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Even though the holiday season is in full swing, the tech world isn’t slowing down. This week brought new twists on established products as Google rolled out a beta version of Simple ML for Sheets, its cloud-based spreadsheet. The add-on borrows machine learning technology from its open source TensorfFlow project.

Every company loves to tout its vision and eye the trends we should all be tracking. However, when AWS looks ahead, as it did at its re:Invent conference, it makes sense to pay attention, so check out its picks for six trends that will drive machine learning adoption.

It’s hard to go a day without hearing about generative AI and its transformational  potential. But there remains an underlying issue with ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs). Sometimes they make up stuff – after all these models are trained to predict responses to an input – whether or not a fact is true.

Every self-respecting tech pro loves a good prediction story. After all, your job calls on you to, as Wayne Gretzy once said, “skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” Deloitte, of course, is well-positioned to anticipate and look ahead so check out why it says AI, the cloud and the metaverse (and Web3) will stay hot in 2023.

Layoffs are never good – yes, stating the obvious here — but there is a ripple effect that makes the recent round of tech layoffs even more troubling. For an industry already suffering from diversity and inclusion issues, workforce reductions may make a bad situation worse.

Here are the top 5 stories for the week December 5th. 

1. Google brings machine learning to online spreadsheets with Simple ML for Sheets
   
   While simple calculations and graphs have long been part of the spreadsheet experience, machine learning (ML) has not. ML is often seen as being too complex to use, while spreadsheets are intended to be accessible to any type of user. Google is now trying to change that paradigm for its Google Sheets online spreadsheet program.
   
   The beta release of the Simple ML for Sheets add-on. Google Sheets has an extensible architecture that enables users to benefit from add-ons that extend the default functionality available in the application. In this case, Google Sheets benefits from ML technology that Google first developed in the open-source TensorFlow project. With Simple ML for Sheets, users will not need to use a specific TensorFlow service, as Google has developed the service to be as easily accessible as possible.

1. AWS names 6 key trends driving machine learning innovation and adoption
   
   There is no shortage of opinions about why artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are growing. A recent report from McKinsey identified industrializing ML and applied AI as among its top trends for the year. In a session at the AWS re:Invent conference this week, Bratin Saha, VP and GM of AI and machine learning at Amazon, outlined the six key trends the cloud giant is seeing that are helping to drive innovation and adoption in 2022 and beyond.

1. The hidden danger of ChatGPT and generative AI | The AI Beat
   
   Since OpenAI launched its early demo of ChatGPT last Wednesday, the tool already has over a million users, according to CEO Sam Altman — a milestone, he points out, that took GPT-3 nearly 24 months to get to and DALL-E over two  months. 
   
   The “interactive, conversational model,” based on the company’s GPT-3.5 text-generator, certainly has the tech world in full swoon mode. Deloitte details emerging tech trends to note, as the countdown to 2023 heats up. But there is a hidden problem lurking within ChatGPT: That is, it quickly spits out eloquent, confident responses that often sound plausible and true even if they are not. 

1. Deloitte details emerging tech trends to note, as the countdown to 2023 heats up
   
   Interaction, information and computation certainly aren’t new concepts to enterprise leaders, but they are the three major areas where tech trends are set to emerge in 2023, according to Deloitte. 
   
   Within these areas, Deloitte honed in on what it predicts will continue to be the most enduring technologies heading into 2023 — including artificial intelligence (AI), cloud, and the metaverse (along with Web3). Bechtel explained that the technologies fit into three buckets, which the report details further

1. What layoffs mean for a tech industry that already lacks diversity
   Diversity, equity and inclusion are by no means new problems for the tech industry. However, new issues like the economic downturn can lead companies to take measures like layoffs — which can worsen an already glaring diversity problem across the industry. Even among the most diverse companies in tech — Twitter, Microsoft, Zoom and Cisco — three of the four have had to cut staff this fall. Twitter, specifically, laid off 90% of its staff abroad in India. What exactly do measures like that do to diversity?