As we wind down towards Christmas, this will be the last newsletter of the year. A time to reflect on all that has happened in AI this year. It’s hard to think that only one year ago I was waiting impatiently to get access to ChatGPT for the first time, wondering what all the fuss was about. A year later it’s become a daily part of my life. So today, I’m going to highlight a few of the main AI news stories of the year, review my favourite AI tool of 2023 and also wrap up with my favourite prompting conversation of the year. Let’s get to it for the final time in 2023

News

The biggest story in AI in 2023 was Sam Altman being fired by OpenAI and then, very quickly, being reinstated: we still have not got the real reason why this week long circus actually happened, but it turned the tech world on it’s head. Seen as the face of AI, Altman had done some stellar work in firstly launching ChatGPT on the world, but then also travelling the world to get world leaders engaged in the promise and risks of AI. Here’s a video of an interview he gave in London during his world tour:

Here’s my wrap up thread on X that covered the whole saga:

The big event of 2023 was the AI Safety Summit held at Bletchley Park: Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pulled off a great coup in getting a lot of the world to come to the UK for a two day summit, including, importantly, China. Here was my take at the time, posted on X:

The biggest tech event of the year was OpenAI’s DevDay: the day was crammed with upgrades, announcements and was very slick. Some of the demonstrations were the best I’d ever seen. Here was my take on DevDay as it happened:

Here is the keynote from the day. Really inspiring:

Tool

My AI Tool of 2023, unsurprisingly, is ChatGPT Turbo. By far the most flexible AI tool out there and the most generally capable, it is the tool that all others aspire to be. Whilst it’s not the best at everything, it is still in the top category for every practical AI test. Multi modal, accepting inputs from voice, text and photo, able to generate images via DALL-E3, it represents the best of the best for me. There are multiple AI tools available for a variety of tasks. Here’s a handy infographic that captures some of the best:

Prompt

My favourite prompt of the year was undoubtedly when I interacted with NASA’s prompt called BIDARA. So much so, that I even made a GPT copying the NASA prompt and adding some more context. You can access the GPT here and try it out for yourself. Be warned however, it has a habit of taking you down the most interestign rabbit holes!

That’s it for 2023. Thank you for all your comments and support during the year. I look forward to picking up the AI story again early in 2024. Until then, I wish you and all you love, a very happy Christmas and a wonderful New Year.