The Fed's preferred measure of inflation has eased slightly, which is a small glimmer of hope amid the economic doom and gloom we've been hearing for close to a year. It's promising results for the Fed, who need to make some tough decisions on interest rates while avoiding raising them too high for fear of triggering a recession. But the jobs market is still strong and Silicon Valley Bank's bank run hasn't affected the data - yet. But is inflation easing thanks to tightening monetary policy, or is this a calm before the storm thanks to SVB's collapse? Let's look at the latest data and see how the land lies.

Github has announced plans to cut its workforce by 10% and will go fully remote, closing all of its physical offices as their leaves expire. They announced a hiring freeze back in January, and this will continue as part of the cost cutting operations. As well as shutting down their physical operations and showing staff the door, they'll also be conducting efficiency-led changes throughout the business to bring costs down. If it seems like there are new layoffs announced every day, it's because there practically are. We've seen layoffs from all across the tech sector, including household names like Google, Meta and Microsoft.

If all the hype around ChatGPT, Dall-E, Tesla's Fully Self Driving mode and *ahem* Q.ai, has shown us anything, it's that artificial intelligence is here to stay. The knee jerk reaction from many old fashioned meat machines, sorry, humans, is a concern around what this means for their income. For years now, we've been told how AI is going to take our jobs, and it's true that in many industries, machines, robots and other technology have cut workforce numbers dramatically. With that said, many of the jobs being taken by AI so far are often considered dangerous, repetitive and boring. There aren't too many people out there who are going to get great job satisfaction from turning the same 5 screws on a production line for 40 hours a week.

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) launches tomorrow, January 5th, the first time the world's largest technology exhibition has been properly running for two years. If you're not 100% sure CES is, it's a global tech trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), held every year (apart from when Covid messes it up) in Las Vegas, Nevada. It's widely considered one of, if not the, influential technology trade show in the world. The show attracts companies and professionals from around the globe, showcasing the latest and greatest in consumer electronics, including smartphones, laptops, TVs, home appliances, and much more. CES also features keynote speeches, panel discussions, and other events, giving attendees the opportunity to learn about the latest trends and innovations in the technology industry.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is everywhere right now. In truth, the fundamentals of AI and machine learning have been around for a long time. The first primitive form of AI was an automated checkers bot which was created by Cristopher Strachey from the University of Manchester, England, back in 1951. It's come a long way since then, and we're starting to see a large number of high profile use cases for the technology being thrust into the mainstream. Some of the hottest applications of AI include the development of autonomous vehicles, facial recognition software, virtual assistants like Amazon's AMZN Alexa and Apple's AAPL Siri and a huge array of industrial applications in all industries from farming to gaming to healthcare.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is everywhere right now. In truth, the fundamentals of AI and machine learning have been around for a long time. The first primitive form of AI was an automated checkers bot which was created by Cristopher Strachey from the University of Manchester, England, back in 1951. It's come a long way since then, and we're starting to see a large number of high profile use cases for the technology being thrust into the mainstream. Some of the hottest applications of AI include the development of autonomous vehicles, facial recognition software, virtual assistants like Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri and a huge array of industrial applications in all industries from farming to gaming to healthcare.

AI is everywhere right now. It's been slowly growing in popularity and importance, but recently it's burst into the mainstream with a number of high profile (and very cool) projections and applications. One of the most talked about has been the AI image generation technology such as Dall-E 2, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. These programs use text prompts to create incredible pictures of scenes and characters which are only limited by the imagination. One guy from Colorado even won a prize for digital art at the State Fair, with an artwork that he created using Midjourney.