Hello! Welcome to another edition of AI versus Marshy.

The newsletter where a growth marketer with a conscience tries to demystify the biggest tech adoption wave we’ve ever surfed 🌊

(Side note: I like how I keep reworking what I say with the intro - I enjoyed writing that one).

Here’s what we’re covering this week:

🎚️ The regulation saga and avoiding AI monopoly

🧰 Tool tip - Pairing Excel with ChatGPT for badass spreadsheets

📈 One of the biggest takeaways from the OpenAI DevDay

There’s a bit to get through so let’s get going!

-Marshy

It’s not Monopoly money

Last week we talked about regulation playing into Big Tech’s hands.

To recap, if you’re already ahead in the AI arms race, one of the best ways to stay ahead is to cry for regulation.

The ensuing red tape will throttle and prevent any challenges to your throne.

Well the saga continues - an open letter to the President Biden opposing the AI Executive Order.

The first link is to X/Twitter (sorry) and the second link is to the website for The White House.

The signatories include Yann LeCunn (Meta), Marc Andreesen (VC firm a16z), Tobi Lütke (Spotify Shopify), and John Carmack (inventor of DOOM).
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​Edit: Earlier edition had Spotify :(

One of the main arguments about the regulation is that it throttles competition.

The debate about open-source versus closed has raged since the dawn of tech. I’m beginning to form stronger opinions about this space since starting to write - and I’m team open-source.

If artificial intelligence is as valuable as the Silicon Valley hype machine states (Sam Altman says it’s still being under-estimated even with that) then making it open and available to all will encourage more competition, more community involvement, and provide a more level playing field.

It’s not without risks (everything in this world has now) but to my novice mind it seems like a best general direction to move towards.

It’s mind-boggling seeing this all play out at the rate it is.

Tool tip - Getting Excel macros on like a boss

I’m an Excel nerd. I love the power that comes with being able to divine information from a pivot sheet like a wizard.

Once things get into macro territory - I’m out of my depth.

Until now.

​Masters of Work is another of of my news sources for this stuff, and they recently released an X/Tweet on how to use ChatGPT for VBA scripts in Excel.

Here’s it is summarised for you in Readwise.

Twitter is painful to read these days so you can thank me later 👋

Gold rush in 3, 2, 1…

OpenAI had their first DevDay - a conference focused on the developer community.

This sort of practice is very common in tech world. These companies owe a lot of their growth to getting engineers on side and building things within their ecosystem.

So when the makers of ChatGPT do their first one of these - you know it’s going to be big.

There’s already a lot of takes out there on the conference (it was Monday) - so here’s a summarised one for you.

OpenAI will open up a GPT marketplace and do a revenue share for apps released in its ecosystem.

The part I like the most is that the writer shared a chart for app adoption with Shopify:

This is far bigger than Shopify.

And if it takes off like this chart that’s a LOT of revenue for OpenAI.

There’s some other interesting bits to come out of the conference as well, including:

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That’s another week.

Something about ticking over 20 editions has buoyed my sails for this newsletter and am thinking I should update my newsletter heading past “ghetto MVP” status.

But I kind of love how crappy it looks.

What would you like to see on the top of the newsletter?

If I get any good answers I’ll run with it!

Stay curious!

-Marshy

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