🤖 Meta's massive AI pivot

Good morning and welcome to the latest issue of neonpulse!

Here are the AI headlines making waves:

🌊  Meta’s AI pivot

🌊  Walmart’s new AI negotiators

🌊  Robot dogs learn to speak

Let’s get into it!

Meta’s AI Pivot

After a very unprofitable detour into the metaverse, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears to be back on a course towards profitability after announcing a massive pivot into AI.

On the companies latest investor call Zuckerberg said that he wants Meta to bring AI agents to “billions of people,” with plans to introduce AI across the companies entire portfolio of products in the coming months.

“We’re exploring chat experiences in WhatsApp and Messenger, visual creation tools for posts in Facebook and Instagram, and over time, video and multi-modal experiences as well,” Zuckerberg said on the earnings call.

“I expect that these tools will be valuable for everyone, from regular people to creators to businesses. For example, I expect that a lot of interest in AI agents for business messaging and customer support will come once we nail that experience.” Zuck continued.

Supporting this pivot is billions of dollars of investment overhauling the company’s data centers, a move that insures that Meta will be able to support the rapid growth of AI on its platforms for years to come.

And while the company has not completely abandoned its Metaverse plans, investors have taken a collective sigh of relief now that the company has focused a majority of its efforts onto AI.

Walmart’s AI Negotiators

When your company’s business model depends on being the lowest cost provider of goods in the country, its critical that your team is able to negotiate the best prices on the products you sell.

But because human beings are imperfect and emotional creatures negotiations can get messy, which is why Walmart has turned to AI to negotiate deals with it’s suppliers.

Using technology from a company called PactumAI, hailed as the “global leader in autonomous negotiations,” Walmart simply provides the AI with its budget and then lets the AI go to work on negotiating the best prices.

PactumAI’s chatbot references historical pricing data (and even what other companies are paying) in order to negotiate pricing and payment terms, helping the company to close deals in a matter of days compared to weeks or even months when humans were involved.

Suppliers are surprisingly happy about the robo-negotiations, with 3 out of 4 suppliers surveyed saying that they preferred dealing with a robot more than a Walmart negotiator (don’t take it personally guys, most of my ex girlfriends have preferred a robot to the real thing too).

Only a matter of time before robots are negotiating with other robots, with humans removed from the equation completely.

Robot Dogs Learn To Speak

For a while there I was worried that we were going to have to communicate with our robotic dog overlords with hand gestures, but thanks to a partnership between Boston Dynamics and OpenAI, our new masters can finally speak.

By linking Google voice recognition technology to a ChatGPT interface, you can now have conversations with the robotic dog about it’s missions, or if you prefer small talk, the weather.

And while many have voiced concerns about the potential dangers of a technology like this, thankfully the people behind the project were able to put the risk of a AI powered robot in perspective.

You can check out the demo video on Twitter here.

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