The Acceleration Era: 2023
The year the public meets AI. ChatGPT reaches 100 million users. The surveillance infrastructure quietly expands. The platforms tighten their grip. The first serious conversations about regulation begin and stall.
March 14, 2023. AI. GPT-4 Launches. OpenAI releases GPT-4, the first multimodal large language model capable of processing both text and image inputs, and it scores in the top 10% among bar exam takers. The model that makes AI capability legible to a general audience. TechCrunch
March 2023. AI. Claude Launches. Anthropic publicly releases Claude via an API and a chat interface, the first production model built using Constitutional AI. Launches the same month as GPT-4. Anthropic
March 9, 2023. AI. xAI Founded by Elon Musk. xAI is incorporated in Nevada. Publicly announced July 12, 2023. Founded explicitly to counter what Musk describes as political correctness in competing AI models, drawing engineers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Microsoft Research. Britannica
July 2023. Identity. World ID Launches. Worldcoin launches its protocol, including World ID, a biometric identity system using iris-scanning Orb devices to establish proof of personhood. Co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The first attempt to build a global identity layer for AI-era commerce. CryptoRank
November 3, 2023. AI. xAI Launches Grok on X. xAI releases Grok, an AI chatbot integrated directly into X, initially accessible only to premium subscribers. The first major AI model built natively inside a social platform, combining the social graph with AI capability in a single product. Wikipedia
2023. Money. First Yuan-Denominated Saudi Oil Transaction. Saudi Arabia completes its first oil transaction denominated in Chinese yuan, the first documented crack in the petrodollar settlement architecture established in the 1970s. The transaction that proved the alternative rail existed.
2023. Money. Contactless Payments Reach 50% of All In-Person Transactions. Contactless payment methods, including tap-to-pay cards and mobile wallets, reach half of all in-person retail transactions in the United States, completing the behavioral shift that makes stablecoin-linked card infrastructure viable at consumer scale.
2023. Surveillance. Palantir Launches AIP (Artificial Intelligence Platform). Palantir launches its AI Platform, integrating large language models with its existing Foundry and Gotham infrastructure. The product that subsequently becomes the core of DOGE’s cross-agency data consolidation capability.
2023. Money. Palantir Funds Augustus Bank in $20 Million Series A. Palantir co-funds Augustus Bank, then called Ivy, in a $20 million Series A investment. The first federally chartered AI-native bank, led by a 25-year-old CEO, receives its foundational backing from the same company that will become the federal government’s primary data infrastructure provider.