Altman is not coming back alone, Bret Taylor, the former Salesforce CEO, and Larry Summers, the former Treasury Secretary will assume roles on OpenAI’s board of directors. Brett Taylor will take the chair position. Adam D’Angelo who voted to remove Altman from his role as the CEO will retain his board seat.

The reinstatement of Altman coincides with the departure of Helen Toner, Tasha McCauley, and co-founder Ilya Sutskever from the board. All of whom voted to remove Altman. Sutskever initially was for removing Altman, but later withdrew his support for the decision and at time being remains an OpenAI employee.

The board’s decision to remove Sam Altman as the CEO was swiftly met with letters from hundreds of employees and investors demanding that the board of directors resign and Altman returns as the CEO. Sam Altman was almost instantly scooped up by Microsoft who announced a new AI lab that would be led by Altman and Greg Brockman. Following the reinstatement the future of said Microsoft’s project is yet unknown.

The rapid turnaround in leadership meant the appointment of Emmett Shear, ex-Twitch CEO, as Altman’s temporary replacement. Many compare this situation to that of Steve Jobs’ departure from Apple in 1985.

Open AI has been the talking point of the world ever since the release of their chatbot ChatGPT in late 2022, which earned the company a valuation of $86 billion. Sam Altman has been at the helm of the company since 2019 and played a pivotal role in shaping it.

What happened with OpenAI’s leadership switch-up shows the challenges in governing businesses in such high-stakes industries as artificial intelligence. Altman’s return, which also brought changes in the board of directors can be seen as a crucial step towards more stable top level leadership.

Sam Altman’s reinstatement was met with enthusiasm from fellow prominent figures in the tech industry. Many highlighted that he had a pivotal role in OpenAI’s success and that should be appreciated. This leadership change-up rollercoaster shows how quickly and unpredictably can things develop in the tech landscape.

The potential for conflicts further spiralling out of control adds to the uncertainty. Bloomberg Economics suggests a global recession that could wipe off $1 trillion from the global economy pushing oil prices to $150 per barrel. Such a development would certainly dictate the gas markets to skyrocket.

With that being said, Europe’s gas inventories are currently at 96% capacity, which is well above the seasonal average. Following historical data a large withdrawal is not expected, providing a positive outlook for gas availability. Of course, that prognosis is subject to change depending on the upcoming winter weather.

The economic slowdown in the eurozone might mitigate the recent bullish trends in gas prices. Slowdown in manufacturing and business activity across major European economies, including Germany and France, reflect economic contraction. This does mean a potential future decrease in the demand for gas.

Let’s take Germany for example, Europe’s largest gas market, it has seen a decline in both industrial and residential gas consumption. Totaling to a 13% decrease in gas consumption for the first half of 2023.

If we look at what industrial investors are predicting, hedge funds are already selling gas futures, showing a bearish sentiment towards the market. Natural gas prices are already down by 3% due to slowed demand. However, a slight consumption increase in October shows that the situation is more nuanced than it could first appear.

What does all of this mean for the average household? Well, mostly uncertainty and potential budget impacts. Volatility in energy markets could trickle down to the retail markets as it adds to increased inflation. Retail sales across the eurozone have already declined by 2.9% YoY, this just further proves that careful planning and strategic decisions are needed both by businesses and governments.

ICBC Financial Services, the U.S. unit of China’s largest commercial lender, is actively trying to remedy the fallout of the cyberattack and are currently working towards system recovery. China’s foreign ministry assured that ICBC is doing everything in its power to minimise the impact and losses. ICBC assures that the global operations remain normal.

The attack is likely masterminded by the Lockbit cybercrime gang, which is infamous for its aggressive tactics. Although Lockbit did not take the credit for the attack on their website, cybersecurity experts suspect their involvement. Allan Liska from Recorded Future stated that it is very uncommon for a large bank to fall victim to such a large ransomware attack, which just further showcases the increasing boldness of cybercriminals.

Ransomware attacks involve hackers encrypting an organisation’s systems and demanding payment for its release, which often comes with the threat of exposing sensitive data. Lockbit has targeted 1,700 U.S. organisations, according to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

Despite the disruption, ICBC successfully executed Treasury trades on Wednesday and repo financing trades on Thursday. However, there is potential for disruptions in trade settlement and market liquidity as noted by market participants. The incident once again raises big concerns about the cybersecurity controls of major organisations, this incident will most definitely add to ever-increasing regulatory scrutiny.

The attack on ICBC adds to the trend of increasing boldness among ransomware groups. It seems that cybercriminals are becoming fearless of consequences. U.S. authorities are actively working to enhance international cooperation to try find and cut funding routes for these criminal enterprises.

The Treasury market continued to function normally, according to data from the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG). The impact appears to be limited and is contained for the time being. The bigger issue is that the attack showcased the vulnerability of large organisations to cyberattacks. This and many other cyberattacks this year urges a reevaluation of cybersecurity measures and regulation in the financial sector.

The jury reached their decision in less than five hours, finding Sam Bankman-Fried guilty on all seven counts of fraud and money laundering. The charges include lying to investors and lenders and embezzling billions of dollars from FTX, strongly contributing to the collapse of the exchange.

Even though Bankman-Fried maintained his innocence throughout the trial, three former associates of his, including ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison, pleaded guilty and in turn agreed to testify against him for reduced sentences.

The prosecution provided hard evidence that defendant’s crypto trading firm, Alameda Research, received and used deposits that were meant for FTX customers for other purposes, including repaying lenders, property purchases, investments, and political donations.

Five of the seven criminal charges carry a maximum prison term sentence of 20 years, the remaining two a maximum of five years. Quick-maths: that is a potential prison sentence of 110 years. It is unlikely that the judge will impose the maximum sentence, but Bankman-Fried is expected to spend decades in prison.

This trial drew a lot of attention to and within the cryptocurrency industry, potentially increasing future regulatory scrutiny within the crypto space. There is a potential second trial on other charges against Sam Bankman-Fried, those include campaign finance violations.

Before the FTX collapse Sam Bankman-Fried was a prominent figure in the crypto industry, a person who earned the moniker “the king of crypto” for the rapid growth of FTX and his ability to make deals. Experts predict that the crypto industry will become a battleground in US courts with the involvement of agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Euro area annual inflation in September 2023 was at 4.3%, down from 5.2% in August of the same year. The Governing Council of the ECB justifies the choice of maintaining the key interest rates at 4% by the fact that the inflation is still way off their target of 2.1%. Also, there might have been some market forces not directly related to the hiked interest rates that added to a drop in overall annual inflation in September.

The ECB’s verdict to keep the interest rates unaltered matched the expectations of market watchers, who predicted that there is a 98% likelihood that the key interest rate remains put for the time being.

ECB President Christine Lagarde noted that the central bank’s decision-making is hinged on data. She emphasised a “higher for longer” stance on interest rates. Lagarde also noted that it is still premature to discuss any future rate cuts at this moment in time.

The ECB’s decision to halt raising the key interest rates corresponds with other central banks globally implying that the rates have reached their peak. In September, the Bank of England, U.S. Federal Reserve, and Swiss National Bank all opted to retain their rates.

The ECB has a real challenge on its hands managing tight monetary policy to keep the inflation in check while also kindling sluggish economic activity and slowed growth within the EU nations. The ECB must navigate around the bond market volatility, global uncertainties like wars in Europe and the Middle East, fluctuating energy prices, and wage growth.

To sum up, the European Central Bank put its inflation objectives above the challenging economic environment in the Eurozone by keeping the key interest rates at a record-high. This is a very delicate matter and ECB must stay very vigilant in factoring in broader economic conditions and global uncertainties in their future policy decisions.

The company is diving into the AI trend, finding new ways to integrate the technology into the manufacturing process. One of the company’s uses for AI is overlooking and managing the body shop processes like welding studs to the frames of cars. A process that was and is performed by robots, but historically was managed by humans, now is fully controlled by AI.

That includes quality control and instructing the manufacturing robots to make corrections if any imperfections are found. This removes all and any human intervention from the process. According to the company, this increases efficiency and saves costs in the long run.

BMW Group Manager Curtis Tingle said that this single update to the manufacturing process has saves the company around $1 million a year. The technology is developed in Spartanburg facility and is patent pending at the moment.

But this is not the only example of AI use in the Spartanburg factory. AI is also being used for quality control during the various stages of assembly. There are 26 different cameras throughout the factory floor that snap pictures that then go through the AI software quality control process and if it spots any issues, those issues are then flagged for humans to inspect and fix.

It is important to note that AI is not there to remove humans from the manufacturing process, but rather help increase production numbers. It is was not possible to manually inspect as many vehicles as it is now with the help of AI.

A Falcon-Heavy rocket launched from Florida a few days ago. The spacecraft has a long journey ahead of it, six years and 3.5 billion kilometres to cover. Scientists hope to uncover numerous surprises on the way to the iron asteroid.

What’s the deal with the Psyche asteroid that actually earned it a multi-million dollar space contract as the destination point of the latest human exploration? Well, it is very unique. Among the million and a half asteroids in our solar system, only nine share similar properties with Psyche, it is also the largest of its kind at about 280 kilometres wide.

Prof. Lindy Elkins-Tanton, the principal investigator, emphasises the excitement of venturing into the unknown. Since there are no close-up pictures of Psyche that really does capture the spirit of exploration – its appearance is still a mystery.

Once the spacecraft arrives at its destination in 2029 it will map the asteroid’s shape, as well as study its interior. There is a theory that the surface of the asteroid might have spiky features due to high-speed space particles potentially forming metal sand.

Besides iron and nickel telescopes have also identified other materials such as sulfur-rich rocks on Psyche. Huge iron cliffs and canyons could potentially be found on the asteroid’s surface that formed as Psyche cooled and cracked over billions of years.

There are two schools of thought about the origin of Psyche. It could either be a stripped planet’s core, similar to that of Earth’s, or a primitive object composed of early solar system materials..

If the first theory is correct, it might have remains of a magnetic field, that would reveal its past as molten metal, similar to Earth’s magnetic field.

Of course, there is a potentially lucrative angle to this mission, since further exploration of Psyche could present an opportunity for asteroid mining that could be worth trillions of dollars. However, this type of mining industry is not yet possible due to technology and resource limitations.

The Psyche mission is a great testbed for new technologies, like electric propulsion and laser data transmission. The mission team plans to make real-time images of Psyche available to the public, providing an engaging journey into this enigmatic metallic world.

So, what exactly happened? Well, the FAA outlined 63 corrective actions that should help prevent the reoccurrence of test launch mishap in April. And until those corrective actions are performed the Starship aircraft is to remain grounded.

These are the corrective actions outlined in the FAA’s report: 

• Redesigning of hardware to prevent leaks and fires.
• Redesigning the launch pad to make it more robust.
• Incorporating additional reviews in the design process.
• Additional testing and analysis of the Autonomous Flight Safety system and other safety-critical systems and components.
• Application of additional change control practices.

This is a serious blow to SpaceX as to perform these changes the Super Heavy rocket essentially involves re-designing it, which takes a lot of time and money. Until these corrective actions are performed and reviewed by the FAA SpaceX is not allowed to perform any test launches at its facility in Boca Chica, Texas.

According to the FAA the implementation of these corrective actions is paramount to public safety and other environmental regulatory requirements.

Unfortunately, the full investigation report by the FAA will not be released to the public as it contains sensitive national data.

On April 20^th the rocket launched seemingly successfully, but 3 minutes in its flight multiple engines lost power, the rocket began to tumble and was intentionally destroyed to avoid damage to surrounding area.

The explosion during test flight left a crater in the ground, flung debris into surrounding area, and impacted sensitive habitat. Environmental and cultural nonprofits sued the FAA after the incident.

Future success of the company’s Starlink satellite internet venture depends on the Starship space program. Rest assured SpaceX is scrambling to make Starship operational and cleared for future launch tests.

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