1.Global Stock markets surged to record highs after the U.S. Federal Reserve signaled it would begin cutting rates next year reported CNBC.

The projection came with central banks in Europe widely expected to hold rates steady today after major hikes over the past few years. The positive news — one analyst labeled it “an early holiday gift”— potentially offers respite for heavily indebted developing countries which have had to borrow in euros and dollars to court investors wary of currency risk: “Record debt levels and high interest rates have set many countries on a path to crisis,” the World Bank’s chief economist said.

Indian markets also boomed : FIIs buy net Rs 3,570 crore of equities as Sensex, Nifty hit record highs, reports Moneycontrol.

The Fed is expected to start cutting rates as early as March 2024, and market observers say the Reserve Bank of India will follow suit shortly.

The Fed’s dovish stance is expected to accelerate foreign fund flows into Indian equities and has come at an opportune time. The market appeared to be facing a liquidity crunch because of the large number of IPOs and share sales by promoters.

2.The IPL is now a ‘decacorn’ with a valuation of over $10 billion, as a surge in viewers and advertisers boost its earnings this year, reported Business Stabdard.

The Indian Premier League (IPL) has achieved the status of decacorn after a 28 per cent rise in its brand valuation to $10.7 billion, according to a report released by Brand Finance. A decacorn is a privately held company with a valuation of $10 billion or more. IPL's brand value was $8.4 billion in 2022. Since 2008, when the league was launched, IPL's brand value has jumped 433 per cent from the $2 billion valuation after season one.

The report said the main reasons behind the surge in the league's valuation are "return to full-capacity stadiums, increased viewer consumption on diverse devices, huge media partnerships, and renewed confidence among advertisers".

It also said that the league's brand value has been bolstered by introducing the Women's Premier League (WPL) and free access through the JioCinema app.

Among the IPL franchises, Mumbai Indians was the most valuable, with a valuation of $87 million. It has been at the top of the list since 2020.

3.Tesla has unveiled its second-generation Optimus humanoid robot, a marked improvement over the stiff and android that awkwardly shuffled across the stage at the EV maker's AI event last year.

In a video (see below) shared on Tesla CEO Elon Musk's social media network X, Tesla's Optimus Gen 2 can be seen flexing its individual fingers and hands, walking around the company's factory halls, doing squats, and picking up eggs.

The video concludes with two of the robots raising their hands,while club music plays in a demonstration of the robot's very Musk-esque dance moves.

While plenty of questions remain about the robot's real-world capabilities and how the company is planning to integrate AI tech as promised, it's a noticeable upgrade over what the company has previously shown off. But whether any of these humanoid robots will be able to replace human workers any time soon remains to be seen.

4.How Meta’s New Face Camera Heralds a New Age of Surveillance reports New York Times

Meta’s $300 smart glasses look cool but lack a killer app, and they offer a glimpse into a future with even less privacy and more distraction.

Mr. Zuckerberg posted a video on Instagram demonstrating how the smart glasses could use A.I. to scan a shirt and help him pick out a pair of matching pants. Wearable face computers, the companies say, could eventually change the way we live and work. For Apple, which is preparing to release its first high-tech goggles, the $3,500 Vision Pro headset, next year, a pair of smart glasses that look nice and accomplish interesting tasks are the end goal.

5.News Publishers See Google’s AI Search Tool as a Traffic-Destroying, reports Wall Street Journal

Shortly after the launch of ChatGPT, the Atlantic drew up a list of the greatest threats to the 166-year-old publication from generative artificial intelligence. At the top: Google’s embrace of the technology.

About 40% of the magazine’s web traffic comes from Google searches, which turn up links that users click on. A task force at the Atlantic modeled what could happen if Google integrated AI into search. It found that 75% of the time, the AI-powered search would likely provide a full answer to a user’s query and the Atlantic’s site would miss out on traffic it otherwise would have gotten.

What was once a hypothetical threat is now a very real one. Since May, Google has been testing an AI product dubbed “Search Generative Experience" on a group of roughly 10 million users, and has been vocal about its intention to bring it into the heart of its core search engine.

Google’s integration of AI is crystallizing for media outlets the perils of relying on big technology companies to get their content in front of readers and viewers. Already, publishers are reeling from a major decline in traffic sourced from social-media sites, as both Meta and X, the former Twitter, have pulled away from distributing news.

As bad as the social-media downshift is, Google’s generative-AI-powered search is the true nightmare for publishers. Across the media world, Google generates nearly 40% of publishers’ traffic, accounting for the largest share of their “referrals," according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from measurement firm Similarweb.

AI and large language models have the potential to destroy journalism and media brands as we know them," said Mathias Dopfner, chairman and CEO of Axel Springer, referring to the technology that makes generative-AI possible. His company, one of Europe’s largest publishers and the owner of U.S. publications Politico and Business Insider, this week announced a deal to license its content to generative-AI specialist OpenAI.

While Google says the final shape of its AI product is far from set, publishers have seen enough to estimate that they will lose between 20% and 40% of their Google-generated traffic if anything resembling recent iterations rolls out widely. Google has said it is giving priority to sending traffic to publishers.

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