apple is launching Apple Pay Later, which “…allows users to split purchases into four payments, spread over six weeks with no interest and no fees.”.

I think this is a cool move. In the U.S., where credit card usage is more common than here, many people pay hefty interest charges to the banks. With this move, people can use Apple’s service instead and avoid these fees. Apple themselves say their service is “Designed with users’ financial health in mind”.

Furthermore, it’s another move in a broader trend of Big Tech moving into finances and cutting out the traditional banks that serve as middlemen. Innovate, or get disrupted 😉

Referrals

Don’t forget, there are some nice rewards waiting for you when you refer people to this newsletter 😃 I see that some of you have already been receiving the first downloads; great stuff!

🤖 AI - pause development because of “risk to society”

You’re probably using ChatGPT in some way, shape or form. And while the novelty of the first few prompts we’ve run has worn off, it’s still mind-blowing to me how quickly we’ve all adopted AI and what it can already do today.

Technology never advances linearly (though it might look like that, looking back). Instead, it grows exponentially. And this growth can be scarily fast.

Just think of the famous chess board example. For those of you that don’t know it, it goes something like this: someone invented the game of chess. They go to the King or Queen, and they are delighted! They are so happy this game of chess now exists that they offer the inventor a reward: anything they want.

The inventor is clever and doesn’t want to appear greedy to the ruler. So, they ask for a single grain of rice and then double it for every square on the chessboard. One grain on the first square. Two on the second. Four on the third. Eight on the fourth. And so on. Double every time.

The ruler, baffled by such a small price for a wonderful game, immediately agreed and ordered the treasurer to pay the agreed-upon sum. A week later, the inventor went back to the ruler and asked him why he had not yet been paid.

The ruler then calls in the treasurer, who then explained that it couldn’t be paid: by the time you get to the second half of the chess board, it would require more grains of rice than the entire kingdom possessed.

The outraged ruler then does what angry monarchs (used to) do: they have the inventor killed for trying to outsmart them.

By the time you reach the 64th and final square of the chess board, it would require over 18 quintillion grains of rice on the board. That’s an 18 with 18 zeros.

In technology, people often speak about “the back half of the chess board”; the moment each step in growth goes crazy fast. Have we reached this point with AI?

According to Elon Musk and many other tech prominents, we have indeed. In an open letter, they ask for a 6-month pause on any AI that goes ‘further’ than the just-released GPT-4 model. The letter states: "Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable,”.

The letter was signed by more than 1,000 people, including Musk, Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque, researchers at Alphabet-owned DeepMind, and AI heavyweights Yoshua Bengio, often referred to as one of the "godfathers of AI", and Stuart Russell, a pioneer of research in the field.

Interestingly, Sam Altman (OpenAI), Sundar Pichai (Alphabet) and Satya Nadella (Microsoft) didn’t sign. What do you think? Is a pause needed, or are some firms trying to stop their competition while they are trying hard to play catch-up?

Share your thoughts with me in the comments (online) or by replying to this email.

Lastly, AI risk is not the same as Artificial General Intelligence risk. Check out the recommended read below.

💼 Jobs - become an “AI whisperer” at up to a $335,000 starting salary

It’s no surprise to any of us that AI is all the rage these days, ever since ChatGPT got released. But, as you will have noticed by using it, the results aren’t perfect. They are highly dependent on the quality of your “prompt”: the questions/instructions you give the conversational AI.

Companies are looking for people who know how to interact with AI in the most effective way. These prompt engineers, also known as “AI whisperers”, are really sought after! With starting salaries being mentioned that go as high as $335,000, a career change might be in order 😉. Read the story on LinkedIn’s story feed.

🧼 Spring cleaning for your finances

Spring is in the air! Traditionally, this is a great time to clean your house (and your wardrobe, as you switch from winter to summer clothes!). The guys over at How To Money wrote about spring cleaning your finances, which inspired me to write a similar piece. I will write it for those that don’t live in the U.S. (and don’t have to deal with Roth IRA, Roth 401(k) and the like). (If you don’t know what those are: they are different types of retirement funds/pension plans, basically.)

Now, here are some spring cleaning tips so you can start with fresh finances this spring!

Relevant updates from MoneyMinds.io:

• New blog: Financial Spring Cleaning

• New carousels on IG and LinkedIn: ‘What are stocks?’, ‘How inflation impacts savings’, ‘The Simple way to become a Millionaire’ and ‘Five ways to give better gifts’

Gems from the interwebs

• New feature: ChatGPT Plugins - like what apps were to the first iPhone

• AI and robots fuel new fears for job replacement (on Axios)

• The jobs most exposed to ChatGPT on WSJ (paywall)

That’s all from me! Thanks for reading.

Cheers,

Jonne

DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.