Read this Wednesday’s edition of the FolhaMercado newsletter (15) – 03/15/2023 – Market

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GPT-4 has arrived

OpenAI, the startup that created ChatGPT, announced this Tuesday (14) a superior version of the language model of its popular chatbot, called GPT-4. The company said the update is more secure and accurate in responses.

With more data than ChatGPT’s GPT-3.5 and training through mid-2022, GPT-4 has 82% less chance of giving retorts that violate company guidelines and 45% more likely to deliver a factual answer, according to OpenAI.

What changes in the new version:

• Interpret images. It can read an image and generate information about it, such as translating a package and even identifying a type of plant or fruit.

• More intelligent”. While ChatGPT scraped by in an entrance test similar to the OAB in the US, GPT-4 is able to be among the top 10% of this group. The calculation of mathematical expressions has also improved.

• Multiple personalities. The user can determine that the tool answers his questions with a certain tone and set limits for the answers, in a concept known as “steerability”.

More about AI

The great rival of OpenAI and Microsoft, companies that have been working together on the chatbot, is Google. By coincidence or not, the big tech also announced this Tuesday that users of Google Docs and Gmail will be able to use AI to compose and summarize texts.

• The company has been adopting a slower pace in the dissemination of its tools and for now has released the novelty only for researchers to test.

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More layoffs at Meta

Four months after announcing its first mass layoff in history, Meta, owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, reported this Tuesday that it will cut another 10,000 jobs.

• Adding the two announcements, the staff reduction reaches 21,000 employees, which corresponds to about 25% of the company’s staff at the end of 2022.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, said this Tuesday that, in addition to layoffs, 5,000 vacancies that are open will not have employees hired. The company’s motto for the year is “efficiency”.

Which explains: in addition to being inserted in a sector context that is prioritizing cost cutting in the face of falling revenues, Meta had to tighten its belt even more due to particular problems.

• Inserted in 2021, Apple’s privacy rules that restricted targeted ads – Meta’s biggest revenue – took about $ 10 billion from Zuckerberg’s company.

• There is still growing competition, mainly from TikTok, and the billions invested in the metaverse that still seem far from generating any return.

The company, however, appears to have left the worst behind. In the last balance sheet released in February, the company cheered analysts by predicting that its revenue in the first quarter of this year would be greater than that of 2021, before Apple’s new rules.

• In 2023, its shares rise 55%, after having retreated 64% last year.

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‘No to Atacadão’

The Carrefour group had to postpone its plans to bring the first Atacadão store, a successful brand in Brazil, to Greater Paris, after the mayor of a small municipality created a petition against the installation.

Understand: the case took place in Sevran, a city of just over 50,000 inhabitants, located 18 km from the center of the French capital. There, a Carrefour store would be replaced by an Atacadão store.

Taking Atacadão to Europe is one of the goals of the group’s CEO, Alexandre Bompard, for this year. He claims that the store’s model, of offering a smaller variety of products, but at lower prices, “works very well in Brazil”.

Revolt: the mayor and the city’s unions criticized Carrefour’s decision, which would bring to the city “a low-cost project, which degrades Sevran’s commercial offer and threatens the sustainable, ecological and solidary city project for which we have worked hard for several years “.

• After a petition and a demonstration in front of the store, Carrefour announced the withdrawal of the deal.

Atacadão’s success in Brazil: is the largest cash and carry store in the country in number of stores, with 374 units in 2022, and accounts for around 70% of the group’s billing here.

The popularization of wholesale in the country came in the wake of inflationary pressure that hit the pockets of Brazilians, especially those of the middle class.

• With reduced purchasing power, consumers began to prefer discounts to the diversity of hyper and supermarket products.

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Banks attracted a flood of deposits

After the bankruptcy of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, US consumers rushed to take their money from smaller regional banks and transfer it to large institutions such as JPMorgan, Bank of America and Citigroup, according to Reuters agency.

Which explains: the fear of contamination from the crisis for the regional banks, which have less liquidity than the banks.

• In the second, shares in First Republic, one of these smaller banks, plunged 60%.

this tuesdayhowever, some of the fear appears to have dissipated and First Republic shares rose 40%, recovering part of the decline.

More on the SVB crisis

Opinion:

• Banks are designed to break, and they do, says Martin Wolf.

• It is no use for the government to promise that it will not intervene in the failure of financial institutions. It never worked in the world of traditional finance, it wouldn’t work with cryptocurrencies, writes columnist Bernardo Guimarães.