Good morning, Exchange crew! This installment might be temporary because I even have to complete prepping for today’s TechCrunch Live with Arianna Huffington of Thrive Global and Mamoon Hamid of Kleiner Perkins. Since we scheduled the conversation, a things have happened, so I would like to retool my notes and questions.

The tech-narrative whiplash is definitely what I would like to speak about this morning. Now that the initial shock waves of the Silicon Valley Bank crisis have seemingly settled, tech news has reverted to type. When you read TechCrunch today, you’ll find meal delivery startups, chip news, funding rounds and a of AI news. Call it a return to industry optimism, even when the bottom underneath the positive vibes remains to be a bit shaky.

The AI bit, though, has me utterly captivated. The more I read into recent advancements within the AI world, the more it seems that the tools that customers and tech folks are twiddling with aren’t gimmicks sitting atop little substance, but as an alternative numerous substance with some gimmicks resting on top.

By that, I mean that the consumer-popular stuff like using ChatGPT to, say, power the narrative to your next Crusader Kings run-through or having similar tools write silly song lyrics seems to not be the core innovation; what’s underneath the consumer-friendly stuff is the actual deal.

Rather a lot is happening directly. From the recent release of huge language model GPT-4 to the recognition and rapid rollout of recent AI-powered search tools to firms like Quora and Duolingo finding ways to leverage the tech, we’re seeing each the speedy development of AI tech and quick commercialization.