To hide or not to hide

Dear Reader,

Past week the markets came to a long overdue conclusion about the effective impact of AI in the context of augmented economic uncertainty and geopolitical danger. Both elements added substantially to the risk level and so it comes as no surprise that CNN's Fear & Greed Index is now on the edge of extreme fear.

Dow Jones sank 2% over one week, the S&P 500 2.5% and Nasdaq 4.2%. The Russell 2000 went down even 6.85%. Intel dropped 32% in one week wiping out $45B market value. The markets in total (mainly US based) evaporated a whopping $2.9 trillion just on last Friday.

The fact that Warren Buffett sold half of his stake in Apple and Iran is seeking retaliation for the blamage is not helping in moving the needle out of the fear zone. Despite this all we got the news that the market is pricing in a 50 bps cut now from the FED in the next September FOMC meeting with a 78% probability. Hip hip Hoeraay to those about to die!

By the way, on the topic of evaluating AI effectiveness I stumbled upon a cool test case. The idea is to identify a hidden number in a picture, which is 'challenging but doable' for humans but may differentiate great AI from poor AI. The test is about the picture below.

When submitting to Google's Gemini this is what comes out:

The AI engine I use regularly however is Perplexity and they gives the right answer:

So indeed Google's (publicly available) AI is not scoring so well while the newcomer in town (Perplexity, based on GPT-4) is doing a lot better. I invite you to test the picture on your own favorite AI tool and send me your experience.

Anyway, I wish you all happy hiding for what's coming next.

Cheers as always,

Luc