In something of a David and Goliath move, Gamestop…through its parent company…has made a $56 billion dollar bid to acquire eBay. Gizmodo.com reports that GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen told The Wall Street Journal that together the two companies “could be a legit competitor to Amazon.” He added, “EBay should be worth—and will be worth—a lot more money. I’m thinking about turning eBay into something worth hundreds of billions of dollars.” Cohen sent a letter to eBay Chairman Paul Pressler on Sunday offering to buy the company for $125 per share in a deal split between cash and GameStop stock. Part of the pitch includes GameStop’s some 1600 storefronts as a network of authentication and fulfillment sites. The employees of the stores, who already inspected and grade gaming hardware and trading cards…could also verify collectables sold on eBay according to Cohen. The stores could be drop off and shipping centers for sellers. eBay has said it is looking over the offer. Cohen does have a track record. Before Gamestop, he started the online pet food site Chewy. 

While the so-called Musk vs. Altman & Brockman trial continues in Oakland, it has now come out that Elon Musk texted OpenAI’s Greg Brockman two days before the trial was set to start, to determine his interest in settling the case. According to cnbc.com, this text was just disclosed in a filing late Sunday. Apparently, “When Mr. Brockman responded with a suggestion that both sides drop their respective claims, Mr. Musk shot back: ‘By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will be,’” the filing says. Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015, sued the company, Brockman and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in 2024, alleging they went back on their commitment to keep the artificial intelligence company a nonprofit and to follow its charitable mission. It probably isn’t helpful at this point that Musk has xAI, which is a competitor with OpenAI. xAI is part of Musk’s SpaceX rocket company, which is not a nonprofit, either. 

Researchers at Harvard and Boston’s Beth Israel have tested a special advanced large language model AI against a couple of attending doctors in their performance diagnosing emergency room patients that come in at the triage stage. Gizmodo.com says the AI model…based on OpenAI’s first so-called ‘reasoning’ model o1-preview…got the correct diagnosis in 67.1% of 75 actual emergency cases, while two actual human doctors only hit 55.3% and 50% accuracy respectively. The diagnoses were what the researchers called ‘exact or very close’ diagnostic accuracy. The co-author of the study, Arjun Manrai, said “I don’t think our findings mean that AI replaces doctors, despite what some companies are likely to say.” Manrai did, however, describe the team’s results as evidence of a “really profound change in technology that will reshape medicine,” one that would require rigorous testing to verify their utility in actually making patient outcomes better.

Sometimes a business fades away, and you are surprised that it was still around. That’s how it seems to me with Ask.com. I can remember being at a radio station in the 90’s when Ask Jeeves…as it was known then…sent around a guy in a full butler tuxedo to promote the service. In fact, I may still have a Jeeves water bottle somewhere. At any rate, techcrunch.com is reporting that Ask.com, as it came to be known, is closing down. It is striking to me that they made it some 30 years and change. I don’t really know anyone who used Ask.com, and didn’t just Google things they had questions about. Now, we are at a point where Ai chatbots are spreading like weeds in your garden, and there are even AI powered robots on the horizon. Maybe they can be dressed up like butlers…’AI Alfred, get the Batmobile ready for me!’

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.