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Future of VR is now Future of Disruptive Tech! After talking to a few of our readers and running a poll, it’s clear to us that a lot of our readers are into all forms of disruptive tech (not just virtual reality).

Going forward, we will still be writing about virtual reality as always. But we will also be writing about AI, Crypto, and other gamechangers in tech. We’re super excited to be making this transition and hope you are too!

Today’s Menu

• Apple Vision Pro Updates

• Deep Fake Hackers Extort $25.6M

• Godaddy - Ethereum Agreement

• Sam Altman Looks To Raise $7T from Saudi Government

TODAY IN VR

Apple Vision Pro Updates

The Apple Vision Pro has been out for 10 days now and there seems to be mixed reactions to it.

On one hand, many people are completely blown away by it. “Spatial computing” is the single greatest thing they’ve ever seen. Based on our observations though, it seems that a lot of these people are newbies to VR. They haven’t actually experienced a VR headset before so what they’re REALLY blown away by is the concept of VR (rather than the Vision Pro itself).

On the other hand, we’ve also seen a lot of haters. A lot of people talking about how it’s only use case is for gaming. People saying that it’s no different than the Quest 3, yet costs 7x as much. End of the day, pretty much everything and everyone has its haters.

We attempted to go into the Brickell Apple store for a demo this weekend but unfortunately were rejected. So we will be reporting back shortly with an update and a side by side comparison with the Quest 3 shortly.

Stay tuned on that…

TODAY IN AI

Deep Fake Hackers Extort $25.6M

A Hong Kong based company was recently subject to a $25.6M loss because of AI deep fake hackers.

Basically these hackers created an AI version of their company’s CFO, which sent a video to the finance team requesting the money.

Their team wired the money to the provided account based on the video. Deep fake extortion represents one of the greatest fears for a lot of people about AI.

AI video is starting to reach a point where the accuracy is pretty scary. Over the weekend, I actually created an AI version of myself using Heygen (custom AI video) and Eleven Labs (AI audio).

The video isn’t perfect, but I have to say the audio is spot-on. This represents a major use-case for a lot of people that want to create content with AI.

TODAY IN CRYPTO

GoDaddy - Ethereum Agreement

GoDaddy (the worlds largest domain name registrar) recently struck a deal with Ethereum Name Services to provide web3 payment gateways to users (at no extra charge).

Basically what this means is that anyone with a traditional web 2 site can now accept Ethereum payments by following a few simple steps.

This is a pretty major breakthrough. Traditionally there’s been a complete separation between web 2 and web 3 sites. A lot of people believe that we will need to transition away from web 2 sites into web 3 sites in order to achieve more widespread crypto adoption.

Realistically this could take years. However, if companies find a way to simply integrate their web 2 sites with web 3, we could see a much faster transition.

I added my Ethereum wallet to my personal website over the weekend to test it out. The process was pretty simple and straightforward. I will be attempting to get someone to actually pay me via ETH over the next week to stress-test the site and will report back.

The Future of Disruptive Tech:

AI Nuclear Arms Race

Sam Altman is reportedly attempting to raise $7T from UAE investors (yes that’s a T for “trillion”) to manufacture new chips to power AI.

To put that in perspective, the US GDP is $23T and the 2022 US federal budget was $6.3T.

So basically Altman is looking to raise as much money as the US government spent in all of 2022.

If you’ve been experimenting with ChatGPT over the past few weeks, then you’ve probably noticed it’s been a bit “lazy.” The energy costs associated with AI are insanely large. It seems that the chip shortage has been wreaking havoc on OpenAI.

Nvidia currently has a monopoly on these chips and OpenAI wants to change that.

$7T may sound like a lot of money, but we actually view the current battle among top LLM’s as similar to the nuclear arms race back during World War II.

When countries were competing to create the first nuclear bomb, they understood that the winner would essentially become the most powerful country in the world. A country with a nuclear bomb could wipe their enemies off the face of the planet.

Because of this, countries funneled an enormous amount of resources into building nukes because they understood how much power it would give them.

Right now, it seems like companies like OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Meta, and several others will spend whatever it takes to achieve dominance. Apple has historically lagged behind in AI, however, they’ve acquired 32 companies over the last few years to catch up.

One could make the argument that all of these companies are ultimately shooting to be the first to achieve AGI (artificial general intelligence). AGI would unlock truly exponential growth given that these companies would have an army of hyper-intelligent employees that work 24/7/365 and don’t make mistakes.

A lot of people speculate that Sam Altman’s one week firing from OpenAI last year was related to making a controversial step forward to AGI. A lot is likely happening behind the scenes that isn’t revealed to the public.

But you can bet for sure that there will be major news about this “AI nuclear arms race” throughout 2024.

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Thanks for reading!

Until next time,

Damon