🥯S3T March 22, 2024 - Rate Cuts, Inflation Tracking, Grok-1, B200, Failures of imagination, LLM energy consumption, Harmonizing different expertise.

Welcome to S3T, the essential newsletter, podcast, and learning platform for change leaders. Every week we review the top developments and insights you need to stay ahead of the curve, build your leadership skills, and drive intentional beneficial innovation.

In this edition of S3T:

• 📉 Rate Cut Rally: Discover how market euphoria over the Fed's signal of three interest rate cuts sent the markets to record highs.
• 📊 Evolution of Inflation Tracking: Explore insights from a new NBER working paper that argues if inflation in 2022 was measured like in 1980, it would hit 18% instead of 9.1%. Learn about the hidden impacts of inflation on individuals and families, shedding light on the cost of money as part of living costs.
• 💡 AI Innovation: Get the latest on Grok-1, the largest open-source AI model yet, and the cutting-edge developments in reducing AI's energy consumption with KAIST's C-Transformer AI chip. Plus, NVIDIA's groundbreaking B200 super chip that promises to revolutionize AI processing.
• 🚑 Cybersecurity in Healthcare: Reflect on the continuing impact of the Change Healthcare Cyberattack, highlighting the urgent need for enhanced security measures in the healthcare industry and the broader implications for risk management in an increasingly digital world.
• 🚀🌟 Change Leadership Skill Building: In today's fast-paced world, the ability to bring together brilliant minds from diverse disciplines is not just an advantage; it's a necessity. Unlock the Secret to Multidisciplinary Success with this new S3T Playbook! Exclusive Content For Paid Memberships

🎧 Listen to this episode on the S3T Podcast - Be sure to follow the S3T podcast so you never miss a show!

Opinions expressed are those of the individuals and do not reflect the official positions of companies or organizations those individuals may be affiliated with. Not financial, investment or legal advice. Authors or guests may hold assets discussed.

Market euphoria over interest rates and 3 rate cuts

Market's hit record highs after the Fed held rates steady and signaled that 3 interest rate cuts would be done later this year.

If 2022 peak inflation had been measured the same way it was in 1980, it would have been 18% not 9.1%

In this new NBER working paper, The Cost of Money is Part of the Cost of Living: New Evidence on the Consumer Sentiment Anomaly four economists piece together new insights on why today's inflation figures do not accurately reflect the economic impacts being felt by individuals and families today.

Key indicators were removed from the consumer price index

• In 1983, mortgage costs were removed from the consumer price index (CPI)
• In 1998 car payments were removed from the index

When the 2023 interest rate hikes occurred, official inflation figures did not reflect the full impact on people because today's measures do not include the cost of borrowing.

xAI releases Grok-1, the largest open source model yet

Grok-1 takes the top spot in open source models with 314B parameters, leaping ahead of Llama 2 (70B). GPT-4 still outperforms.

xAI released Grok-1 under the Apache 2.0 license March 17, noting that Grok-1 is a raw base model trained from scratch and is not fine-tuned for specific applications. Instructions for trying it out:  github.com/xai-org/grok

Reducing LLM energy consumption: Korean chipmaker first attempt

KAIST develops the "Complementary-Transformer" (C-Transformer) AI chip, claimed to be the world's first ultra-low power AI chip capable of training LLMs.

At first glance the chip appears to "put to shame" NVIDIA's chips, with claims that they can "match the speed of Nvidia's A100 GPU" but there are open questions about actual performance of the C-Transformer chips.

Still - it is good to see attempts being made to reduce the energy footprint in the AI industry.

Meanwhile NVIDIA unveils its next level GPU

This week at the GPU Technology Conference, NVIDIA unveiled the B200, an AI super chip based on the Blackwell architecture (two 800 sq mm silicon dies linked by a 10TB per Second connection so they perform as one chip). NVIDIA says the new architecture delivers:

• 4x better training performance
• 30x inference performance
• 25x energy efficiency

than its predecessor. The new super chips are expected to be rapidly adopted by Big Tech - in fact the NVDIA announcement itself reads like a PR lovefest of big tech talking up their plans for using the chips.

Update: Impact of Change Healthcare Cyberattack Continues

UnitedHealthcare says it has paid $2Billion in advances to struggling healthcare providers as the industry's payment processing continues to be paralyzed, and threatens credit ratings of smaller orgs. The situation has Congress mulling the idea of mandating a new baseline of security protections for healthcare organizations.

Further reading, under the heading of "Failures in risk management are failures of imagination"

• HBR: Preparing for risks you can't foresee
• Standford: Learn to Imagine Failure
• ArXiv: Overcoming Failures of Imagination in AI Infused System Development and Deployment

Tech mythology and the new future of empiricism: The debate over open vs private models

Until now, we have predicated scientific advancement on empirical work. This has always carried with the implication of firsthand, direct hands-on repeatably provable findings.

Now, however, the rise of AI models is putting a layer between practitioners, researchers analyst, and the real world. Models are trained on amounts of data that no human could ever verify. (Some may argue that such data tools have the potential to extend our empiricism, or enable a new more advanced version of it.)

So a question for you: Are black boxes and science compatible? DM me on LinkedIn or X and let me know your thoughts. I'd love to hear from you!

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Congratulations - you just invested well-spent time increasing your understanding of the Big Picture, key tech and economic developments, gaining perspectives you can leverage this coming week!

Thank you once again for reading and sharing S3T, and thank you for the change leadership you are exercising - driving needed change whether on a

• personal level,
• team level,
• org level or
• macro level.

It's all equally important and impactful.

Your ability to drive change on team/org/macro levels starts with your ability to learn and make changes in your own life. Likewise your ability to continue driving change on larger levels happens as long as you continue to learn and make changes in your personal life and habits.

Have a great weekend!

Ralph

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