Taylor Swift may be Person of the Year—but history will remember 2023 as the year of AI

I wish I had been a fly on the wall when the editors of Fortune’s former sibling Time made their decision about “Person of the Year” for 2023. As the father of two daughters who came of age with Taylor Swift, I have followed her career and music with admiration and awe—even if not a Swiftie myself. The way she has handled her career and her life is worthy of praise, and her record-breaking tour is one for the ages.

But history will remember 2023 as the year of AI. The technology’s potential was evident long before this, of course. But the release of ChatGPT dramatically changed public perception. Before November 2022, AI was caught between a near-term reality of powerful algorithms that could crunch massive amounts of data to recognize patterns and make predictions, and a long-term fiction of machines that might challenge humans in intelligence. ChatGPT and other large language models brought those two visions crashing together, creating tools that could converse with humans in ways that obliterated any Turing test.

The editors of Time punted, giving the top title to Taylor but creating a new “CEO of the Year” award for OpenAI’s Sam Altman. That’s understandable, but wrong. I mentioned last week the amazing demonstration that architect Keith Griffiths gave at our Brainstorm Design conference in Macau. What I didn’t mention was an equally amazing poem, written in the style of Dr. Seuss, that Franklin Templeton CEO Jenny Johnson created on the spot to summarize a table conversation at our CEO dinner in Dubai on the eve of COP28 the prior week. These sorts of tricks have already become part of our lives, and will change how we do business for decades to come.

That’s why, while I am weary of travel, I’m happy to be in San Francisco this morning for our Brainstorm AI conference, held in association with Accenture. It was here, a year ago, that my eyes were first opened to the power of generative AI. In the next few days, I hope to gain a better sense of where it goes from here. You can follow on fortune.com, and I’ll be reporting more over the next two days.

And an early tip: fans of CEO Daily will want to sign up now for CEO Weekly Asia, which will debut in January and be written by Fortune executive editor for Asia Clay Chandler.

Other news below.

Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com

TOP NEWS

Boeing’s designated successor

Aircraft manufacturer Boeing will reportedly promote Stephanie Pope, CEO of Boeing Global Services, to be the company’s chief operating officer as soon as Monday. The promotion designates Pope as the most likely candidate to be Boeing’s next chief executive once current CEO David Calhoun steps down. Calhoun is likely to stay in the position for at least another year. The Wall Street Journal

COP’s next host

COP29 is likely to be held in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, after Eastern European countries endorsed the oil-rich country’s bid to host the UN’s climate summit next year. In a surprise, Azerbaijan’s neighbor Armenia agreed to support Baku’s application as part of peace negotiations between the two countries. Fossil fuels make up 90% of Azerbaijan’s exports, making it the next major oil country to host COP after the UAE’s at-times controversial leadership this year. The Associated Press

Macy’s buyout

Arkhouse Management and Brigade Capital Management hope to buy the department store chain Macy’s for $5.8 billion. Retailers are struggling to compete against not just e-commerce platforms, but also brands that sell directly to consumers in their own outlets rather than through department stores. Macy’s brick-and-mortar sales fell 7% year-on-year last quarter. Bloomberg

AROUND THE WATERCOOLER

A startup founder who trains women engineers in Palestine wants Silicon Valley to remember that Gazans need the ‘ability to dream’ by Emma Hinchliffe and Joseph Abrams

Major finance CEO just ripped up her predecessor’s ‘work from anywhere’ policy—this is how experts advise preparing for promise-breaking and policy-amending in 2024 by Orianna Rosa Royle

American workers keep proving they don’t need to return to the office to be productive. A Big Four economist pinpoints 4 factors driving the productivity explosion by Jane Thier

House, marriage, kids: Millennials and Gen Z who try to follow a ‘traditional’ path of financial milestones may be majorly messing up their finances by Eleanor Pringle

The biggest study of ‘greedflation’ yet looked at 1,300 corporations to find many of them were lying to you about inflation by Ryan Hogg 

El Salvador became the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender. Now it’s offering citizenship for a $1 million ‘investment’ by Leo Schwartz 

This edition of CEO Daily was curated by Nicholas Gordon.