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This year’s World Economic Forum gathering in Davos had a distinct atmosphere, and not only because Meta and Salesforce occupied prominent storefronts along the main promenade. artificial intelligence took center stage in discussions, pushing traditional focuses like climate change and global poverty somewhat into the background. Corporate leaders spoke openly, voicing critiques of trade policies, cautioning about potential AI market bubbles, and extensively debating the future trajectory of the industry.

Simultaneously, in Silicon Valley, the AI startup Humans& secured an extraordinary$480 million seed investment despite having no market-ready product. The funding is backed by a vision for “social intelligence” AI and a team with prior experience at Anthropic, Google, and xAI.

For further insights from the week, the full episode delves into several key developments: assessing whether Meta’s decision to cut 10% of its Reality Labs staff signals a retreat from the metaverse, and identifying who is still advocating for the company’s virtual reality investments.

It also covers Serve Robotics’ acquisition of Diligent, a startup pioneering the use of delivery robots within hospital settings, and explores rumors about OpenAI’s potential entry into the hardware market with speculated earbuds, analyzing expectations for the AI firm’s first consumer device.

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